There are reports that the new Windows update is deleting user files. Like, all of them sometimes. So maybe turn off updates for a bit, and also make sure your stuff is backed up.
I've been meaning to get a regular backup schedule to an external drive going soon anyway since my drives are getting long in the tooth.
if I pick up a 2tb USB 3.0 drive what kind of free software is there to backup selected files/directories?
I believe the newer versions of windows itself can do automated backups.
Edit: I just threw down for a 2TB drive myself. I purchased Acronis clone software a few years back so I'm just going to clone my 512GB main drive and call it good.
I don't really want a full clone of my system though honestly. that seems like it'll be a bigger pain in the butt. plus then I can't use the drive to move files around as needed.
all my stuff is already spread over 2 1tb internal drives with separate partitions anyway. it's mostly that these drives are older and I want to use the external to copy files I wanna keep handy in case one or both hdds fail someday.
It'd be nice to automate what files sync to the drive though...
a couple of OS X's ago, they added a feature to OS X which automatically consumed excess harddrive space by filling your disk with iCloud related file backups
these file backups were labelled as "purgeable" space, and it would fill your HD, no matter the size, to almost-full status, leaving only a dozen or so GB actually free
if you were to do something with your Mac which rapidly consumed large amounts of space (let's say: compile a large/complex software project using Apple's award winning developer tools (tm)), the OS would race to delete files from this purgeable space to make room for what the user was doing
were it to fail to do so, you would see cascade system errors concerning disk space, as the rest of the operating system doesn't know what's going on and assumes you're about to crash your mac into a glacier
this "feature" was mercifully something you could disable in Settings
In Mojave, as far as I can tell, it can no longer be disabled. Even if you have special tools to identify and proactively delete the purgeable files, they seem to fail, even with admin permissions. I am now trying to figure out where I can set up a Linux partition in my office so I can uhh... keep doing my job
what the hell
I haven't upgraded any of my OS's for a while - and I usually disable iCloud backup anyway, because I use google drive for work so it's just redundant - so one way or another I somehow haven't run into that phenomenon
the number marked "free space", second to bottom, is what every non-iCloud program recognizes as real free space on my computer
if I do something that eats disk, that number very quickly falls down to just a few megabytes. if it ever reaches 0, every program in my computer which isn't icloud-aware will immediately halt and I have to start over again
the "hidden space" section is more or less what Apple is laying claim to, and I cannot find a way to remove (and best googles this afternoon seem to indicate its permanent in Mojave)
it's a great program for hunting down disk space on Mac when you need to make room... back in the good old days when you had permission to delete files from your own computer
I hope the ACCC and the EU come down on them hard for that, cos it's all sorts of fucked.
I mean they've been doing it for iPhone years. The previous generation MacBooks had storage that was built in to the logic board and in the event of board failure data could only be pulled with a proprietary Apple(tm) tool.
I don't think this makes any more waves than are already there.
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited October 2018
So Google gave me the ability to never have to answer the phone again!
Also, I was dead set on the slate until I saw the price.
I knows its always been really expensive, but as Apple makes it harder to do your own repairs and stuff I've been seeing a lot of people on Facebook and Reddit doing angry price comparison of the Apple Store saying "Oh yeah this'll be $900 to fix" and the place up the street doing it for $100.
I got my phone screen repaired by a place on the street for a little cheaper than the Apple Store and within a year my phone was unusable so it's the Apple Store for me
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
i'm not really down with the uproar over the repair stuff, especially not for phones and laptops (which is basically all they have now)
Apple is the company that will give you a mulligan on almost any break anyway (unless they've stopped recently)
i'm thinking their mindset is they'd rather have first crack at the repair than having you taking it to Joe Stoner, letting him fuck it up, and then handing out a full replacement in the end anyway
you don't *have* to take it to Apple either. Just a repair center that can pass muster with them... I'm not sure I'd hand my Very Expensive Computer to someone who can't clear that hurdle anyway
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
i'm not really down with the uproar over the repair stuff, especially not for phones and laptops (which is basically all they have now)
Apple is the company that will give you a mulligan on almost any break anyway (unless they've stopped recently)
i'm thinking their mindset is they'd rather have first crack at the repair than having you taking it to Joe Stoner, letting him fuck it up, and then handing out a full replacement in the end anyway
you don't *have* to take it to Apple either. Just a repair center that can pass muster with them... I'm not sure I'd hand my Very Expensive Computer to someone who can't clear that hurdle anyway
Like, I can't imagine the headaches of running a business that uses macs you can't repair without going through a costly and timely procedure.
At my job, we cannibalize pcs all the time. Especially since some of these towers has ide HD and good luck finding a replacement that dosn't cost a billion dollars.
i'm not really down with the uproar over the repair stuff, especially not for phones and laptops (which is basically all they have now)
Apple is the company that will give you a mulligan on almost any break anyway (unless they've stopped recently)
i'm thinking their mindset is they'd rather have first crack at the repair than having you taking it to Joe Stoner, letting him fuck it up, and then handing out a full replacement in the end anyway
you don't *have* to take it to Apple either. Just a repair center that can pass muster with them... I'm not sure I'd hand my Very Expensive Computer to someone who can't clear that hurdle anyway
If I recall they did substantially scale back the replacement system, to where it's now only offered as part of their Applecare+ warranty, and they replace the broken phone with a refurbished one.
is it still apple policy to explicitly downclock old phones and tablets with OS updates to make them run poorly so you have to buy a new onemaintain longer battery life? that one really sticks in my craw.
There's really no reason to spend weeks getting a hard drive or RAM replaced because Apple wants to have a stranglehold on the entire fucking process from top to bottom.
This is an already solved problem but apple wants to quadruple dip because it makes them more money long term. If their hardware was up to snuff like it used to be 10 years ago where it took the will of Zeus to break the things, maybe they'd have a leg to stand on. But their hardware has become less and less reliable that this stuff was inevitably going to cause a backlash.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
is it still apple policy to explicitly downclock old phones and tablets with OS updates to make them run poorly so you have to buy a new onemaintain longer battery life? that one really sticks in my craw.
The last couple of updates to my 6 have been explicitly designed to help older phones work better, and it does feel like there are speed and battery improvements. That doesn't mean they won't backslide, but it does feel like the company has turned a corner on that policy, at least.
is it still apple policy to explicitly downclock old phones and tablets with OS updates to make them run poorly so you have to buy a new onemaintain longer battery life? that one really sticks in my craw.
The last couple of updates to my 6 have been explicitly designed to help older phones work better, and it does feel like there are speed and battery improvements. That doesn't mean they won't backslide, but it does feel like the company has turned a corner on that policy, at least.
You also still have until the end of the year to get a replacement battery for like 30 bucks since that kid figured out they were screwing with battery life to maintain performance as the battery aged.
I had a 6p that started dying really, really fast. The battery would just die when I started a video even if it was around 65%.
To hold me over until the Pixel 3 announcement I got a Moto G6 for like $250 with a deal from my cell service provider (Ting) for $100 off my phone bills.
Its camera isnt GREAT but it really made me realize half the stuff I was paying for in a $800 phone I dont really even need, and I think after seeing the Pixel 3 I'm just gonna keep this around until it dies.
PSN: mxmarks - WiiU: mxmarks - twitter: @ MikesPS4 - twitch.tv/mxmarks - "Yes, mxmarks is the King of Queens" - Unbreakable Vow
Yeah I don't own a Mac but I have heard that the new versions are making it so you can't even add/change the memory or hard drives in it because you have to connect the PC to the Apple branded utility software that they might not even be offering to like Best Buy or Staples in order to get the thing running again after you install new hardware.
The battery for the 6p is horrendous. Mine does the early shut down thing too, particularly if it's cold, which in Canada means half the year if you're outdoors. A full charge now only lasts me half a day. And this was after getting the device replaced after I complained
It was a huge issue for a lot of people and I'm still peeved it happened
I had been waiting on the pixel 3 to upgrade but the leaks from a couple months back led me to just pull the trigger on a 2XL, so mostly I'm just glad those leaks were pretty much accurate.
Yeah I don't own a Mac but I have heard that the new versions are making it so you can't even add/change the memory or hard drives in it because you have to connect the PC to the Apple branded utility software that they might not even be offering to like Best Buy or Staples in order to get the thing running again after you install new hardware.
the new ones have the hard drive and ram basically soldered right into the board because fuck you
it offers literally nothing.
"but bowen" you might say "they can streamline it and make the case smaller" which is a fair point, but you can do that without soldering them right into the board too, this is a solved problem. Laptops already do it (non mac ones) and they aren't really that much larger than mac ones.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
When I first started dating my finance back over 6 years ago her and I got into it about Macs once, she was a fervent Apple supporter and loved Macs. To her it was because it came with good art software, and since she didn't need a powerhouse PC the hardware was always fine. What sold her though was the toughness of the devices and the support from Apple. She use to always get the Apple warranty with every product and if there was even a slight problem they fixed it. It was expensive, but it was worth it.
Not anymore though. A few years back I worked at Best Buy selling Macs, and then after that at a Verizon third party selling Iphones. Over the course of the last few years the products break crazy easy now, you can wind up with a $1000 laptop that barely runs their own software (which I have also heard doesn't get new features or update as much anymore), and AppleCare is now split into so many different tiers, and if you don't get one of the cray expensive ones the service sucks.
They are still nice machines, and have some of the best displays I've seen (I honestly want a Thunderbolt for my PC), but it seems like lately their quality is dropping. This is mostly anecdotal, as I don't own one but have heard this from friends/relatives/customers.
There's effectively no pressure on them to do better.
Apple has a big following in art/music stuff, and their phones are some of the better phones and their unified design and ease of understanding new versions makes them better than android.
I say this as someone who has paid for and used both android/iphone and pc/mac stuff. But since there's no market pressure they can deliver subpar service and people will respond with "oh I guess I'll just upgrade anyways".
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Posts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/10/05/avoid-windows-10-october-update-until-you-do-one-thing/#5b609cb03e79
if I pick up a 2tb USB 3.0 drive what kind of free software is there to backup selected files/directories?
I believe the newer versions of windows itself can do automated backups.
Edit: I just threw down for a 2TB drive myself. I purchased Acronis clone software a few years back so I'm just going to clone my 512GB main drive and call it good.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
all my stuff is already spread over 2 1tb internal drives with separate partitions anyway. it's mostly that these drives are older and I want to use the external to copy files I wanna keep handy in case one or both hdds fail someday.
It'd be nice to automate what files sync to the drive though...
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
these file backups were labelled as "purgeable" space, and it would fill your HD, no matter the size, to almost-full status, leaving only a dozen or so GB actually free
if you were to do something with your Mac which rapidly consumed large amounts of space (let's say: compile a large/complex software project using Apple's award winning developer tools (tm)), the OS would race to delete files from this purgeable space to make room for what the user was doing
were it to fail to do so, you would see cascade system errors concerning disk space, as the rest of the operating system doesn't know what's going on and assumes you're about to crash your mac into a glacier
this "feature" was mercifully something you could disable in Settings
In Mojave, as far as I can tell, it can no longer be disabled. Even if you have special tools to identify and proactively delete the purgeable files, they seem to fail, even with admin permissions. I am now trying to figure out where I can set up a Linux partition in my office so I can uhh... keep doing my job
I haven't upgraded any of my OS's for a while - and I usually disable iCloud backup anyway, because I use google drive for work so it's just redundant - so one way or another I somehow haven't run into that phenomenon
that is quite honestly insane
So I just backed up my personal data for the first time.
the number marked "free space", second to bottom, is what every non-iCloud program recognizes as real free space on my computer
if I do something that eats disk, that number very quickly falls down to just a few megabytes. if it ever reaches 0, every program in my computer which isn't icloud-aware will immediately halt and I have to start over again
the "hidden space" section is more or less what Apple is laying claim to, and I cannot find a way to remove (and best googles this afternoon seem to indicate its permanent in Mojave)
it's a great program for hunting down disk space on Mac when you need to make room... back in the good old days when you had permission to delete files from your own computer
I mean, I was never interested in buying a Mac laptop or desktop before anyway, but that certainly doesn't help.
I mean they've been doing it for iPhone years. The previous generation MacBooks had storage that was built in to the logic board and in the event of board failure data could only be pulled with a proprietary Apple(tm) tool.
I don't think this makes any more waves than are already there.
Also, I was dead set on the slate until I saw the price.
But the home hub is a purchase for sure from me.
Apple is the company that will give you a mulligan on almost any break anyway (unless they've stopped recently)
i'm thinking their mindset is they'd rather have first crack at the repair than having you taking it to Joe Stoner, letting him fuck it up, and then handing out a full replacement in the end anyway
you don't *have* to take it to Apple either. Just a repair center that can pass muster with them... I'm not sure I'd hand my Very Expensive Computer to someone who can't clear that hurdle anyway
Sadly, you can't even do that
Like, I can't imagine the headaches of running a business that uses macs you can't repair without going through a costly and timely procedure.
At my job, we cannibalize pcs all the time. Especially since some of these towers has ide HD and good luck finding a replacement that dosn't cost a billion dollars.
If I recall they did substantially scale back the replacement system, to where it's now only offered as part of their Applecare+ warranty, and they replace the broken phone with a refurbished one.
This is an already solved problem but apple wants to quadruple dip because it makes them more money long term. If their hardware was up to snuff like it used to be 10 years ago where it took the will of Zeus to break the things, maybe they'd have a leg to stand on. But their hardware has become less and less reliable that this stuff was inevitably going to cause a backlash.
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
The last couple of updates to my 6 have been explicitly designed to help older phones work better, and it does feel like there are speed and battery improvements. That doesn't mean they won't backslide, but it does feel like the company has turned a corner on that policy, at least.
You also still have until the end of the year to get a replacement battery for like 30 bucks since that kid figured out they were screwing with battery life to maintain performance as the battery aged.
To hold me over until the Pixel 3 announcement I got a Moto G6 for like $250 with a deal from my cell service provider (Ting) for $100 off my phone bills.
Its camera isnt GREAT but it really made me realize half the stuff I was paying for in a $800 phone I dont really even need, and I think after seeing the Pixel 3 I'm just gonna keep this around until it dies.
It was a huge issue for a lot of people and I'm still peeved it happened
Switch: SW-7603-3284-4227
My ACNH Wishlists | My ACNH Catalog
I have a pixel 2 that replaced a 5x and the difference was substantial. The camera alone was worth the upgrade.
the new ones have the hard drive and ram basically soldered right into the board because fuck you
it offers literally nothing.
"but bowen" you might say "they can streamline it and make the case smaller" which is a fair point, but you can do that without soldering them right into the board too, this is a solved problem. Laptops already do it (non mac ones) and they aren't really that much larger than mac ones.
Not anymore though. A few years back I worked at Best Buy selling Macs, and then after that at a Verizon third party selling Iphones. Over the course of the last few years the products break crazy easy now, you can wind up with a $1000 laptop that barely runs their own software (which I have also heard doesn't get new features or update as much anymore), and AppleCare is now split into so many different tiers, and if you don't get one of the cray expensive ones the service sucks.
They are still nice machines, and have some of the best displays I've seen (I honestly want a Thunderbolt for my PC), but it seems like lately their quality is dropping. This is mostly anecdotal, as I don't own one but have heard this from friends/relatives/customers.
Apple has a big following in art/music stuff, and their phones are some of the better phones and their unified design and ease of understanding new versions makes them better than android.
I say this as someone who has paid for and used both android/iphone and pc/mac stuff. But since there's no market pressure they can deliver subpar service and people will respond with "oh I guess I'll just upgrade anyways".