Periphery Advice and Maybe Commiseration...

[brdaykin]

Hi forum!

So my 27" iMac 5K died and after a very long and frustrating slog through my local reseller's AppleCare+ repair process, Apple is replacing it with a new M3 iMac. Although I had 1 TB storage in the 27" and asked if I could order the new iMac with the additional and was told outright no, they will only just replace it with the base model. I strongly suspect this is the local seller's limitation and I don't know why that would be, but I'm pretty much stuck with it. Unless I can simply return the new iMac for cost and order a THIRD Mac with the additional storage. Which feels like a LOT of work.

So I'm asking generally for advice about how to manage reduction in storage. Most of my media is in the cloud anyway, but with three regular users in the house we were running up on about 800 GB generally on the iMac's usage, although admittedly some of this was often in the gray "other data" category.

What do y'all recommend? I have been running Time Machine backups on an old Time Capsule, which I think/bet is also ill-advised. I'm fine running backups to Cloud but am wondering if any of you have also downgraded on storage and what your hints or tips are.

Thanks in advance!

brd

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Was the 1TB aftermarket? If it was factory, I’d certainly insist on specs equal to or greater- particularly with the screen size reduction.

 

[neutrino17]

You can add external storage very cheaply. I just got an external 1TB drive from Crucial for temporary storage and moving data around. It was about $90 or so. SSD. Might be an option for you.

 

[gilby101]

AppleCare+ is an Apple product, even if you are negotiating via a local reseller. It is not the reseller who determines what you get - they should be pushing Apple for a better deal. That is assuming your replacement is an AppleCare+ replacement and not just the local reseller offering a replacement - either would be possible in my country.

I would be annoyed about the smaller screen and would be asking for a Mac Mini and a 27" 5K screen, as well as making sure the memory and storage were what you had with the 27" iMac.

And get a directly attached HDD for your TM backups.

 

[Fishrrman]

Three "account users"?

Have you considered getting a 1tb or 2tb EXTERNAL drive (SSD would be good)?

I'd partition it "Three ways" (one partition for each account holder).

Then, encourage the account users to "migrate" surplus and seldom-used stuff to their respective partitions on the external drive.

This should "trim down" the amount of space used on the internal 1tb drive considerably.

 

[HDFan]

If you purchased it with 1 TB of storage as configured by Apple then they have to replace it with a 1 TB model.

 

[ChrisA]

Three "account users"?

Have you considered getting a 1tb or 2tb EXTERNAL drive (SSD would be good)?

I'd partition it "Three ways" (one partition for each account holder).

No, never do that. Lets the operating system's access control manage access just like it does on the system drive.

A fast 1TB external SSD costs just over $200. But you can buy them up to 4TB

As for backup, just buy a 4TB mechanical disk for cheap and ue that with Time Machine and then also use an off-site cloud company.

You can use "soft links" so that all the data on the external drive appears as if it is on the internal drive and users don't have to think about where their data is.

 

[Fishrrman]

Chris wrote:
"Lets the operating system's access control manage access just like it does on the system drive."

I'm old.
What does the above mean?
I've never EVER used the "manage drive" feature (iCloud?) and never will.
All the "management" of my drives... is done by... me.

The OP seemed to be concerned because the Mac's internal drive was getting "full".

The easiest way to resolve that is to move things that aren't used or needed OFF OF it, to an external drive.

With 3 separate account holders, I would presume that each user wants some control over what is moved from his/her account.

Thus... the partitions on the external drive... one for each user.

The entire external drive can then be backed up using CarbonCopyCloner (each partition backed up individually).
I've been doing this (backing up multiple partitions on my internal drive to a partitioned backup drive, for many, MANY years).

 

[theluggage]

I'm old.
What does the above mean?

I think they simply meant to use the regular "Sharing and Permissions" settings on each user folder to set it up so each user can only access their own files. If you need to enforce that at all, you'd do the same using "partitions" anyhow.

Thus... the partitions on the external drive... one for each user.

Apologies if you already know this (it may still be helpful to others): With APFS, Disk Utility can very easily create and remove "Volumes" rather than "Partitions". Like partitions they show up as if they were separate drives. Unlike partitions you don't have to give them a fixed size - you can leave them free to grow to fill the entire drive, add a quota to set their maximum permitted size and/or 'reserve' a minimum size. Much more flexible than partitions. Downside is that (I think) you can't change the quota on an existing partition (which is annoying).

I've found them useful for (e.g.) having a Time Machine volume and a regular storage area on the same physical drive (Time machine needs a blank volume to initialise). I've also got a volume on my main drive set to "case sensitive" for web development and other stuff that gets shared with case-sensitive Linux systems.

 

[Digital Dude]

Hi forum!

So my 27" iMac 5K died and after a very long and frustrating slog through my local reseller's AppleCare+ repair process, Apple is replacing it with a new M3 iMac. Although I had 1 TB storage in the 27" and asked if I could order the new iMac with the additional and was told outright no, they will only just replace it with the base model. I strongly suspect this is the local seller's limitation and I don't know why that would be, but I'm pretty much stuck with it. Unless I can simply return the new iMac for cost and order a THIRD Mac with the additional storage. Which feels like a LOT of work.

So I'm asking generally for advice about how to manage reduction in storage. Most of my media is in the cloud anyway, but with three regular users in the house we were running up on about 800 GB generally on the iMac's usage, although admittedly some of this was often in the gray "other data" category.

What do y'all recommend? I have been running Time Machine backups on an old Time Capsule, which I think/bet is also ill-advised. I'm fine running backups to Cloud but am wondering if any of you have also downgraded on storage and what your hints or tips are.

Thanks in advance!

brd

If that's the policy, things have really changed. I've been an Apple product consumer since 1983, so I'm a bit jaded by the level of customer service we had in the early decades. If you ever had to get a Mac serviced and it was beyond repair, they would just give you a new one. I remember a time when my broken iPhone was upgraded to a newer version with better specs. Frankly, accepting a downgrade just doesn't sit right with me. You could try calling the Apple Corporate office to explain your situation and resolve the mismatch. 🍎

 

[theluggage]

Frankly, accepting a downgrade just doesn't sit right with me. You could try calling the Apple Corporate office to explain your situation and resolve the mismatch.

Yeah - I can partly see the argument that the 24" is the nearest current equivalent to the 5k iMac (it's "better" in many respects, esp. if we're talking about the base i5 5k iMac - an M3 will smoke that) - but they should at least match the storage capacity and RAM (if the original purchase included a RAM upgrade), without which even a more powerful processor might not be fit for the original purpose.

Ultimately, they're trying to replace a computer that cost at least $1800 new with one that costs $1300 new - asking for a 1TB version that costs $1700 is hardly unreasonable.

 

[ChrisA]

Chris wrote:
"Lets the operating system's access control manage access just like it does on the system drive."

I'm old.
What does the above mean?

Old? This stuff was invented in the 1960s

The idea is that back in the day a computer was a shared resource used by everyone in a department or even company. Many people would be using the computer simultaneously. So the OS was designed to isolate users from each other, so that one person could not mess-up the work of others. One part of this was permissions on files.

I disagree that users should have to even worry or know where their files are. That is a concept from MS DOS that was carried over to MS Windows. Other OSes make file location transparent and don't show the physical location of data to users unless they go looking for it.

Hinding the location from causal users might seem odd but it has the big advantage that later we can physically move the data because perhaps a disk drive broke or more drives were added to the system. Then all the pointers to data need not change, the user never notices the change to the hardware. So you can add and external drive and later a second drive and the user sees no change.

MS Windows dramatically dumbed down user expectations. I think because it was an OS developed after computers because smaller and used by individual users and was not (at the time) connected to networks. "Security" was a non-issue and much of the "under the hood" design was inherited from MS DOS which was designed to run on severely under-resourced microprocessors. macOS (aka BSD UNIX) was developed on a departmental computer and stayed there until finally personal computers because both powerful and "connected" to multi-user networks. It's problem was that it required a knowledgeable administrator to set up and maintain it. Apple tried to make this easy to normal people and mostly succeeded.


As for backups the "clone the drive" idea's only good feature is that it is easy to understand. That is it. The big problems are:
1) creating a backup always overwrites the previous backup. What if a file was corrupted and then you did a backup, doing so overwrites your only good copy of the file? So the clone-the-disk backup needs to keep a series of backup disks offline and used in rotation. It is expensive to keep many disk drives in a fire safe.
2) cloning the disk takes a LONG time so you are not likely to want to do it frequently. Other methods are fast enough that you can do them either continuously or every hour. (modern copy-on-write file systems can maintain version history with zero cost and time)
3) clone-the-disk generally means the data has to be restored to a system with a similar hardware setup because the backup copied not only the data but the way the data was stored.

 

[Fishrrman]

Re reply 12:
"creating a backup always overwrites the previous backup. What if a file was corrupted and then you did a backup, doing so overwrites your only good copy of the file?"

This is exactly WHAT I WANT.
I want my backup to be a copy of what is on my "main" drive.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Works for me.

I do keep three cloned backups:
- one within arm's reach
- one in a fire-resistant box in the basement
- one in the car (serves as an "off-site" backup out-of-the-house)
Very VERY few times have I ever had to "go back" to either backup #2 or #3 to look for a file.

"cloning the disk takes a LONG time so you are not likely to want to do it frequently"

I keep my internal drive (2018 Mac Mini) partitioned into 4 "pieces":
Boot
Main
Media
Music
Nearly all of my day-to-day files are on the "Main" partition (hence the name).
For "a test" for this reply, I just
- turned on my cloned backup
- ran CCC and told it to update my "Main" partition
- CCC did the job -- time consumed was 6 seconds (that IS NOT a typo)

Cloning my boot partition (which I do weekly) takes about 3 mins.

"clone-the-disk generally means the data has to be restored to a system with a similar hardware setup because the backup copied not only the data but the way the data was stored"

EVERY time I've either "restored" (only have had a need to do that once or twice in many years), or just MIGRATED from an old Mac to a new one, I've used cloned backups.

It has always worked well for me.
That's my experience.
What works... works.

 

[wonderings]

Never heard of Apple replacing with a completely different model. Did your 27" iMac still have AppleCare on it? If so you should deal directly with Apple and not your reseller. If the computer is still in warranty you should be getting exactly what you had covered under warranty, not a different machine.

I am thinking that this is probably not an AppleCare warranty but your resellers store warranty which they are covering and not directly covered by Apple themselves.

 

[theluggage]

So the clone-the-disk backup needs to keep a series of backup disks offline and used in rotation. It is expensive to keep many disk drives in a fire safe.

...yes, keeping proper "professional grade" backups is expensive and time-consuming and might not be worth it if you're just a hobbyist/casual user. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide how valuable your data is and how scrupulous you need to be, and how much time you can afford to waste re-building your drive after a failure.

Personally, I think clone-type backups and Time Machine complement each other - Time Machine is great for recovering individual files after fat-finger errors, but there's a lot to go wrong (which could leave the whole backup corrupt) and the backups grow huge over time. Disk clones will always "fit" on the same-sized disk as the drive you're backing up and - at the end of the day - are just regular disks with regular files without any convoluted hard links or sparsebundles. Having a Time Machine backup and one or more periodic clones isn't a bad idea.

I know SuperDuper has an "only write changed files" option, which speeds things up a little, so I assume CCC does the same.

Even if you're only using Time Machine you should probably have several backup drives that you regularly switch between - or a permanently connected one and another that you take out of the safe and update every so often.

It's also useful to learn how to write rsync scripts (or, I think, there are some friendly front-ends to rsync) that just back up the directories for a particular job or project to an external drive or network share, as a belt-and-braces backup for works-in-progress.

 

[wonderings]

Unless there are very complex settings you have done do your computer, I don't really get needing to have a complete clone. Apps are easy and quick to download and most are cloud based ie you login with an email and password. Adobe is an example of this, I no longer need reg keys for the apps, I simply login, download what I need and I am done. What I want is a hassle free backup that secures what I can't replace. My working files, photos and things of that nature. Time Machine offers this for onsite backups, it is simple, runs in the background so you never notice it. The secondary offsite option I use is BackBlaze. It is cheap for peace of mine, runs like time machine in the background and never notice it. It also has unlimited backup size for home use, so any externals I might have I have backup as well into the cloud. I never have to think about it. so protected offsite and onsite with ease. Needing to backup to an external manually on a regular basis is going to get old fast and eventually most people will just stop doing that. And then keeping the hard drive in your car for an offsite backup, well not something I would recommend to anyone, especially with the simple and hassle free options out there.