Your Mac fails, and your backup is...?

[Karel Bata]

So you're in the middle of a shoot which you CANNOT ever keep waiting, and your state of the art MacBook Pro does the unthinkable - it dies. Maybe it's something you can fix, but right there and then you haven't got the time. What do you do...?

Many folk here will have a backup Mac handy - and will hope the AD is sympathetic as they boot it up!

But what if you haven't got a backup Mac (yet!) and you think you really really should go to eBay and get one. Something that will keep you going, in a real emergency, till you sort the problem out? What's the bare minimum you can get away with, just as a temporary stopgap for maybe a few hours, without completely embarrassing yourself on set?

(Any one care to own up they don't carry a backup at all? hmy: )


And while I'm here - what other backups are worth having? Do expresscards fail?
For instance, I'm thinking of swapping out the hard drive for a SSD. So I think (in case that should go up to the big Apple warehouse in the sky) it might be worth carrying around the original with a copy of my OS on it. Just in case...

 

[Marko Bunker]

I would go for a mirror system drive which you can hang onto another Mac and work as on your own, and of course a Time Machine backup of your project files.

 

[Karel Bata]

Sounds sensible. But what's the bare minimum hardware spec for the Macbook? I don't want to go spending another 2K on a machine that might never even get used!

 

[AaronPicot]

2K? I'm thinking that you're going to want to think bigger than that. I would go for the Mac Pro, not another MacBookPro. Use your current MBP as your backup, that's what I do. Life would not be awesome if I had to switch to using my MBP as my lifeline, but the production would keep running for sure.

But if you do wish to go MBP, get the 17", cuz they still have the ExpressSlot. This way you can add on FW and eSATA ports, etc. Much better for spot checking footage on a larger monitor as well.

IMHO, bare minimum means being able to get the job done on time, and that means having the right tools.

 

[Michael Romano]

While this might not be your question exactly, these are the steps I have to prepare for the kind of nightmare you're referring to:

1 - Multiple internal HDD's with mirrored installs in case a drive dies or software gets mangled.

2 - Multiple power supplies for both RAID and CPU.

3 - Keep (The correct) spare blank drives for the RAID in case you need to rebuild with a quickness.

BTW - If you're not AT LEAST using RAID 5 then god help you.

4 - Multiple monitors, in a pinch you can get away with just one.

5 - LoJack. Not the software, the real deal motorcycle version goes into the cart itself. I also use kensington locks on laptops / control surfaces. They don't do much but every drop counts.

6 - I always have a spare (MBP 17) laptop but thats often used to diagnose an issue rather than as an operating platform. In a pinch it has eSATA adapters and is fully mirrored to the MacPro install.

7 - Keep installers for all your programs/builds/serials etc... on a spare drive for the unthinkable.

Generally, if you're on "a shoot which you CANNOT ever keep waiting" you should be paid enough to just buy a whole new cpu on the drop of a dime. I've had to do that in the past until a repair was made. I then promptly returned the system to apple and paid the 10% restocking fee. I looked at the charge as a rental in a pinch.

Another great alternative is to think of all the friends you know who have a system. Better to pay them than Apple right?

BTW - Time Machine is cool for personal use but I've found that it doesn't restore a lot of system hacks, many of which I've had to install to make things run the way I like them. Test your recovery method BEFORE you have no choice but to test it.

 

[Jay Gannon]

I have 2 Mac Pro's and 2 Macbook's in the Jeep. If they all die then I go to the nearest computer store any buy something (I did that on a job in London a while back, Mac Pro died(PSU failure, dirty power from the house feed), Macbook (Non Pro) died so I went and bought a cheap Macbook Pro refurb from Micro Anvika on TCR and sped back to the set) I was traveling so didn't have the backup tower with me.

If you use a Macbook Pro everyday for 8-10 hours a day its going to die. I promise you that, get a 2nd hand Mac Pro and be much more safe in the reliability of enterprise level hardware. Their not that expensive anymore for an older 06 or 08 model.

 

[Jay Gannon]

While this might not be your question exactly, these are the steps I have to prepare for the kind of nightmare you're referring to:

1 - Multiple internal HDD's with mirrored installs in case a drive dies or software gets mangled.

2 - Multiple power supplies for both RAID and CPU.

3 - Keep (The correct) spare blank drives for the RAID in case you need to rebuild with a quickness.

BTW - If you're not AT LEAST using RAID 5 then god help you.

4 - Multiple monitors, in a pinch you can get away with just one.

Good advice here guys listen to it all.

I personally had never thought of monitors dying, another thing I need t get some backups of.

Generally, if you're on "a shoot which you CANNOT ever keep waiting" you should be paid enough to just buy a whole new cpu on the drop of a dime. I've had to do that in the past until a repair was made. I then promptly returned the system to apple and paid the 10% restocking fee. I looked at the charge as a rental in a pinch.

Yep your reputation is worth more than a single paycheck, if your not getting paid enough to buy a base Mac Pro system in a pinch your not doing yourself or the profession any favors.

 

[Marko Bunker]

Consider a cheapo hackintosh perhaps? Used one for about an year with alot of RED editing and had very few minor problems with it

 

[Matt Coats]

Old MacBook Pros, G5s, iBooks, iMacs, Minis, Hackintosh, Dell monitors, etc... this screams the word - amateur - sorry, this is business.

If you dont own this stuff, rent it per job, or lease it long term. Apple offers a very fair small business leasing arrangement.

As for gear...

I'm wary of people bringing only a MBP on set. If you are location it's understandable, but bring 2.

In a studio setting you should be bringing a MP with an MBP for email and internet (and a backup in case the tower goes down). 2 screens are nice, but heavy. I don't have the luxury of having equipment porters...

Tower Drives should be;
Bay 1 - System and Apps
Bay 2 - EMPTY (weight reduction)*
Bay 3 - 2TB (Raid 0)
Bay 4 - 2TB (Raid 0)
*Bay 2 is also empty because I'm f'ing SICK of pinching my fingers on drive trays when pulling Bays 3 and 4.

16gb RAM min. (8gb is for actual use, the other 8gb is marketing when some asks how much RAM you have)

Serial ATA with a Large TB Raid, sync'ing with rsync terminal commands, or Chronosync scheduler for the non-terminal savy.

 

[Alex Carr]

If your Operating system fails... You can still use Single User mode to do your
job. Md5,Diff, and cp are all valid and professional options. Just keep a piece of paper handy to write down directory structures. One should never leave the House without a Install Disc and a spare HDD.

I also know of a USB boot stick of Mac OSX, that is the ultimate in Backup. Its not a whole new laptop, but you stick it in and it boots. Snow Leopard Only, capable of r3d Data manager and Quicktime player. I haven't tinkered enough to get bigger programs working that need a library of files to operate though. But still very handy in emergencies. Plus this trick reliably boots up PC's too that can Natively run osx.

Also don't use a RAID 0, unless you are always prepared to lose that Data. There is no recovery from RAID 0, plus the Speed increase is minimal compared to data loss. Single disks can be recovered if not in RAID 0.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So you're in the middle of a shoot which you CANNOT ever keep waiting, and your state of the art MacBook Pro does the unthinkable - it dies. Maybe it's something you can fix, but right there and then you haven't got the time. What do you do...?

First of all, that's not "the unthinkable". In fact this has happened to me twice in the past year. Once with my own MBP on a shoot where I was DIT and on another shoot where I directed and the DIT's MBP failed.

Both times it was a hard drive crash, nothing wrong with the system.

When mine failed, I booted the system from a backup drive (I always have a backup on-hand!), connected via USB2 so I could continue to use FW800 and eSATA for the job at hand. Down-time was less than a minute, not an issue, replaced the drive that evening.

Second time, it was the DIT's system and he was totally unprepared. Grabbed my MBP and we started using that. Down time was about 5 minutes. When we broke for lunch, the DIT raced home or wherever - said he had a backup. Lunch was over, we had to start without him, I had to direct and pull DIT duty. He finally shows up with a 2.5" HDD that "he thinks" is his backup, but it's just a bare drive in an opened static bag. I say whatever and tell him to to fix his computer and hurry up. Dude didn't know what to do. We stopped to change set-ups and while I should've been working on other things, I cracked open the guy's MBP to swap the HDD. This was the older pre-unibody model where it was actually a real pain in the ass to do it. I did that while the guy looked over my shoulder, we powered it up and found the drive to contain an empty FAT32 partition. Finished the day on my MBP, the guy re-loaded all his software that night and had a working system the next day. I was not real happy with him, neither was our producer. A DIT needs to be able to handle this situation and know how to fix their equipment.

ALWAYS have a backup system available. This should be the DIT's responsibility, IMO. If your DIT can't provide this, then cover your own ass and have something. Most of my shoots are outdoors and/or on limited budgets. It's rare we have a full DIT cart with a Mac Pro. Even if the budget is there, no one is wheeling a DIT cart up the side of a mountain or out into a field. But I always make sure we have a backup notebook on hand or two as well as a backup system drive we can use along with our redundant media for offloading, etc..

And while I'm here - what other backups are worth having? Do expresscards fail?

Haven't had an ExpressCard fail on me yet <knock wood> but I did have one get broke somehow. I keep an ExpressCard eSATA adapter with each MBP.

For instance, I'm thinking of swapping out the hard drive for a SSD. So I think (in case that should go up to the big Apple warehouse in the sky) it might be worth carrying around the original with a copy of my OS on it. Just in case...

SSD's are more resilient to shock, vibrations, etc.., but don't go thinking that they're any more reliable. I've toasted a few SSDs in the past 18 months and I don't see any reason to spend the money to put them into a notebook. For the price of one top of the line 480GB SSD, I can buy about 17 (yes, seventeen!) 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" HDDs... But whatever. They do have performance benefits, especially as an OS/application drive, since read times are really fast. Write times fall off as the units fill up, so your mileage may vary on that front. Personally I think there's better things to spend the money on until the SSD tech matures a bit more.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

For backup OS/application drives, I use a 2.5" HDD in a compact 2.5" HDD enclosure with USB2 that can power itself from the USB2 port. I also use compact RAID systems at times like the Patriot Convoy XL. It lets you put two 2.5" HDDs (or SSDs) into a 3.5" HDD-sized enclosure and configure as RAID-0, 1 or JBOD. Very fast and efficient RAID. Lots of people using these with dual SSDs in RAID-0 mode and then installing them as 3.5" drives in desktops. Can connect via SATA/eSATA and USB2. They're awesome. Can power themselves via USB as well.

I also keep a 64GB USB2 FLASH drive/thumb drive with OSX on it and other diagnostic tools, some basic software like REDCINE-X, and all the drivers for my systems. OSX boots from a USB2 memory key just fine -- any key that represents itself as a standard mass storage device works just fine. Wish Windows would work that way....

 

[Alex Carr]

I hate the older MBP, it takes me about 10 minutes longer to replace the HDD. With the newer unibody its about 3 minutes, Plus the hdd I would swap inside would already be loaded with an OS and every piece of software I would need.

I like SSD's in Laptop's. Very smooth, super fast, Low power, no Heat. But as Jeff says, they can also fail. I have one in a desktop that's reading super super slow after being used for almost a year and a Half. So Its begging to be replaced or reformatted, I'll find out tonight.

 

[AaronPicot]

sync'ing with rsync terminal commands, or Chronosync scheduler for the non-terminal savy.

Hey Matt. This is interesting. What are you syncing, exactly? Thanks.

 

[Jay Gannon]

Multiple arrays I would guess. Good thing to do on large shoots and sometimes large sets can benefit from it.

 

[Matt Coats]

Hey Matt. This is interesting. What are you syncing, exactly? Thanks.

I'm sync'ing the Raid 0 set (Bays 3 & 4 ) to the external RAID (configured to Raid 5 or a mirrored set, project dependent). I may also do a copy to a FW800 pocket drive.

Basically making sure there are 3 copies before any media is erased (I use R3D DM as well). I use Chronosync set to keep everything in sync usually, with a 5-10 min schedule so everything is mirrored in near real-time.