Here are instructions on how to share a file or folder inside your Dropbox folder with another person. In previous Tech Tips, I gave an overview of Dropbox and give instructions on how to share files that are too large to send as an email attachment, even with people who don’t have Dropbox accounts, using the Public folder in your Dropbox folder. This week, I cover two more features of Dropbox:

Feature 1. How to share any file, in any folder, inside your Dropbox folder, with another person even if that person doesn’t have their own Dropbox account.

Feature 2. How to setup a shared folder with another person so the two of you can easily exchange files on an on-going basis.

The instructions below assume that you’ve already signed up for your Dropbox account and have installed the Dropbox application on your Mac.

Feature 1 – If you have a one-time need to share a file with a person who doesn’t have their own Dropbox account then you can use Dropbox’s Get Link feature. Here’s how:

• Click once on a file in your Dropbox folder to select it. Then right-click (or control-click) on this file. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then select Get Link from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and a preview of your document will appear. Copy the address which appears in the address field, (https://www.dropbox.com/….)
• Go to your email application, compose a new email message and then paste this address (aka link) into the email message and send the message.
• The recipient can click on the link to be taken to a web page which will let them download the file. Here’s a sample link to one of my files in my Dropbox folder. https://www.dropbox.com/s/skifcwwnajlzn77/Darts-Practice.rtf

I want to emphasize that the recipient is able to download and then edit the file, but this feature doesn’t give them a way to easily send the file back to you. So, this is more of a file distribution capability. It doesn’t offer two-way file exchange. This feature is very similar to sharing a file using the Public folder. In fact, I see only one primary difference. This Get Link feature allows you to leave a file inside of a shared folder while also sharing it with a person who typically can’t access files in that shared folder. Additionally, the

Dropbox has their own article about using this feature.

Feature 2 – If you regularly want to be able to do two-way file exchanges with another person then you’ll want to setup a dedicated shared folder with that person in your Dropbox account. Here’s how:

• Create a folder in your Dropbox folder. For this example, I want to share a folder with a friend named Tom so I created a new folder named Tim-Tom
• Right-click (or control-click) on this folder. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then Share This Folder… from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and you’ll be taken to the Dropbox web site. Login to your Dropbox account if you aren’t already logged in.
• In the field named “Invite collaborators to this folder” type in the email address of another person. I entered Tom’s email address.
• Type in an optional personal invitation message and then click the “Share Folder” button. This will send an email that includes the invite.
• The email recipient can click on a link in the invite email to accept the invitation which grants them access to this folder. If the recipient doesn’t already have their own Dropbox account then they’ll be prompted to create a free account.
• If your invitee accepts your invite then you’re notified via email.

At this point, you’re ready to easily share files with your invitee via this folder. Every time a file is adding, edited or deleted then a notification will pop-up on your screen. This invitee can’t see any other folders that you have in your Dropbox account. Happy file sharing.

Dropbox has their own article about this feature.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about this folder sharing feature. This information is taken from Dropbox’s help article.

• You can’t share a folder from within your Public folder. You can share a folder within the Photos folder
• You can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Attempting to share a folder within a shared folder will automatically send you to the sharing options of the top level shared folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can also invite others to join the folder
• Only the creator of the shared folder can remove people from the folder
• If two people both open and edit a file in a shared folder at the same time, Dropbox will save both of their changes, but in separate files. It does not try to automatically combine or merge changes. Read our help article on conflicting copies to learn more about how this works

Here are instructions on how to connect your Mac to your flat panel TV to send both audio and video to it. There are a number of reasons why one might want to do this including showing an iPhoto Slideshow, watching a Netflix movie or TV show from Hulu. I’m only providing information about connecting Macs with Intel processors since this covers all Macs back to 2006. Here’s a quick description of what’s involved in connecting your Mac to your TV. First, you need to determine your Mac’s Model Identifier, then you need to buy one or two cables and maybe an adapter. However, there are also a few idiosyncrasies of which you should be aware.

Overview – The types of ports on flat-panel TVs varies from model to model. I’m only going to address VGA, DVI and HDMI ports since they are the most common types. VGA and DVI cables only carry video signals while HDMI cables can carry both audio and video. For this reason, whenever possible, I recommend using a TV’s HDMI port.

For most Macs made between 2006 and the end of 2008 one will need to connect two cables, one cable to carry the video and a second cable to carry the audio. When Apple switched to using Mini DisplayPort connectors in 2009 most Macs can now use just one cable to carry both audio and video from the Mac’s MiniDisplay Port to the TV’s HDMI port. One idiosyncrasy to be aware of is that when using HDMI or DVI to connect your Mac to your TV you might have to change your TV’s display settings to turn off overscan. I’ll address this in a future Tech Tip.

Model Specific Details – For most Macs you can use either Method 1 or Method 2 listed below. For each of these methods I list the Model Identifier for each specific Macintosh model which can use this method. If you don’t know how to determine your Mac’s Model Identifier please read this previous Tech Tip. To buy the cables listed in the method click on the cable name which is a link to a web site which sells the cable. I also list variations on each method that are either required or optional for certain Macintosh models.

Method 1 – Buy a DVI to HDMI cable and a 3.5 mm analog stereo audio cable. The DVI cable will carry the video output from your Mac and connect to the HDMI port on your TV. The 3.5 mm (aka 1/8″) stereo audio cable will carry the audio from your Mac to the audio in (aka headphone) port on your TV.

Specific Macintosh models supported by this method: Macmini 1,1, Macmini 2,1, MacPro 1,1, MacPro 2,1, MacPro 3,1,  MacBookPro 1,1, MacBookPro 1,2, MacBookPro 2,1, MacBookPro 2,2, MacBookPro 3,1, MacBookPro 4,1.

Variation 1 – If your TV has a digital audio input port, sometimes called Digital Optical audio or Toslink then you could substitute a digital audio cable for the 3.5 mm analog stereo cable. Recently, I’ve encountered some TVs that only have digital audio input ports and no longer have a headphone port so you may have to use this digital audio cable instead.

Idiosyncrasy: All of the Mac minis, MacBook and MacBook Pros have a combo audio output port that can accept either an analog 3.5 mm audio cable or a digital Toslink audio cable. The MacPros have separate analog and digital analog ports so make sure you use the correct one.

Variation 2 – If your TV’s HDMI port(s) are already in use then you could use a DVI to DVI cable in place of the DVI to HDMI cable as long as your TV has an unused DVI port.

Variation 3 – If you have one of the MacBook or iMac models listed below then you can use the two cables listed in Method 1 and just add a Mini DVI to DVI adapter in order to connect the DVI cable to your MacBook. Model Identifier: MacBook 1,1, MacBook 2,1, MacBook 3,1 MacBook 4,1, MacBook 5,2, iMac 4,1, iMac 4,2, iMac 5,1, iMac 5,2, iMac 6,1, iMac 7,1, iMac 8,1.

Variation 4 – If you have a MacBook Air, model identifier MacBook Air 1,1, then you can use the two cables listed in Method 1 and just add a Micro DVI to DVI adapter in order to connect the DVI cable to your MacBook Air.

Method 2 – Buy an HDMI cable and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. The MiniDisplayPort adapter plugs into the Mini DisplayPort port on your Mac and then you connect the HDMI cable to it. The other end of the HDMI cable connects to an unused HDMI port on your TV.

Specific Macintosh models supported by this method: Macmini 3,1, Macmini 4,1, Macmini 5,1, Macmini 5,2, Macmini 5,3 MacPro 4,1, MacPro 5,1,  iMac 9,1, iMac 10,1, iMac 11,1, iMac 11,2, iMac 11,3, iMac 12,1, iMac 12,2, MacBook 5,1, MacBook 6,1, MacBook Air 2,1, MacBook Air 3,1, MacBook Air 3,2, MacBook Air 4,1, MacBook Air 4,2, MacBook Pro 5,1, MacBook Pro 5,2, MacBook Pro 5,3, MacBook Pro 5,4, MacBook Pro 5,5, MacBook Pro 6,1, MacBook Pro 6,2, MacBook Pro 7,1, MacBook Pro 8,1, MacBook Pro 8,2, MacBook Pro 8,3.

Idiosyncrasy: Typically this configuration will carry both audio and video from your Mac to your TV. However, the first few Mac models that have Mini DisplayPorts port do not carry audio signals. They only carry video signals. I’m not sure why Apple designed these Macs this way since Mini DisplayPort ports can carry both audio and video as evidenced by subsequent models. Apple doesn’t clearly list which Mac models with Mini DisplayPort ports only carry video so if you find that your Mac is one of them then you’ll need to use either a 3.5 mm analog stereo audio cable or digital audio cable to carry audio from your Mac to your TV.

Note: MacBook Pro models 8,1, 8,2, and 8,3, iMac models 12,1 and 12,2 as well as Mac Minis model 5, 1, 5,2 and 5, 3 all have Thunderbolt ports instead of regular Mini DisplayPort ports. Thunderbolt ports look and act the same as regular Mini DisplayPort ports, but they offer additional features as well.

Variation 1 - Macmini models 4,1, 5,1, 5,2 and 5,3 have HDMI ports (as well as MiniDisplay Port ports) built-in so you don’t need to buy the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. All you need is the HDMI cable.

Variation 2 - If your TV has a digital audio input port, sometimes called Digital Optical audio or Toslink then you could substitute a digital audio cable for the 3.5 mm analog stereo cable. Recently, I’ve encountered some TVs that only have digital audio input ports and no longer have a headphone port so you may have to use this digital audio cable instead.

Idiosyncrasy: Using a digital audio cable is not an option for MacBook Airs 2,1, 3,1 and 3,2 since their audio output port is analog only.

There are a number of instances when it could be really useful to know exactly which model of Macintosh computer you own. Here are instructions to identify which model you have. Did you know that Apple has made Macintosh computers named iMac since 1998? That’s 14 years, and counting, of various iMac models. Do you know which specific iMac model you own? You may know that you have an 20″ Intel iMac, for example, but there are actually 4 different versions of the 20″ Intel iMac.

To distinguish your Mac from all of the similarly named Macs you need to know its Model Identifier, which can be found by doing the following.

• Click on the Apple menu, select About This Mac.
• In the window that appears click either the More Info or System Report button. (You’ll see More Info if you’re Mac is using Mac OS X 10.1-10.6. If your Mac is using Mac OS X Lion then you’ll see the System Report button.)
• In either case, you’ll be taken to the Hardware Overview which will list your Model Identifier.

Do you receive a lot of packages in the mail and want to have one place where you can easily monitor their status? Then you need Delivery Status by JuneCloud.

I frequently order products on behalf of my clients and I want to be notified of their shipping progress and when they are delivered. Delivery Status lets me do this easily. Initially, I used the free Delivery Status widget. When I received a vendor’s email with a tracking number, I’d add this item to the Delivery Status widget. It can track packages from USPS, DHL, Fedex, OnTrac and many other shippers. Delivery Status would then send me status updates via Growl every time the package made progress towards my door. This was great but I realized I only got updates when my Mac laptop was awake and connected to the Internet and sometimes I wanted to be notified in the middle of the day as I was moving between client appointments. Consequently, I decided to buy the iPhone/iPad Delivery Status app ($5). Now, I get notifications on my iPhone since this app can sync with the widget if one sets up a free account at the JuneCloud web site.

I’ve been using DeliveryStatus for about a year and have been very pleased with its performance. Check it out.

Would you like to free up some desk space by retiring either your stand-alone fax machine or multi-fuction printer which has faxing capabilities? Or, if you’re paying for a dedicated fax line, would you like to reduce you phone bill by dropping that line? If so, here are a few alternatives which you could consider. I’m surprised that faxes haven’t faded away completely and I’m convinced that it’s because many people don’t know how easy scanning can be. Personally, I find that I need to receive or send at most a handful of faxes each year, but in some fields, especially healthcare faxes seem to be going strong. One reason why faxing is strong in the healthcare field is the need to comply with HIPAA or other laws. I highlight HIPAA-compliant Internet fax options below. Whether your faxing needs are light or heavy here are some alternatives for you to consider.

Option 1 – This is the easiest option to setup but not necessarily the most cost-effective or convenient. You could out-source your faxing needs and use a FedEx Office store or, if you live in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, a business like Sip and Ship. Both of these businesses will let you send or receive faxes and charge you a fee per page.

Option 2 – Sign up for an Internet fax service like Faxaway or RingCentral. I have experience using both of these services. When you sign-up for a Faxaway account you’re assigned a fax number in the 206 (Seattle-area) area code. For a monthly fee of $1 you can receive unlimited incoming faxes and send faxes at a cost of about 10 cents per page. Faxes sent to your fax number are forwarded to you as email attachments. You can then save the attachment and open it on your Mac. Print a copy if you’d like. I like to receive my faxes via email since I can then save them or forward them easily. You also send faxes via email by using the fax number as part of  the email address, for example, 12065551212@faxaway.com. Faxaway is a good option if you’re a one person business with very light faxing needs.

If your business has a few employees or your have heavier faxing needs, the one of RingCentral’s plans might be a better fit. You can sign-up for a free trial account to test RingCentral. Their entry-level plan costs $8/month which gives you a local or toll-free fax number and 500 pages of inbound or out bound faxes. RingCentral provides a Macintosh application which you install on your Mac. You use this app to both send and receive faxes. This application also makes it easy to send documents as part of your fax, but it, unfortunately, doesn’t tie into your Mac’s Address Book application. Therefore you’ll need to either enter your fax numbers by hand or using “copy and paste”. Your RingCentral fax service can easily be shared by several people. In a future Tech Tip I’ll write about how you could use RingCentral to replace your existing phone system.

If you’re in a business that needs to comply with HIPAA regulations or other security or privacy regulations then you could check out Sfax, InterFAX or FaxSolutions. These companies fax services cost more then the previous Internet fax services I mentioned. I haven’t personally worked with this companies to know how user-friendly they are.

Option 3 – This is my favorite and most commonly used solution. When a person asks me to sign a document and fax it back to them, I simply ask if I could scan it and return it to them as an email attachment. With rare exception, the person is perfectly happy to receive the document as an email attachment. In a previous Tech Tip, I talked about how I much I love my Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner. It turns a pile of pages into a PDF which I can then easily attach and send via email. I like this method since I then have a digital copy of the document on my computer in case I need to refer to it later on. Also, I have a more detailed paper trail then if I’d sent a fax since my sent mail folder will have a record of when I sent a document and to whom.

Hopefully, one of these options will be a good fit for your faxing needs.

Do you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro? Have you noticed that its keyboard doesn’t have a “Forward Delete” (aka delete to the right) key like the one that exists on an iMac’s keyboard? This tip tells you how to perform a forward delete. Simply hold down the Function key, which is labeled “fn” while pressing the delete key. The fn key is located in the lower left corner of the keyboard.

In case the phrase “forward delete” is confusing, let me elaborate. We all know that the delete key, aka the backspace key, deletes the character to the left of the insertion point. The forward delete button does the opposite. It deletes the character to the right of the insertion point.

Forward delete is not a new feature for Macintosh laptops. All Macs laptops have supported this feature for many years, but because this feature isn’t obvious or well-documented many users don’t know about this feature.

If you would like to learn about more keyboard shortcuts you might find this Apple web page helpful.

Intuit recently announced that it plans to release an update to Quicken 2007 that’ll make it compatible with Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion. This news is a big relieve to a number of my clients who have intentionally held off on updating to Lion since they use Quicken 2007 and migrating to another application is not a simple task. iBank and Quicken Essentials are two applications that users could consider as a replacement, but an update to Quicken 2007 simplifies the entire situation.

When Lion was released in July 2011, Tidbits had an article talking about finding a replacement for Quicken. One colleague switched to iBank but due to differences in how iBank handles investment accounts, he spent many hours cleaning up his Quicken data after it was imported into iBank and needed assistance repeatedly from iBank’s tech support staff. A few of my clients who used only the account registers and reporting features in Quicken were able to Quicken Essentials. Quicken Essentials for Mac was released in 2010. It is not really an update for Quicken 2007 users. Instead, you could think of it as a successor to Quicken 2007, but one that lacks some of Quicken 2007′s features. As its name implies, it is a bare-bones financial management application. It is enough for some but not for all Quicken 2007 users. Thus, the news of this Quicken 2007 update is welcomed news.

Intuit indicates that this Lion-compatible update will be available “soon”. Elsewhere, I’ve read that it’ll be early-spring 2012. Users will be able to update their Quicken 2005, 2006 and 2007 data files into this updated version of Quicken 2007. Please read Intuit’s note about this update as well as Tidbit’s article about this Quicken update if you’d like more information.

Do you send out annual updates about your family around the holiday season? If so, MacWorld has written a good article about how to create a newsletter using Pages. Pages is Apple’s word processor which competes with Microsoft Word. It comes bundled with some Macs so you may already have a copy. If not, you can buy it as part of iWork. Or, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher  on your Mac then you can use the App Store to buy it for about $20. I used the MacWorld article as a guide to design our holiday newsletter this year. Here’s a brief overview.

Start by opening iPhoto and identifying which photos you want to include in your newsletter. I found it easiest to put my photos into an album so I would be able to find them again easily when using Pages.

Next, I opened Pages and selected the “Informal Newsletter” template. I clicked on the Media button in Pages’ toolbar. I clicked on Photos and selected the iPhoto Album containing my selected photos. I then dragged the images on top of the placeholder images that appear in the template.

I clicked on the text box on the first page, selected all of the text and deleted it. Then I typed in our content.

We wanted to add a second page so I went to the Insert menu, selected Pages and added a “Back Page” since it has pre-defined locations for text and photos. I linked the text boxes on page 1 and page 2 so the text would automatically flow between them. I replaced the placeholder photos, of course, as well.

Finally, I realized that I needed more room to fit all of the text so I had to adjust the template’s layout some. I removed one of the photos on page one and added a new text box and linked it to the other box on page 1. I then changed the font and font size a bit to get everything to fit. Finally, I was satisfied with the layout. Pages is a pretty elegant program to use for tasks like this and the templates are really professional so it made this task easy to do.

This week’s Tech Tip is written by our guest blogger, Elizabeth Bowman, President of Innovatively Organized.

Are tasks slipping through the cracks? Feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities on your plate?  There are lots of tools to help you manage your to-do list, but how do you know which tools are best?  You’re in luck!  At Innovatively Organized we have put together a list of 4 tools to help you manage your to-do list electronically.  Now, you will be able to access your tasks from home, the office, or on the go from an Internet browser or your mobile device!

Keep in mind, it’s not about having the perfect to-do list, it is about picking a tool that will work for you and using it consistently.

1. TeuxDeux

Compatible with:

• iPhone or iPad

• Internet

• Mac or PC

Highlights:

• Simple design

• Basic list tracker

• Cross out tasks when complete

• Moves un-finished items to the next day automatically

Toodle Do's Interface

2. Toodledo

Compatible with:

• iPhone, iPad, Palm, Blackberry, Droid

• Internet

• Ability to sync with Outlook & TaskAngel

• Has ability to print to-do list neatly

Highlights:

• Comprehensive and robust features

• Offers ability to delegate and email tasks directly

• Can filter and run reports on tasks

• Includes a timer to help you stay on task

3. TaskAngel

Compatible with:

• Native PC software download

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Matches Toodledo’s comprehensive task tracking details

• Runs fast on your PC helping you stay productive easily

• Can export your to-do list to Excel

4. 2Do

Compatible with:

• iPhone & iPad

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Option to color-code tasks by category

• Provides tabs in the interface on an iPhone and iPad

• Has lots of fields to enter your tasks easily from a mobile device

For more organizing and productivity tips, check out the Innovatively Organized blog!

Safari version 5 introduced a new feature named Top Sites which automatically displays your most frequently visited web sites. Top Sites displays thumbnail depictions of each web site in a grid of several rows and columns. This tech tip tells you how you can customize Top Sites.

You can permanently add a web site to Top Sites by going to the Bookmarks menu and selecting Add Bookmark. Then select Top Sites from the pop-up menu near the top of the small window that appears. Then click the Add button, as depicted below.

By default, Safari 5 displays Top Sites when you open a new window. You can manually display Top Sites by clicking the grid icon located near the upper left-corner of the Safari window. This grid icon is highlighted in the red circle in the picture below.

When the Top Sites grid is being displayed, you can click the Edit button in the lower left corner. Then, in the lower right corner you’ll see that you can switch between Small, Medium and Large. These choices will cause Top Sites to display 24, 12 or 6 thumbnails respectively.

You can also drag the thumbnails around in the grid so they appear in the order that you prefer. Additionally, you can click the Push Pin icon or the X icon located in the upper left corner of a thumbnail to permanently add or remove a web site from your top sites. When the Push Pin icon turns blue then you’ve permanently added the web site.

 When viewing Top Sites look for a star icon to appear in the upper right corner of a thumbnail. The star indicates that the web site has added content since you last visited the site.

There are a number of easy ways to convert an .mp3 song file to a ringtone for your iPhone. I typically use Garageband since the method is quick and easy, but I realize that not everybody owns Garageband so I’m pleased to share this other free method. Compared to using GarageBand there are more steps, but it’s not difficult to do.

Important: This process doesn’t work for copyright-protected songs (.mp4) purchased from the iTunes store.

• Open iTunes, go to the iTunes menu and select Preferences.
• Click on the General button and click the Import Settings button.
• From the pick-list next to “Import Using” select AAC Encoder. Click the OK button. Click the OK button a second time to exit out of Preferences.
• Play the .mp3 song file you want to convert in order to identify the 20-30 section of the song which you’d like to use for the ringtone. Specifically, you’ll need to write down the start and end time of your desired section. You can do this by watching the timer that iTunes displays near the top of its window.
• Click once on the mp3 song file and go to the File menu and select Get Info
• Click on the Options button so you can enter the Start and Stop times to set the 20-30 section that you want to become your ringtone.
• Go to the Advanced menu and select Create AAC version. This will cause a duplicate copy of the song file to be created. This duplicate copy will only be the length you selected when you set the Start and Stop times.
• Before you forgot, return to the original mp3 song file and clear the Start and Stop times. You don’t need to re-enter the original times. I simply leave these fields blank and iTunes will automatically know to play the entire song.
• Click on the newly created AAC song file to select it.
• Go to the File menu and select Reveal in Finder. This will open a Finder window showing you this AAC song file. Leave this window open. We’ll return to it in just a minute.
• Go to iTunes and make sure your AAC song file is selected.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Delete.
• You may be asked if you’re sure you want to remove this file from your iTunes Library. You’re sure so click the Remove button.
• Next, you’ll be asked, “Do you want to move the selected song to the Trash, or keep it in the iTunes Media folder?”. Click the Keep File button.
• Return to the Finder window that you left open. You’ll see the AAC version of the song file. You can identify it since its filename ends with .m4a file.
• Change .m4a to .m4r
• Drag this .m4r file onto the iTunes on the Dock. This will import this .m4r file into iTunes and it’ll show up in the ringtones section.
• Sync your iPhone and make sure that you’ve selected to sync all Ringtones. This will add the ringtone to your iPhone. Then you can assign it to a particular person listed in Contacts.

Sometimes an application stops behaving properly and doesn’t respond to menu commands or keyboard commands. When this happens you’ll often want to use the Force Quit command to force the application to quit. There are several ways to issue the Force Quit command.

1. The easiest way is to click on the Apple menu and select Force Quit. A window will pop up listing all of the applications which are currently open. Click on the one that you want to force quit and then click the Force Quit button in the lower right corner. You’ll be asked if you’re sure that you want to do this. Click the button to indicate that you’re sure.

If the Apple menu is not responsive then you may not be able to use this method. In this case, try the next method.

2. Hold down the Option key while simultaneously clicking on the Dock icon for the application which you want to force quit. A menu should pop up after a couple of seconds. Select Force Quit from this menu.

If the Dock is not responsive then you may not be able to use this method. In this case, try the next method.

3. Simultaneously press the following 3 keys, Command, Option and Escape. The Escape key is labeled “esc” and is above the “1″ key. A window will pop up listing all of the applications which are currently open. Click on the one that you want to force quit and then click the Force Quit button in the lower right corner. You’ll be asked if you’re sure that you want to do this. Click the button to indicate that you’re sure.

If none of these methods work then you aren’t able to force quit applications. Typically, the only option at this point is to force the computer to turn itself off. This is accomplished by pressing and holding the Power button for 5 seconds. The power button is the round button you use to typically turn the computer on. Hold this button for 5 seconds. The entire computer will turn off and the screen will go dark. Then press and release this power button to turn on the Mac.

Firefox and Safari for Mac are the two most popular web browsers for Mac users. At times, both of them can act up and not perform properly. When this happens, here are a couple of basic troubleshooting steps which you can take.

In Safari, go to the menu named Safari and select “Empty Cache”. This will remove the locally saved (cached) copy of recently visited web sites. This might be all you need to do to fix your problem. If not, you can continue by going to the Safari menu and selecting ”Reset Safari”. This is a very handy feature since it lets you easily remove some of the information which it saves which can get damaged and cause Safari to misbehave. By default, all of the options are checked in the Reset Safari window. Typically, I recommend that you only select and reset the following since they seem to cause the most problems:

• Remove all webpage preview images
• Remove all website icons

If your Safari problem is not resolved then you can go ahead and select other items to reset, but be aware that removed saved names, passwords and AutoFill data can mean that you’ll be prompted to re-enter this information down the road. Consequently, I try to reset these items last.

Firefox doesn’t have a handy reset feature the same way as Safari. However, you can empty its cache by doing the following. Open Firefox and go to the Firefox menu, select Preferences, click on Advanced and click on Network. Click the “Clear Now” button in the Offline Storage section. To do more advanced troubleshooting in Firefox, I recommend checking out this helpful troubleshooting article written by the makers of Firefox.

Do you ever want to do any of the following tasks?

• View two Word documents side-by-side so you can compare them or more content between them
• View two Finder window side-by-side so you can move files from one folder to another
• Make a window fill your entire screen

If so, Cinch ($7) is an easy to use application that lets you accomplish these tasks. I regularly need to file documents that have accumulated either in my Downloads folder or on my Desktop into folder elsewhere on my Mac. In order to do this easily, I’ll open two Finder windows and then move them to one of the edges of my screen which triggers Cinch to automatically get them to re-size to fill half of my screen. With the two windows sitting side-by-side, I can then easily file my documents. If my brief description isn’t sufficient, please check out the brief but excellent video demonstration.

You can download Cinch and try it for free from the Irradiated Software web site. Irradiated Software also make a slightly fancier window management utility named SizeUp($13) that lets you accomplish the same tasks using keyboard shortcuts and it adds additional features.

Do you give a lot of computer-based presentations or training? Do you need you audience members to be able to easily view and track your mouse, see when you click the mouse and see the keyboard shortcuts that you press? If so, Mousepose, could be your best friend. In previous Tech Tips I’ve talked about other ways to highlight the mouse and its clicks using MouseLocator and display keyboard shortcuts. using KeyCastr. Unlike Mouse Locator and KeyCastr which are both free, Mousepose costs money ($17), but it offers additional features. For example, it can be controlled and customized using AppleScript and it can dim the screen and put a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer. If you give computer-based training you might really like Mousepose.

Do you use multiple web browsers on your Mac? Do you use only one browser but you use multiple Macs? Do you want all of your browsers to have the same set of bookmarks? If so, you should checkout Xmarks, a free bookmark syncing tool that works with the most common web browsers on both Macs and PCs.

Setting up Xmarks is fairly straight-forward, but it’s beyond the scope of this article since there are a lot of combinations to consider since Xmarks works on both Macs and PCs and supports Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. In general, the setup process includes creating a free Xmarks account and then installing the Xmarks plug-in for each web browser you use on each computer you use. When you next open your web browser, you’ll typically be greeted by the Xmarks setup assistant which’ll give you guidance in configuring and using this tool.

Before you start the install process, it’s always prudent to have a backup copy of the bookmarks from each of your web browsers since it’s possible to over-write your bookmarks if you click the wrong button. If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac then the Time Machine backup will contain backup copies of all of your web browser bookmarks, but they aren’t readily accessible since they are tucked in the ~/Library folder.

Once Xmarks is installed, it can be setup to automatically sync your bookmarks. You can view your bookmarks via the Xmarks web site. There you have access to tools that will help you find and delete duplicate bookmarks as well as empty bookmark folders. By default, Xmarks only encrypts the login process so your bookmark data is being sent in an unencrypted manner to and from Xmarks’ servers. Thus, in theory, somebody could capture and view your bookmark data. This likely isn’t a big security threat but it’s something to be aware of. You can change Xmarks’ configuration to have it encrypt the transmission of your bookmark data. The basic version of Xmarks is free, but the developers offer paid versions that offer more features.

I looked at other bookmark sync tools including BookIt, URL ManagerPro and BookMacSter but found that I liked it the best. URLManagerPro and BookIt have not been updated to work with current web browsers. BookMacSter is current but I found it interface un-intuitive and jargon laden. It’s definitely powerful but I don’t need all of it’s features and I don’t want to learn a lot just to use the basic features. I also didn’t want to use a separate application to manage my bookmark syncing. I just want the syncing to happen automatically in the background. Thus, Xmarks was the best choice for my needs.

I regularly provide small group training and I want audience members to be able to know when I use keyboard shortcuts. This way, they can see how I made something happen. For example, I might press the Command key and the P key to tell an application to print a document. Since the audience can see my screen, but not my hands, it’s very useful to have an application display my keystrokes on screen. KeyCastr lets me do this easily. KeyCastr is a free application, but donations are welcomed via PayPal. The developer of KeyCastr has not released a final version of the application. In other words, it’s still in beta-testing, but it’s been this way for a couple of years. In my use of it, I haven’t encountered any problems.

A few months ago a representative of Stellar Data Recovery contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in reviewing their product Stellar Phoenix Macintosh, a data recovery application. I was happy to oblige. At long last, here’s my assessment.

If you’ve read many of my tech tip articles you may know that I’m a staunch advocate for setting up robust, redundant and automated data backup systems. If one has such systems in place then one’s likelihood of actually needing a tool like Stellar Phoenix Macintosh should be slim. However, the need for such tools can still arise for a myriad of reasons. Maybe one hasn’t yet copied photos from their camera’s SD storage card to their computer. Maybe one uses a USB flash drive to move files around and doesn’t backup this drive. Maybe one’s backup is misconfigured and it isn’t actually backing up an important folder. Any such drive could fail or a user could accidentally delete a file. Thus, anybody could end up needing a data recovery tool such as Stellar Phoenix Macintosh.

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh has a simple user-interface which includes buttons to let you try to recover data from various types of drives including iPods. It also has a button dedicated to photo  recovery. Within the main Drive Recovery section it provides options to try to recover deleted files, files from re-formatted drives and from drives which don’t mount. I happened to have two non-mounting drives sitting around. One was an external firewire hard drive and the other was a USB flash drive. Both were personal drives which I’d used for years. They’d each stopped working properly in the past six months. Nothing critical was on either drive so I’d only made half-hearted attempts to figure out what was wrong with the drives previously. I’d been unable to get either drive to mount. Not surprisingly, Stellar Phoenix Macintosh wasn’t able to see them or recovery any data from them. I didn’t really expect that it would since I suspect that there were physical problems with the drives. If I had really needed to get data from these drives I would have sent the drives to a professional data recovery company, like Drive Savers which has a strong track record of being able to recover data.

Next, I took a fully-functioning external firewire drive that contained a backup copy of some of my music and movies. I put all of my files into the Trash and emptied the Trash. Then I asked Stellar Phoenix Macintosh to try to restore the files. I used it’s Deleted File Recovery feature. I showed it the external drive and I let it scan the entire 60 GB drive. Understandably, this is a time consuming process since it needs to scan every block. I don’t know how long it took since I went to bed, but I’m sure it took more then an hour. By morning it had finished, but I didn’t have time to finish restoring my files so it conveniently let me save the scan file, presumably some sort of directory of the drive. Subsequently, I used Stellar Phoenix Macintosh’s Resume Recovery feature. This let me pick up where I left off.

Stellar Phoenix correctly listed the folders which I had deleted. I started to navigate through this folder list and it correctly listed the names of sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. What was annoying was that Stellar Phoenix’s window could not be re-sized. Additionally, the 3 sections within it’s window could not be re-sized either. This made it cumbersome to navigate through the folder hierarchy. This is a significant short-coming of the application’s user-interface. Up to this point, I’d like the interface. It had been simple, buttons well labeled and explanations of their function were frequently listed on screen. So it was quite jarring and annoying to suddenly realize that I couldn’t resize the window at all. However, I continued with the data restore. I selected about 10 mp3 files as well as a number of PDF documents and Microsoft Word files. I clicked the Recover button, waited a few seconds and the files were saved to a new folder on my Mac’s Desktop. I was then very disappointed when I tried to open these files and not a single one could be opened properly. I’m not sure why. Stellar Phoenix had done an admirable job of seeing the deleted files as well as their file names and folder structure. All of this is important, but it failed in the final and most important step of successfully recovering the files.

I wanted to give Stellar Phoenix another chance so I took a healthy 1 GB USB flash drive, formatted it, copied a few files onto it and then deleted them a few minutes later. I then had Stellar Phoenix scan the drive which took about 10 minutes. It was not able to recover the folder structure or the file names, but it did create folders for each type of file which it found. In other words, it created folders for PDFs, JPEGs, Word and RTF files, for example. I then asked Stellar Phoenix to recover the files. It did so and all of the files opened properly. I was pleased with the results in this simple test. I should mention, however,  that in a real world situation in which one might need to only recover a few files from a hard drive that has been used for years, the inability of data recovery software to recovery filenames and folder structures can mean that one could have to spend a fair amount of time locating the few desired files from a larger pile of recovered files.

In conclusion, Stellar Phoenix could be useful as a data recovery tool, certainly for recently deleted files and possibly in other situations. However, the lessons that I take away from these experiments are that data recovery is not always possible. Even when it is possible it can be time consuming to conduct drive scans and then locate the particular files you need. If you need to employ a professional data recovery service, it can be very expensive. Thus, I think it’s more prudent to setup, monitor and test robust, redundant and automated backup systems so you can hopefully avoid having to rely on data recovery products.

Are you wondering how long your Mac will last or how frequently you’ll need to replace it? This is a very difficult question to answer since many factors can affect the durability, longevity and compatibility of a computer, but I’ll do my best to provide some concise and useful guidance.

My shortest answer is that I find that many clients replace their computer about every 5 years. Some clients, who have high-end needs might replace their computer every 3-4 years and it’s worthwhile for them to migrate to Apple’s latest and fastest hardware every few years. I have many clients who have been able to stretch their computers to last 7 years or more.

Often customers will replace their computers because their previous computer’s compatibility or performance is no longer adequate. Macs will typically function for many more than 5 years, but if it breaks after 5 years it’s not always cost-effective to repair it so this can lead to replacing it. Needing to make significant upgrades to a Mac’s hardware can also lead to replacing it. The most common upgrades needed are adding memory, installing a larger hard drive or installing a newer version of Mac OS X can be cost-effective if one is able to do the work themselves, but if one has to hire somebody to do the labor, then the labor cost can make it no longer cost-effective.

In recent years, I’ve found that web browser compatibility often drives one to replace their computer. The two most common uses of a computer are sending emails and viewing web sites. The people who make web sites, like banks, often employ ever newer web site technologies to keep their web sites current and secure. These changes often require ever newer versions of web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. As these web browsers get upgraded it becomes necessary for their developers to occasionally drop support for older versions of Mac OS X as well as older or slower processors. For example, Macs using older PowerPC processors like the PowerMac G5 and iMac G5 can no longer run current versions of Safari, Firefox or Chrome. This means users might not be able to properly view or access some web sites. Thus these computers increasingly will need to be replaced since they would become less and less useful. Interestingly, PowerMac G5 ands iMac G5s were made between 2003 and the end of 2005 so they are more then 5 years old so it shouldn’t be too surprising that they need to be replaced.

I don’t have any specific data to support the following claim, but I think the rate of replacing computers is increasing. I think that customers used to replace their computers less frequently then every 5 years. These days, a new Mac has a minimum cost of about $1000 so it’s not easy for many people to replace their computer every 5 years. With the recent advent of the less expensive tablet computers, like the iPad, I find some hope. These devices and their capabilities are rapidly evolving. I think that in the coming years many casual computer users will be able to use an iPad for their email and web browsing needs. Thus, when one next replaces their Mac, you should consider if you could replace it with a less-expensive iPad. Then, if you were to need to replace your iPad every 4-5 years, it would be a less expensive proposition.

I strongly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for all MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac and MacPro purchases under most circumstances. I know that, in general, extended warranties have a poor reputation, but I think AppleCare is a good value for most Mac models.

Every Mac computer comes with 90 days of telephone tech support and a 1 year hardware warranty. By purchasing APP, the telephone support is extended to 1 year and the hardware warranty is extended to 3 years. AppleCare protection covers the cost of both parts and labor in the event of a repair. For the rest of this article I’ll simply refer to the AppleCare Protection Plan as AppleCare.

It’s very useful to know that you can buy AppleCare as long as the original 1 year hardware warranty is still in place. Additionally, AppleCare is transferrable. If you should sell your Mac within 3 years of initial purchase, the AppleCare coverage transfers with the computer. This can slightly increase your Mac’s resale value, but it also gives the buyer some reassurance should they detect a hardware issue after they purchase it. AppleCare does not cover accidental damage. AppleCare is available for all new or refurbished Macs bought from Apple.

MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs – The price for AppleCare is currently $249 for every laptop model except the 17″ MacBook Pro. For this model the price is $349. Apple has tiered flat-rate pricing for all laptop repairs. The last time I checked the lowest price was about $300. So, if your laptop is outside of it’s one-year hardware warranty and it breaks then one repair would have paid for the cost of Applecare protection. Since laptops are typically carried around they can sustain a lot of wear and tear. One repair within 3 years is not at all uncommon, thus I think it’s worthwhile to purchase AppleCare for MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. Over a dozen years, I have owned 4 Mac laptops I know that I’ve bought AppleCare for at least the last 3 and used it on each of them. On one of them the CD/DVD drive and a fan was replaced. On two of them the motherboard was replaced. All of these repairs were fully covered by AppleCare.

iMacs and MacPros – AppleCare for iMacs costs $169. AppleCare for MacPros costs $249. iMacs and MacPros repairs are not tied to tiered, flat-rate pricing. Each replacement part is priced individually. While fans and other small components may be inexpensive Apple’s labor rate is around $90-100 per hour. So, again, AppleCare quickly pays for itself. AppleCare covers the monitor built-into the iMac and it covers an external monitor if you purchase it at the same time that you buy a Mac, such as a MacPro, Mac mini or Mac laptop.

Since AppleCare can be purchased at any time within the first year of initial purchase, I have some clients who don’t purchase AppleCare initially for their iMacs or MacPros. Instead, they wait 6 to 9 months to see how the Mac performs and then make a decision. The first 6 months of a computer’s life is not necessarily a good indication of how it’ll perform after 2.5 years of use, but if the Mac has problems in the first 6 months then if seems prudent to buy the insurance of AppleCare in case other problems develop.

I typically don’t recommend AppleCare protection for Mac minis as strongly since AppleCare costs $149 but the price of the mini might be as little as $600. If a business were buying a Mac mini server or, if a person were purchasing an Apple laptop at the same time as the Mac mini then I would recommend it more strongly.

I don’t recommend AppleCare for iPhones, iPods, iPads or AppleTV either due to the relatively low price or the fact that the devices are more likely to be dropped or stolen then require a repair due to a part defect.

If you buy your Mac using a major credit card then the credit card company might double the manufacturer’s warranty. Please call your credit card company to verify and get the details. One client was able to get their iMac’s replacement motherboard covered by their credit card company due to this coverage. The client had to pay for the repair up front and they were subsequently reimbursed after submitting the requisite paperwork. So, utilizing this coverage is not as quick and easy as AppleCare but this protection could help you if you didn’t buy AppleCare within the first year.

Some homeowners insurance policies or specific riders might be a reason to not buy AppleCare. Some insurance policies even cover accidental cover that is not covered by AppleCare.

I recently discovered a bug in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. If you insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation and you’re using the older .ppt file format then the link to the movie break when you close the file.  I’ve confirmed that this problem occurs with .wmv and .mov movie files and I assume it occurs with any other type of movie file. I’ve had a couple of clients encounter this bug. I reported this problem to Microsoft but it hasn’t been fixed as of the time of this writing. There is an easy solution to this problem. Use PowerPoint 2011′s native .pptx file format instead of the older .ppt file format.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem.

Open the .ppt PowerPoint file.

Go to the File menu and select Save As

In the Format section, select PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx)

Click the Save button. This will convert the presentation from .ppt format to the newer .pptx format

Go to the slide where you’d like to place a movie.

Go to the Insert menu and select Movie and then Movie From File

Navigate to the folder on your Mac which contains the movie file you want to insert into your presentation.

Select the movie file and click the Insert button.

Go to the File menu and select Save. The movie has now been imported to your presentation and will be saved within your PowerPoint file. You can check the size of your PowerPoint .pptx file to see that it has grown significantly now that the movie is saved inside it. When I was figuring out what the problem was I noticed that the file size of the .ppt file didn’t grow after I inserted the movie and saved the file. This told me that it wasn’t working properly. I also knew that I’d seen this feature work in other PowerPoint 2011 presentations. I then realized that the difference was that some files were .ppt files while others were .pptx files. That’s when I realized that this insert movie feature failed to work whenever I used the .ppt file format.

Here are instructions on how to restore one or more files from your CrashPlan online backup archive.The instructions work for both CrashPlan and CrashPlan Pro. In my opinion an untested backup system is next to useless. Only by testing it do you know for sure that your backup system is owrking properly. By testing it you also learn how to restore a file which will enable you to be a bit more calm in the event of an actual disaster

If you’re a visual learner you might like to watch my video demonstration of how to preform a restore from CrashPlan.

• Open the CrashPlan (or CrashPlan Pro application) by clicking on its icon on your Dock or in your Applications folder.
• On the left-hand side you’ll see five sections, click on Restore.
• You’ll see the CrashPlan Central Destination listed at the top as well as the time of the most recent backup. If you want to restore from a backup other than the most recent backup then click words “most recent” which appear at the bottom of the window. From the calendar that appears select a previous date and time and click “Ok”.
• Next select the files or folders you want to restore by inserting a checkmark in the checkbox to the left of the file’s name. You can either use the search field to locate your file or you can click the arrows to the left of folder names to see the contents of the folder. Using these arrows you can navigate down several layers of folders to locate the files or folders that you see.
• By default the files will be restored to the Desktop. If you prefer, you can click on the word “Desktop” near the bottom of the window to select another location.
• Finally, click the “Restore” button.
• “Restore Status” information will be listed at the bottom of the CrashPlan window. Depending upon how many Kilobytes of data you select it can take a while for CrashPlan to retrieve the files and send them to your computer. When the restoration is complete the status message will list the time at which that the files were restored to the destination on your Mac.

It’s also possible to restore files from CrashPlan’s web site. This option could be useful if your laptop was stolen or if you’re traveling without your laptop, but need a file. Restoring files from the CrashPlan web site limits you to restoring a maximum of 500 MB.

Zamzar, an online file conversion service, is an easy way to save a copy of a YouTube video on your Mac. To do this you enter the YouTube video’s address at Zamzar’s web site and it will convert the YouTube video into a file type which you choose and then send you an email containing a link to download the  converted file.

Zamzar is actually a very versatile file conversion service. I’ve used it to convert Microsoft Visio drawings, Microsoft Works files and Microsoft Publisher files. To read Zamzar’s huge list of supported file types visit this web page.  Zamzar offers several levels of service. Their free accounts are ad-supported. Free accounts are limited to processing upto 20 files per day which add up to not more than 500 MB. Paid accounts let you overcome these limitations as well as offering additional features.

Update: Here’s another possible option. Jaksta is a commercial application which claims to let you save a copy of any audio or video file that you stream in your web browser.

Are you unable to install Office 2008 Update 12.2.9 because you’re told you have to quit Sync Services, but you can’t find SyncServices? Use this work around.

In order to get the 12.2.9 update install, I had to stop using Microsoft’s built-in auto-update feature and install do this installation by hand using these steps.

• Download the Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.9 update from Microsoft’s web site by clicking the Download button. The update should be placed in your Downloads folder if your Mac uses Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. It’ll be named Office2008-1229UpdateEN.dmg
• Close and save all open documents and quit all applications.
• Safe Boot.  We’re using Safe Boot to ensure that Sync Services is not running. A Safe Boot takes longer then a normal startup so please be patient.
• When your Mac has finished starting up double-click the Office2008-1229UpdateEN.dmg file located in your Downloads folder. (Or wherever it is located.)
• Double-click the Office 2008 12.2.9 Update.mpkg to start the installer.
• Follow the on-screen instructions which are displayed. Mostly you just need to click on the Continue and Agree buttons a few times. Eventually you’ll be asked to enter your Mac account’s username and password.
• The 12.2.9 update will be installed. Quit the installer after it has finished.
• Restart your Mac normally. In other words do not do another Safe Boot.

Congratulations. You’re done. The update is installed. You can confirm this by opening Word and then selecting “About Word” from the Word menu. You’ll see version 12.2.9 listed.

You can use Apple’s infrared (IR) remote control to control slideshows in  PowePoint 2004, PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011. Here are some instructions for getting this setup. PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 both include support for Apple’s remote. PowerPoint 2004 does not natively have this capability. Instead, you need to use one of the third party applications described in this other article. Personally, I’ve used the free iRed Lite.

First, here’s a little background. Starting in 2005, Apple started to ship remote controls with their iMac G5 computers. They then included it with MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as the Mac mini. Apple’s intended users to use them to control FrontRow which lets user view movies (DVDs), photos and music. I think Apple must have realized that few people actually used the remote controls so they stopped including them with new Macs but they continue to sell the remotely separately for about $20. In 2009 they replaced the original white plastic remote and with a taller, thinner aluminum version. The remotes do have some uses beyond controlling FrontRow. Most commonly I see them used to control PowerPoint slideshows. PowerPoint 2004 does not support the Apple Remote but both PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 do support the remote. For a more thorough history of the Apple Remote check out this Wikipedia article. To learn about third-party products that allow the remote to control more applications and extend its capabilities in other ways check out this article.

Here are instructions on how to setup the Apple Remote to control PowerPoint 2008.

• Hold your remote control a few inches from your Mac.
• Simultaneously, press the Menu and Next (right-point arrow) buttons for 5-10 seconds.
• Open your PowerPoint presentation and click the Slideshow button to put it into slideshow mode.
• Press the Forward and Back buttons to move through the slideshow. Pressing the Pause/Play button will also advance to the next slide.

Apple's original white IR remote and the newer aluminum one.

If you ever want to unpair your Mac from a given remote you can go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and then Security and click the Unpair button.

I should also mention that by default the IR receiver is on in all Macs. This means that other people could walk up to your Mac and pair a remote with it and start to control it. This isn’t the worst thing in the world but it could cause confusion. What really causes confusion is when there are multiple macs in the same room and one person suddenly starts to use one of Apple’s IR remotes and the remote starts to control all of the Macs simultaneously. I assume this only happens if the Macs have previously been paired with another Apple remote. In these situations it’s useful to know that the Security System Preference pane mentioned above lets you check a box to disable the IR receiver in your Mac.

Do you need to recover files that were deleted from a Mac’s hard drive? Here’s a quick overview of three options.

Option 1 – By far the easiest way to recover a file is to restore it from the most recent backup. This is why I’m such a strong proponent of setting up a comprehensive backup system including automated TimeMachine or CrashPlan backups. By default, TimeMachine runs every hour and CrashPlan runs every 15 minutes. Here’s are tech tips I wrote about how to restore files from Time Machine and CrashPlan backups.

This option is appropriate for a wide range of situations including: accidentally deleting a file and realizing it a minute or a month later; suffering from a malfunctioning hard drive, losing your computer or having it stolen. Assuming that you make multiple and frequent backup copies of your data this option has a very high recovery success rate.

This is the last of the good options. The two remaining options are either expensive, time consuming or have a much lower chance or success — or some combination thereof.

Option 2 – Use data recovery software such as ProSoft Engineering’s Data Rescue. Data Rescue and comparable applications can search a hard drive for deleted files and it can try to search a malfunctioning hard drive for files. Both of these processes can take hours to run and their success is far from guaranteed. When a file has is deleted it’s not really removed from the hard drive. Instead, the entry for that file is removed from an invisible list of all files and the space where the file resides on the hard drive is marked as available for re-use. Depending upon how much time has elapsed since the file was deleted it may or may not have been over-written. If a hard drive is failing who knows if you’ll be able to recovery any files from it.

Option 3 – Use a professional data recovery company like DriveSavers. DriveSavers has been around since the mid 1980s. They have a stellar reputation and success rate. In the rare cases that I’ve had a client who needed professional data recovery, I’ve often used DriveSavers and they have fortunately been able to recover most of the needed data. The downside of professional data recovery companies is the relatively high cost.

In the past decade, I’ve only sent two hard drives to DriveSavers. One hard drive was from an Mac made in the mid 1990s. It hadn’t been used in years and my client suddenly realized that she needed some data from it. The hard drive no longer worked properly. She spent about $2500 to recover a few dozen files which she needed.

In the other instance, a woman phoned me after most of her iPhoto Library suddenly vanished before her eyes. She didn’t have any backup of the hard drive so we sent the hard drive to DriveSavers. She paid about $1500 for the recovery work. DriveSavers recovered thousands of jpeg photos, but some of them were random clip art files so my client then had to spend countless hours weeding through the recovered files.

In my opinion, options 2 and 3 aren’t really attractive options. They are expensive, time-consuming and the odds of getting all of the files needed are not as high as I’d like. In comparison the cost to buy a couple of backup hard drives or to pay for CrashPlan’s online backup storage system is much less. Please setup an automated, redundant and reliable backup system for your Mac.

Do you want to clean up your Mac hard drive? Is your hard drive nearly full and you don’t know why? OmniDiskSweeper (free) can help with both of these situations. OmniDiskSweeper will scan all files and folders on your Mac and then list them by size, starting with the folders taking up the most space. This helps you to focus your clean-up efforts on the folders that are taking up the most room on your Mac’s hard drive.

People often erroneously think that their Mac is running slowly because the Mac’s internal hard drive has so much stuff on it. This is rarely the case. Unless the hard drive is 90% or fuller then the computer’s performance is not impacted by the amount of stuff that is stored on the hard drive. I should be clear to mention that when the hard drive is nearly full, typically starting around 90% full, that the computer’s performance is significantly impacted. So, if your hard drive is this full then please download and use OmniDiskSweeper to help you clean it up.

OmniDiskSweeper conveniently shows you all of the invisible files and folders on your Mac. Over the years, I’ve seen several hard drives that were filled with spurious log files or errant backup copies of data — all of which happened to be invisible. These invisible files and folders are part of the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. Some of them are critical files so don’t throw away any invisible file without being sure that you have a full, bootable backup of your Mac and that you know what you’re doing. If you’re unsure check with a Mac expert or hire a Mac consultant.

Using OmniDiskSweeper is easy.

• Download OmniDiskSweeper and install it in your Applications folder. Double-click it to open it.
• Then, from the list, select a hard drive which you want it to scan. OmniDiskSweeper uses the term sweep to imply scan. The scan can take 10-15 minutes or longer, depending upon how much data you have.
• When the scan is complete you’ll see a columned window (see below) listing all folders sorted by size.
• If you’ve identified a file that you want to delete you can select it in the column browswer window and then click the “Delete” button in the lower left corner.
• If you want to look at a file or folder then select it in the column browser and double-click the icon in the lower-right corner. This will reveal the file or folder in the Finder so you can look at it more closely.

Happy hunting. I use OmniDiskSweeper regularly and find it an indispensable tool for cleaning hard drives.

OmniDiskSweeper File Browser

Did you receive an email attachment named winmail.dat or winmail? Here’s a brief explanation of what this file is and instructions for opening this type of file.

Winmail.dat files are sent by people using Microsoft Outlook as their email application. Under certain circumstances Outlook will encode attached files, like Word or PDF files, in this winmail.dat

Mac users can open the winmail.dat file using a free application (donations accepted) and extract the files hiding inside. Unfortunately, this application has a goofy name which is TNEF’s Enough. I won’t bore you with an explain of this name, but if you care, you can read about it on the developer’s web site.

Here are instructions on how to open the winmail.dat file.

• Save your winmail.dat file on your Desktop.
• If you use Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.2. If you use OS X 10.4 or earlier then download TNEF’s Enough ver 2.0
• By clicking on one of these links you’ll download a .zip file which contains TNEF’s Enough inside. Your Mac should automatically open the .zip file so you should see TNEF’s Enough sitting in your Downloads folder.
• Move TNEF Enough into your Applications folder.
• Double-click it to open it and then go to the File menu and select Open…
• Select the winmail.dat file which you previously put on the Desktop.
• You’ll then see a window listing the embedded files which are the files that you actually want.
• Click on each file, one at a time, and click the Save button.
• Save these files to your Desktop or any other desired location.
• Quit TNEF’s Enough.

You’re done. You can now throw away the winmail.dat file since you’ve extracted all of the files from inside it.

If you’d like to read more about how and why this happens please read this Microsoft Support article or this other article. These articles also provide instructions that you can pass on to the Outlook user who sent you the winmail.dat file so he or she can make changes to no longer send you winmail.dat files. Essentially, they have to edit their record for you in their Contact list and indicate that you should only receive plain-text emails.

Do you want to know how to perform some routine preventive maintenance on your Mac? Here’s my recommendation of helpful preventive maintenance tasks as well as instructions on how to perform these maintenance tasks. You don’t need to have advanced knowledge to perform these tasks. These recommendations assume you are using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5 or newer).

Overview

• Daily backup your data files
• Weekly update your bootable backup
• Monthly check your hard drive to make sure it’s not getting too full
• Monthly perform the following tasks using Maintenance (free): Verify your hard drive’s SMART status and its file structure (the invisible directories), repair your hard drive’s permissions, run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts and delete the System, Application and Font caches.

More Detail

Daily Backup – I strongly believe everybody should have an automated backup system and, ideally, a comprehensive backup system. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Time Machine. Time Machine is Apple’s backup application that comes with Mac OS X 10.5 (and newer). Time Machine will automatically perform hourly backups of one’s data assuming the Mac is on and the backup hard drive is connected.

Weekly Bootable Backup Update - It’s useful to be able to boot (start) your Mac from another hard drive if your Mac is not able to start from its own internal hard drive. This could happen if the internal drive is starting to fail or if an OS X update didn’t install properly or for a myriad of other reason. In other Tech Tips I provided detailed instructions on how to setup Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup of your Mac’s hard drive.

Monthly Check Hard Drive’s Fullness – A Macintosh computer’s performance will slow noticeably if it’s hard drive is more than approximately 90% full. It’s easy to make sure it’s not getting too full by doing this. Click on the hard drive’s icon on the Desktop, it’s typically named Macintosh HD, go to the File menu and select Get Info. Compare the values listed next to “Capacity” and “Used”. If the number of gigabytes of data listed in the “Used” section is 90% or more of the hard drive’s capacity then you need to free up some hard drive space. You can use Omni DiskSweeper (free) to help you determine which files are using the most storage space on your hard drive. Then you can either move some data to another hard drive, archive it to a DVD or delete it.

Monthly Maintenance Tasks – You can perform all of the maintenance tasks that I recommend using a free application aptly named Maintenance. Download the Maintenance disk image (Maintenance.dmg), then double-click it to open it and then drag the Maintenance application to your Applications folder to install it. Then, double-click the application to open it.

When you open Maintenance, it’ll display a message indicating that it’s checking your hard drive’s SMART status. SMART is an acronym which stands for Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology. It’s a simply diagnostic tool built in to most current hard drives. Next, Maintenance will ask if you want to Verify your startup volume (hard drive). Before you start this process please save and close all open documents and then quit all applications. Once the verification process is complete you’ll be prompted to enter an adminitrative-level account name and password. You’ll then be presented with a list of available tasks. I recommend inserting checkmarks into the first 5 items. (See below). Then click the Execute button to have Maintenance do the following: Repair Permissions, Execute Maintenance Scripts and empty the System, Application and Font caches. Wait while these tasks are completed. This could take 10-15 minutes.

Maintenance Task List

No harm should come if you were to perform the other tasks, but I find that they are more troubleshooting tasks rather then preventive maintenance tasks.

If you want to learn more about maintaining your Mac then I encourage you to read the $10 PDF book Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac

Titanium Software makes Maintenance as well as Onyx which can do everything that Maintenance can do plus a whole lot more.

Are you looking for an easy way to share files with your colleagues who use a mix of Macs and PCs? There are many online file sharing and storage systems, but I use and recommend DropBox. I’ve tried a handful of systems including MobileMe’s iDisk, SugarSync, Windows LiveMesh, Box.net and GoogleDocs. While I use several of these services on an on-going basis I think DropBox is the most versatile and has the best mix of features that I use and care about.

Here’s a list of some of my needs.

• I want a fast, affordable, easy-to-use and secure system. I want to keep the files locally on my computer and have them get copied (synced) to my colleagues Mac or PC.
• I want to be able to share different folders with different people.
• I want to be able to access the shared folders and some of the files from my iPhone and iPad.

Dropbox meets all of these needs and has many other handy features. Here are some highlights.

• It provides status indicators when files are getting synced and optional on-screen notification messages when files have been added, deleted or edited.
• It saves older versions of files so you can retrieve a previous version.
• It lets you view your shared folders and files from their web site so you can access any file from any computer which has an Internet connection.
• If two people simultaneously edit the same file it’s smart enough to save both copies and point out this conflict.
• Files stored in DropBox can be accessed on iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, Android-based phones and tablets
• There is a special Public folder which can be used to share a file with the entire world, if you want. Any file in the public folder has a “public link” which can be put in an email or on a web site to provide an easy way for others to download this file. This is a handy way to share a file that is too large to send as an email attachment.

Dropbox is capable and versatile, but it’s not as robust as a full-fledged file server to which you might be accustomed. In particular it’s important to know that you can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Instead you would need to create a separate shared folder outside of the shared folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder. Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then invite others to join the folder. As the owner of the folder you can see the list of people who have access and you can revoke somebody’s access privileges at any time.

You can try Dropbox for free. A free account includes 2 GB of storage space. If or when you outgrow that 2 GB of storage space you can buy more storage space. 50 GB of storage space costs $100 per year or 100 GB of storage space costs $200 per year. Give Dropbox a try. I think you’ll like it.

This is the first in a series of articles about how to easily recycle your Macintosh computer, monitor, printer, ink and toner cartridges, batteries, cell phones and other electronics commonly used in small businesses or around the home. I live in Seattle so I focus on Seattle and King County, but many of these resources are available in the greater Puget Sound area.

In 2006, Sally Deneen, a Seattle resident, wrote a good overview about How to Recycle Practically Anything. There’s a lot of good information in this article but some details have changed over the years.

Starting in 2009, Washington State joined other states in offering an e-cycle program. It is a free, convenient and environmentally responsible recycling program for computers, monitors, laptops and televisions. It is for households and small businesses, schools, non-profits and others.  Be aware that computer peripherals such as keyboards, mice and printers are not included in this program.

Many of the organizations that participate in the E-Cycle Washington program also belong to the Take It Back Network. This network operates in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. It’s a group of retailers, repair shops, non-profit organizations, waste haulers and recyclers that offer convenient options for recycling certain products that should not be disposed of in the trash. I can’t give you an exhaustive list of all of the items that various groups take, but here’s a partial list of what one can recycle: audio and video equipment, cell phones, printers, computer peripherals,  copiers, fax machines, PDAs, pagers, tapes, discs, video game consoles,  and circuit boards.

One can use this Ecycling Center web site to locate recycling resources across the country. One of my preferred recyclers is Interconnection located in Fremont. While they are a highly certified recycler they try to reuse as much equipment as possible. They test all equipment that is donated and make some computers and equipment available to low-income individuals, people who volunteer their time at Interconnection and local non-profit organizations. Additionally, they ship some computers to overseas groups who can put them to use. I donate most of my computers, monitors, printers, scanners and other peripherals at Interconnection and encourage you to consider them as well.

In future articles I’ll provide more detail about how to recycle specific items like compact fluorescent lamps, zip disk, floppy disks, video tapes, film and other items.

Also, if your computer or other equipment is not broken then you could donate it an organization that’ll attempt to donate the equipment so it gets reused instead of recycled.

Did you know that Apple’s Preview lets you easily annotate PDFs, merge PDFs as well as delete and re-order pages within a PDF? Preview is a free application which comes bundled with Mac OS X. Apple has been quietly updating over the years and it has become quite capable and user-friendly. Just a few years ago one would have needed to buy the relatively expensive Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional PDF Editor to do many of these tasks.

I should note that there are slight differences in how certain tasks are done if you’re using OS X 10.5′s version of Preview. All of these demonstrations are done using OS X 10.6′s version of Preview.

It’s also important to know that the following techniques may not work on all PDFs. It’s possible for a person who creates a PDF to lock the file in such a way as to prevent others from manipulating it. Typically, locking a PDF like this requires use of an application like Adobe’s Acrobat.

I’ve created short video tutorials on how to do the following tasks. Read the brief text description and then click the link to watch the video.

If you need more extensive editing capabilities then what is offered by Preview then you should check out the relatively affordable PDFPen.

1. Reorder pages in a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on one of the thumbnails and drag the page up or down. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears indicating the new location of the page. To remove a page you can simply click on the thumbnail icon for a page to select it and the press the Delete key on your keyboard.

2. Extract pages from a PDF – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Click on the first page you want to extract. If you want to extract additional pages then hold down the Command key and click on additional thumbnail icons. Release the Command key and then drag the thumbnail icons to the Desktop. A new PDF file will be created on the Desktop. Rename the file as desired. Open this new file by double-clicking to verify that it contains the pages that you want. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above.

3. Move pages between PDFs (Merge PDFs) – Open a PDF file, click the Sidebar button to view the thumbnail icons for each page. Open a second PDF and click its Sidebar button too. Position the two PDFs so you can view both file’s Sidebars at the same time. Select one or more pages from one file’s Sidebar and drag them into the other file’s Sidebar. Look for the horizontal blue line that appears in the receiving file’s Sidebar. This blue line indicates where the new page appear. You can re-order the pages by following the tip listed above. Go to the File menu and select Save to save the changes.

4. Annotate text in a PDF -  Open a PDF file, click the Annotate button to review a row of tools at the bottom of the window. Use these tools to highlight text in a variety of colors, draw a line through the text, enclose text inside a rectangle or oval, add a note in the margin of the PDF.

Have you wanted to change your Mac’s behavior so Apple’s Preview is used, rather than Adobe Reader to open all .pdf files? You can control which application is used to open any given file type such as .xls, .doc, .jpg, .tiff, or .awk files.

In this example, we’ll configure a Mac to use Apple’s Preview as the default application to open all .pdf files.

• Locate a .pdf file on your Mac.
• Click once on this .pdf file to select it.
• Click on the File menu and select Get Info.
• In the Get Info window which appears, locate the “Open With” section.
• You ‘ll see the current default application listed. Click on this application’s name and select Preview from the list. If you don’t see your desired application then scroll to the bottom of the list and select “Other” then browse your Mac’s hard drive to select your desired application.
• Click the “Change All” button that appears below this list.
• You’ll be asked if you really want to make this change. Click “yes” you do want to make this change.
• Close the Get Info window.

That’s it! You’ve now configured your Mac to use Apple’s Preview as the default application to open all .pdf files.

Every so often, you might want to override the default behavior. For example, you might want to use Adobe Reader to open a particular .pdf file. Here’s how you can do this.

Click on the particular .pdf file. Drag it and drop it onto the application icon for Adobe Reader. It’s easiest to do this if you’ve already added Adobe Reader to your Dock. To do this, go to your Application folder, locate the application named Adobe Reader and drag it to the Dock. This will permanently add it to your Dock.

Have you ended up with duplicate songs in iTunes that you want to remove? iTunes has a built-in “Display Duplicate” feature which can be helpful, but I prefer to use the slightly hidden “Display Exact Duplicates” feature instead. How’s are instructions on its use.

• Open iTunes.
• Hold down the Option key and then click on the File menu and select “Display Exact Duplicates”. (If you don’t hold down the option key then you’ll instead see “Display Duplicates”.
• iTunes will do a search and do its best to display pairs of songs which are exact duplicates of each other. This feature doesn’t work perfectly but it’s pretty good.
• Then to actually get rid of the duplicates you can hold down the Command key (aka Apple key) and click on each of the songs that you want to delete.
• Finally, press the Delete key.
• You’ll be asked if you really want to remove the song. Click the Remove button.
• Finally, you’ll be asked if your want to move the song file to Trash or keep it in the iTunes Media folder. You could do either but to really get rid of the file you should put it in the Trash.

Note: There is a reason why I don’t like to use  iTunes’ built-in “Display Duplicates” feature. In a nutshell, it doesn’t seem to be very effective. I think it only compares the song’s Name and Artist. There are times when one might want two copies of the same song by the same artist. For example, one might have two versions of the same song — one from the original album release and a second version from a live concert album or a greatest hits album.

If you find that iTunes’ “Display Exact Duplicates” is not adequate for your needs then I’ll direct you to two third-party products. Acertant’s Tunes Ranger and SuperSync. I’ve used Tunes Ranger to merge multiple iTunes Libraries while retaining playlists. I haven’t used SuperSync. Both products indicate that they’ll help to identify and remove duplicates.

Here are instructions on how to copy a DVD.

Important Note: – using Disk Utility will NOT work for all DVDs. Some or maybe many commercial DVDs intentionally have copy-protection mechanisms in place to prevent copying. This method should work fine for DVDs which you made using iDVD, for example.

1. Open Disk Utility
2. Insert your DVD into your Mac.
3. Wait until the DVD shows up in the Disk Utility window and then click on it once to select it.
4. Go to the File menu, select New, and from it’s sub-menu select New Disk Image from <DVD name>
5. In the Save As dialog box that appears either accept the proposed name or type in your preferred name. Then, select a folder, like the Desktop, where the disk image will be saved. Click the Save button.
6. Wait for the disk image to be created. Depending upon the speed of your computer this can easily take 30-60 minutes or more.

Once the disk image has been created you can follow these steps to burn a new DVD copy.
A. Open Disk Utility
B. Go to the Images menu and select Burn
C. In the “Select Image to Burn” window select the disk image which you created previously, click the Burn button.
D. Insert a blank DVD-R disk and wait for the image to be burned onto this blank disk. This process can also easily take 30-60 minutes or more.

This Tech Tip covers provides you with instructions on how to setup and monitor Time Machine. It also explains some basic concepts behind Time Machine’s operation. Monitoring your backup system is incredibly important to do. A backup system that isn’t working is useless. Don’t simply trust or believe that your backup system is working. Check on it regularly.

Time Machine is Apple’s backup application which comes bundled with Mac OS X. It was introduced in 2007 as part of Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard. I have other Tech Tips that talk about encrypting Time Machine backups, swapping between two hard drives when using Time Machine and restoring a file from Time Machine.

Setup – Time Machine is the easiest backup application to setup. For many users it can be as easy as the following. Connect a brand new external USB or Firewire hard drive to your Mac and turn it on. When you turn it on it’ll mount (appear) on the Desktop. Time Machine will detect this hard drive and present an on-screen message asking if you’d like to use this hard drive for storing Time Machine backups, click the “Use as backup disk” button and you’re done.

While it can be this easy, there can be complicating factors, including these:

If Time Machine has previously been configured to use some other hard drive then you’ll need to manually configure it to use this new hard drive. To accomplish this, go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and click on Time Machine and then click the “Select Disk” button. Select the new hard drive from the list.

If the new hard drive is formatted as a PC hard drive using FAT32 or NTFS formats then Time Machine will prompt you to re-format the hard drive. I tend to buy my hard drives from Other World Computing or some other Mac-oriented vendor since their hard drives always come pre-formatted as a Mac hard drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I also tend to buy hard drives with FireWire ports as opposed to only USB ports since there tend to be a lot of USB devices vying for the relatively few USB ports on a Mac.

Initial Backup – Once Time Machine is configured to use a particular hard drive, backups will automatically occur every hour as long as the Mac is on and awake and the selected hard drive is available. The first backup will start within two minutes of you selecting it. The first backup can take many hours but you can continue to use the computer while the backup is running. I typically try to start the initial Time Machine backup near the end of the day. This way it can run all night as needed.

Which files are backed up? Time Machine backs up nearly all files on your Mac. It backups all of your data files (music, email, bookmarks, photos, etc) as well as applications (Word, Safari, iTunes, etc) and Mac OS X itself. It’s useful to know that it does not backup files in the Trash. It also does not backup most cache files, log files and the iPod photo cache. You also have the ability to manually exclude a file or folder by going to the Apple menu, selecting System Preferences and clicking on Time Machine and then clicking the “Options” button and adding an item to the list.

Backup Retention – After the initial backup is complete, subsequent backups only backup new and/or modified files. Subsequent backups run automatically every hour however not every backup is kept for ever. If every hourly backup was kept forever your backup hard drive would fill up very quickly. Instead, Time Machine automatically does some pruning of old backup files. Here is Time Machine’s backup retention policy. Hourly backups are kept for the past 24 hours. Beyond 24 hours, daily backups are kept for one month. And beyond that, weekly backups are kept until the backup hard drive is full. Once the backup hard drive becomes full, then Time Machine will notify you that it needs to delete the oldest backups in order to make room for the newest backups. I typically recommend using a backup hard drive which has at least twice the amount of storage space as you have files. For example, my laptop has about 150 GB of stuff on it. Thus, I should use a backup drive that is at least 300 GB in storage capacity.

Day-to-Day Monitoring – After you’ve setup Time Machine the next most important task you can do is monitor Time Machine to ensure that it’s operating. A backup system that isn’t working is useless. To monitor Time Machine simply click on the Time Machine icon located in the upper right corner of your screen near the clock. The Time Machine icon looks like an arrow curving around in a circle with clock hands inside the circle. Click on this icon and read the first line. It should read  ”Latest Backup: Today 2:15 pm” or something like that. If your most recent backup wasn’t today then you should select “Back Up Now” from the Time Machine menu. The Time Machine menu icon should begin to spin backwards. You can then click on it to monitor the status of the backup. Commonly seen messages are  Preparing, Backing up X Megabytes of XYZ Megabytes and Cleaning Up.

If your Time Machine backup system is not working properly the most common cause is that your backup hard drive has become disconnected or turned off. Do you see your backup drive’s icon on the Desktop? If not, check for loose cables and to make sure that it’s turned on. Also, disconnect and then reconnect the cable which connects the hard drive to your Mac.  If you’re still not able to get the backup drive to show up then restart your Mac. Afterwards, manually start Time Machine to see if it’s working now. If it’s still not working you could refer to either of the web sites I list below or you should contact your Mac support person for assistance.

Restore – It’s best to know how to restore a file from your Time Machine backup before a crisis hits. Thus, you should practice performing a restore in order to get comfortable with the procedure. This way you can remain calm when a crisis strikes. I’ve written a separate Tech Tip about how to restore files from Time Machine.

Apple’s introduction to setting up, restoring from and troubleshooting Time Machine.

Mr. Pondini has created a very thorough web site about Time Machine including extensive Frequently Asked Questions and Troubleshooting sections.

Is your Time Capsule full and would you like to free up some room for either newer backups of your data or to add another computer in your home? If so, here are some instructions on how to do this.

[Note: You need to be comfortable using Terminal and issuing some basic Unix commands in order to free up storage space. You can really mess things up if you use Terminal and you're not sure what you're doing so hire a consultant if you're unsure.]

Time Machine uses different methods for storing data on local (USB or Firewire) hard drives and on the hard drive in a Time Capsule. On a Time Capsule hard drive Time Machine stores your backup files in a special type of disk image known as a sparsebundle disk image. You don’t need to know what a sparsebundle is but it’s important to understand that it has important implications when it comes to freeing up space on a Time Capsule hard drive.

On a local hard drive, if you want to delete some of the backup data, you open Time Machine, select the date of a particular backup. Then, click on the Action menu icon and select Delete Backup. Time Machine will proceed to delete the files in that particular backup and this will free up space on the local hard drive.

On a Time Capsule hard drive, when you follow this same procedure you delete the files in a particular backup but you don’t free up storage space on the Time Capsule since the sparsebundle disk image has not changed in size. To reclaim the storage space you need to issue a command to shrink the sparsebundle disk image. Here are the steps you need to do.

• Open the Terminal application and type cd /Volumes/
• Select your Time Capsule hard drive and navigate into its subdirectories until you find the correct .sparsebundle file. The sparsebundle file will have the general form of ComputerName MACaddress.sparsebundle. Write down the name of this file, you’ll need it in a second.
• Type the following command in Terminal: hdiutil compact SparsebundleName.sparsebundle
• Now sit back and wait. Depending upon how many backups you deleted and how large your sparsebundle was when you started this compacting could take anywhere from a few minutes to overnight.

When the compacting is complete then you’ll see that you have more storage space available on your Time Capsule.

Are you having difficulty getting Verizon Wireless UMW190 Aircard working on your Mac running OS X 10.6? If so, make sure you’re using the proper version of VZAccess Manager. I know that the UMW190 works with version 7.0.5.

Verizon Wireless’ web page for Support Devices & Platforms lists the incorrect version of VZAccess Manager. It indicates that if your Mac is running OS X 10.6 then you should use VZAccess Manager version 7.2.1 (2595a). This is incorrect. I spent a long time banging my head against the wall. You can install version 7.2.1 and your UMW190 will be able to establish a connection to Verizon Wireless. It even gets an IP number assigned, but it can’t ping its WAN IP number, it can’t ping typically available public IP numbers and it doesn’t respond to pings. I spoke to Verizon Wireless tech support on a handful of occasions and we repeatedly reviewed which version of VZAccess Manager I had installed. I indicated version 7.2.1 and none of them indicated that this was wrong. So, either they refer to the same web page that I found or their internal documentation lists the wrong version also.

The clue that lead me to try the “wrong” version was the ReadMe file for the 7.2.1 Installer. I read through the list of supported Aircard devices and the UWM190 wasn’t listed. I then revisited Verizon Wireless’ Supported Devices & Platforms page and saw that the UMW175 and UMW 150 cards use VZAccess Manager 7.0.5.  I guessed that the UMW190 was probably a pretty similar device. I downloaded version 7.0.5 and read its ReadMe file. Sure enough the UMW190 was listed! I installed this version, restarted my Mac, established a connection. Voila. That was it. Everything worked. I was able to view web pages and send and receive email.

Would you like to secure your Time Machine backup data so other people wouldn’t be able to view your files if your backup drive fell into the wrong hands? Apple doesn’t provide a built-in way to encrypt your Time Machine backup files but it can be done. A clever individual named Jay has figured out how to do it and has the best documentation that I could find on how to setup encrypted Time Machine backups. Thanks Jay.

In previous Tech Tips, I’ve written about how useful Time Machine can be as well as how to setup Time Machine and test your Time Machine backups. Apple got a lot of things when they created Time Machine. It’s by far the easiest backup system to setup, monitor and to use to restore a file. Having said that it does have some short-coming including the fact that it doesn’t let you automatically switch between multiple hard drives and it doesn’t let you encrypt your backup data. I describe how to manually switch between drives but Jay offers a way to automate the process. I haven’t tested his method myself but I have successfully setup encrypted Time Machine backups.

Jay provides excellent step-by-step setup instructions but here’s a quick overview.

You obviously need an external hard drive on which Time Machine will store the encrypted data. (Time Machine comes with Mac OS X 10.5 or newer.) Next, you use Disk Utility to create an appropriately named encrypted sparse bundle disk image which you put on the external hard drive. Save the password for your disk image and then move this saved password from your own Login keychain to the System keychain. The disk image then needs to be tweaked slightly so Time Machine will be able to figure out that it can store your data in it. This is accomplished by creating a custom preference (plist) file and putting this plist file into your Disk Image. Finally, select the external hard drive in Time Machine Preferences and Time Machine will magically store the backup data inside the disk image.

Did you know that Mac OS X has a built-in zoom feature? This feature lets you zoom in on your screen so everything on the screen is larger. Of course, when you zoom in you can only see part of the screen on your monitor. You need to scroll around to see the other parts of the screen.

I use the zoom feature frequently when I’m giving presentations especially when I provide Mac training. I project my Mac laptop’s image onto a wall or screen using a projector. Then, I want to show audience members something on the screen so I zoom the screen so I can ensure that everybody in the audience can see what I’m trying to highlight on one part of the screen.

Zoom is off be default. Follow these instructions to turn it on.

• Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences.
• Click on the Universal Access icon
• Click on the Seeing button.
• In the Zoom section set the button to On.
• Optionally, click the Options button and make sure in the section titled “When zoomed in, the screen image moves:” that it is set to “Only when the pointer reaches an edge”. Click Done. The other options lead to too much screen movement which I find distracting or even annoying.

Once the zoom feature is enabled then you can invoke it at any time to zoom in on your Mac’s screen by simultaneously pressing these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Plus Sign (which is typically the same as the Equal Sign key). Each time you press these three keys your Mac will zoom in a little bit more.

To zoom out simultaneously press these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Minus Sign key which is typically to the left of the Plus Sign key.

If you ever struggle to find your Mac’s cursor then I recommend that you use MouseLocator. This free application puts a halo around the cursor to help your eyes locate the cursor. You can configure how long the halo is displayed. It can be displayed for as little as half of a second or permanently or somewhere in between these two extremes. You can also control how long the cursor must be idle before the halo will re-appear.

I find that MouseLocator is popular with people who use very large monitors or whose eyes are tired. I do a lot of computer-based presentations and I consider MouseLocator to be an indispensable tool. When I’m projecting my laptop’s display onto a large wall, MouseLocator helps audience members locate and track the cursor as I move it around the computer screen.

Check out MouseLocator.

In this Tech Tip article, I’ll tell you how to setup CrashPlan’s Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service to perform automated, off-site versioned backups. I use this service to backup my work laptop. In my previous Tech Tip on setting up a comprehensive backup system, I mention how CrashPlan can be a nice supplement to backing up your Mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner since CrashPlan’s backup data can be stored off-site on CrashPlan’s servers. Thus, it can provide automated, off-site backups of your business data.

In another recent Tech Tip I talk about how to use CrashPlan+ to backup personal data so if you’re not backing up business data you’ll probably prefer to sign-up for the less-expensive CrashPlan+ service which offers the same set of features. That article includes definitions of CrashPlan, CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central so if you’re not familiar with the differences between these terms please read this part of the article now.

One important detail to know is that CrashPlan’s does not mention this Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by name and barely mentions that a hosted service is available. In fact, I was confused after reading the CrashPlan web site and trying to understand the proper way to use CrashPlan+ to backup business data. I only learned about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by exchanging emails with Code42′s tech support team. I was informed that CrashPlan will be revising their web site to offer a better explanation of the range of services that they offer. In the meantime, here’s my abbreviated explanation.

CrashPlan, the application, can be used to backup either personal or business data to local hard drives, hard drives connected to your friend’s computer at their home or office, or hard drives connected to other computers on your own network. However, neither CrashPlan nor CrashPlan+ allow you to backup business data to CrashPlan Central, Code42′s servers kept in a secure data center. I value having a reliable, redundant backup system and I want my data to be secure so I really like the idea of storing my backup data on the CrashPlan Central servers. So, if you’re a business owner and you want to backup your business data to the CrashPlan Central servers then you need to sign up for either CrashPlan Pro or the Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service (contact info listed below). CrashPlan Pro is advertised as supporting 10-10,000 computers, but technically it could be used for any number of business computers. It just isn’t cost-effective until you have about 10 computers. It seems that Code42 setup their Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service as a bit of an after thought to plug the gap in their service offerings and to give business owners with 1-5 computers a way to more affordably store their data on the CrashPlan Central servers.

If the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service is a good fit for your small business then here’s some guidance on how to set it up.

Contact Code42′s sales team at sales@crashplanpro.com and ask them about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service.

Fill-in and return the Pro Hosted Order form that is sent to you by the sales team. Read the pricing examples that I provide at the bottom of this article.

You’ll be notified of your login information once your account has been setup.

Download and install the CrashPlan Pro application. It works on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.4.11 or higher.

Open CrashPlan Pro. When you’re prompted to login do so using the account information you were given.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side. Then, in the Backup Destinations section locate “CrashPlan Central” and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.
By default, CrashPlan will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan Pro is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan Pro will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan Pro application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan Pro is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan Pro application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan Pro. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.

By default, CrashPlan Pro will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

Pricing Example – As of the November 2010 the cost is $5/computer/month plus 30 cents per gigabyte per month with a minimum of 50 GB. Thus, for one computer the cost would be $20/month ($5 for the computer and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage).

The cost for 4 computers would be a minimum of $35/month ($20 for 4 computers and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage). $35/month x 12 mns = $420 per year each year.

Here’s a cost example in case you need more then 50 GB of storage space.

4 computers = $20/month

initial 50 GB of storage space = $15/month

additional 20 GB of storage space = $6/month

Total is $20 + $15 + $6 = $41/month    12 months x $41 = $492/year

Update Jan 2011: In December 2010, CrashPlan released CrashPlan version 3 which added new features like the ability to backup different files to different destinations. More importantly, it rolled the CrashPlan + features of backups running every 15 minutes and storing multiple versions of files into the standard CrashPlan application. Thus these two features are now standard for all users of CrashPlan.

In my Tech Tip on how to setup a comprehensive backup system I mention that CrashPlan can be a nice supplement to backing up your Mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner since CrashPlan’s backup data can be stored off-site on CrashPlan’s servers. Thus, it can provide automated, off-site backups of your personal data. In this article I provide instructions on how to setup CrashPlan to perform automated, off-site, versioned backups.

I need to start by introducing and defining a few terms.

CrashPlan is the name of a backup application. It’s free for personal use. It’s made by Code42 Software.  It can be used to backup data to a locally connected hard drive, to another computer in your home, to another computer at your friend’s home or to CrashPlan’s servers. These servers are called CrashPlan Central. The capabilities of the CrashPlan application can be extended by buying a license for CrashPlan + (plus). The license is simply a long string of letters and numbers which you enter into the CrashPlan application. The most important capabilities which one gets from CrashPlan + are more frequent backups and versioned backups. Let me elaborate. The free version of CrashPlan performs daily backups to other computers or hourly to CrashPlan Central. With CrashPlan+ backups occur every 15 minutes. The free version of CrashPlan stores only one copy of each file. If you edit a file each day then then new version of the file replaces yesterday’s version. With CrashPlan+ you can configure CrashPlan to hold onto previous versions of files for a while or forever.

It’s important to know that CrashPlan is free for personal use by residential customers. That is, you’re allowed to use it to backup only personal data, not business data. If you’re a business customer then you should buy CrashPlan + ($60). This then allows you to backup your business data but only to local hard drives or other computers owned by you or your friends. CrashPlan+ is not adequate for backing up business data to CrashPlan Central.

If you’re a business and you want to backup your business data to CrashPlan Central then you need to sign up for either the Hosted Pro Client Subscription or CrashPlan Pro. The Hosted Pro Client Subscription service is for a maximum of 5 computers. CrashPlan Pro is for 5-10,000 computers or more. I’ll talk about the Hosted Pro Client Subscription service in a future Tech Tip article.

Setup Instructions

Start by going to CrashPlan’s web store and purchasing a license for CrashPlan+ ($60) and either an Individual Unlimited Plan ($54) or a Family Unlimited Plan ($100). The individual plan provides unlimited storage for one computer at CrashPlan Central. The family plan provides unlimited storage for all computers in one household at CrashPlan Central. When you finish the checkout procedure you’ll receive an email which contains your license code for CrashPlan+

Download the free CrashPlan application. It works on PowerPC Macs as well as Intel Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher.

Open CrashPlan. You’ll be prompted to enter your user account information. You don’t have an account yet so follow the instructions to setup an account.

Once you’ve setup your account then the CrashPlan application will open. On the left-hand side click on Settings and then on the right-hand side click on Account. Type in your CrashPlan+ license key in the boxes provided. Click the Save button.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side. Then, in the Backup Destinations section locate “CrashPlan Central” and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.

By default, CrashPlan will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

All batteries will eventually experience diminished efficiency and storage capacity and will need to be replaced. However, regularly recalibrating your Lithium-ion battery will help to prolong your battery’s life and health which helps you to reduce the frequency with which you’ll have to buy a new battery

Apple recommends recalibrating your battery at time of purchase and then every few months after that. Battery University recommends recalibrating your battery every 30 charge/discharge cycles. Apple provides written instructions on how to recalibrate your battery. For years, I had a repeating event on my iCal calendar that sent me an email reminder which included a copy of Apple’s instructions. Recently, I switched and started to use Watts (30-day free trial, then $6.95) which lets me monitor the health of my battery, reminds me to calibrate my battery and then guides me through it.

Apple indicates that one should expect current Mac laptop batteries to retain 80% of their charge capacity after 1000 full charge/discharge cycles. Watts lets you keep an eye on this and alerts you if your battery is not healthy and needs to be replaced. If you have Growl, the notification application installed, then Watts can be configured to display useful notifications and reminders to recalibrate your battery. I recommend Watts, check it out, you might find it helpful.

Here’s a copy of Apple’s current instructions for recalibrating your battery if you own a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or PowerBook G4 with a dual-layer DVD drive.

• Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
• Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
• Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
• At this point, save your work.  Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
• Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
• Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Do you want to check to see if your Mac is still under warranty from Apple? The technical support section of Apple’s web site lets you easily check to see if your Apple device is protected by either its built-in or the extended hardware warranty. Here are simple instructions on how to do so.

All Macintosh computers as well as iPhones and iPad come with a standard one-year hardware warranty. Apple offers an optional extended warranty named AppleCare Protection Program. This extended warranty can be purchased anytime during the first year while your Mac is still protected by it’s built-in warranty. To determine if your Mac  is covered do this:

• Obtain your Apple device’s serial number. It is printed on your device but it can sometimes be hard to locate so use this page from Apple which explains where to find your device’s serial number. If you have a Mac that starts up you can follow these instructions instead.
• Go to the Apple menu and select “About This Mac”
• In the window which appears, click the “More Info” button which opens System Profiler application.
• The “Hardware” section will be selected on the left-hand side. In the right-hand side, near the bottom of the Hardware Overview, you’ll see the serial number listed. Select it and copy it.
• Go to Apple’s web page for checking your warranty coverage.
• Paste your Mac’s serial number into the field and click the Continue button. Your hardware coverage will be listed shortly.

Do you want to give your computer to another person so they can use it, but before you give it away you want to remove all of your data? If so, here’s an easy way to accomplish this. We’ll create a user account for the person who’ll be using the Mac, then we’ll delete your user account.

These instructions were written for OS X 10.5 and 10.6, but should work on previous versions as well though some of the names and wordings have changed subtly.

• Turn on the Mac and let it start up.
• Go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and click on Accounts
• If the padlock in the lower left corner is locked then click on it to unlock it. Enter your user account’s password when prompted to do so.
• Click the plus sign button to add a new user account. Set “New Account” to “Administrator”. Enter the real world name of the new user of the Mac in the “Full Name” field. Enter a name in the “Account name” field; this name can not contain spaces, capital letters or punctuation marks. Enter a password in both the “Password” and “Verify” fields. Enter a password hint if you’d like.
• Click the “Create Account” button.
• Go to the Apple menu and select Log Out which appears at the bottom of the menu.
• You’ll be presented with a login window. Type in the account name and password for the account which you just created. You’ll be logged into this new user’s account and now that you’re no longer using your account it can be deleted.
• Go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and click on Accounts
• If the padlock in the lower left corner is locked then click on it to unlock it. Enter your user account’s password when prompted to do so.
• Click on your user account which’ll be listed on the left-hand side of the window.
• Click the minus sign button to delete your user account.
• Select “Delete the home folder” to have all of the data in your user account deleted.
• Click the OK button. The actual deletion process could take 10-15 minutes, especially if there is a lot of data in your account.
• When the deletion process is complete you can close the System Preferences window.

Here are instructions on how to use Disk Utility to securely erase a hard drive connected internally or externally to your Mac. These instructions were written for Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.6. The process is very similar on older versions of Mac OS X but the screens will look a bit different.

Requirements – You’ll need either the Mac OS X install disk that came with your Mac or another OS X install disk that’ll boot your Mac, such as a retail copy of the Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 install disk.

I recommend securely erasing a hard drive before you recycle it or give it away. The instructions below include the option to re-install Mac OS X onto the hard drive at the end of the process.

If you’re securely erasing an external hard drive you do not need to use a Mac OS X install disk. Instead, you can simply open Disk Utility which you’ll find in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. In Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and then follow the last few steps below to erase it using one of the Security Options described below.

Background – Technically, it’s not possible to erase or remove data from hard drives. Thus “securely erasing” is a misnomer. Instead, what we’ll be doing is over-writing the data on your hard drive with gibberish, a random string of bits of data. When you securely erase your hard drive you’ll have a choice of how much over-writing you want to do. This process can take many hours if you select the 7-pass overwrite procedure. I recommend starting this process and then letting it run over-night.

• Insert the Mac OS X install disc that came with your Mac.
• Note: The disc will begin the process of installing Mac OS X on your Mac. Whether or not you actually choose to install Mac OS X is your choice, but if you do, you’ll do it AFTER you’ve securely erased your Mac’s hard drive.
• Select your preferred language from the list presented.
• When you see the welcome screen for the Mac OS X Installer go to the menu named Utilities and select Disk Utility
• In the left pane of the Disk Utility window, click on the hard drive you want to erase.
• In the right pane of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab.
• Click the Security Options button
• I recommend that you select the 7-Pass Erase options, but you could choose the 35-Pass Erase option. Here’s my description of these options.

Don’t Erase Data— This option does not provide any security. This option only over-writes the directories on the hard drive. Your files could still be recovered.
Zero Out Data— Provides a pretty good level of security. All of your files are over-written with a string of zeroes. There are forensics utilities that in theory could retrieve some data.
7-Pass Erase— Provides a lot of security. This is considered sufficient by government standards to erase data from a disk. It writes a random string of ones and zeroes over your data files seven times. It may take several hours or more to complete this process.
35-Pass Erase— Provides the maximum amount of security offered.This option takes an extremely long time, possibly more than one day.

• Click the radio button in front of 7-Pass Erase
• Click OK.
• Click the Erase button next to the Security Options button.
• Confirm you want to erase and the process will be begin.
• If you want to install Mac OS X then go to the Disk Utility menu and select Quit
• You’ll be taken back to the Mac OS X Installer welcome window. Click Continue.
• Agree to the software license.
• In the “Select a Destination” window click on the icon for the hard drive which you just erased and then click Continue.
• Click the Install button to start the installation process. Depending upon the speed of your Mac and the version of Mac OS X which you are installing this process could commonly take anywhere from 20-60 minutes.

Testing your backup system is a critical, but often over-looked task. You need to monitor and test your backup system so you know that it’s properly copying your files, but more importantly so you learn how to use your backup system to retrieve a file. By practicing how to restore a file you’ll be confident and ready when disaster strikes and you really need to restore a file. Time Machine is the easiest and most user-friendly backup program for restoring a file. Here are simple instructions, tested on Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, for restoring a file from Time Machine. We’ll imagine that you accidentally deleted a file named My Resume.doc from your Documents folder.

• Click on the Finder icon on your Dock. This will open a Finder window.
• Navigate to your Documents folder.
• Open Time Machine. You could either click on the Time Machine icon in your menu bar and select “Enter Time Machine” or your could go to your Applications folder and double-click on Time Machine.
• Time Machine’s interface is a star field with a stack of windows disappearing into infinity. On the right-hand edge of the screen, you’ll see a time line. Each of the hash marks corresponds to a different backup copy.
• On the right-hand time line, click on the date and time from which you want to restore your My Resume.doc file.
• You’ll see the top windows in the stack whisk by as Time Machine goes back to the date you selected. Notice that the date and time listed below the Documents window corresponds to the date and time you selected. You’re now looking at your Documents folder the way it looked at that point in the past!
• These windows behave like regular Finder windows. You can navigate around in them, you can use the search field. You can preview a file by double-clicking it. Click on your My Resume.doc file in your Documents folder to select it. (You can select an entire folder. You can hold down the Command key and select multiple files or folders as well.)
• Click the Restore button in the lower left corner. If the name of the file you are restoring matches the name of a file in the same location, your Documents folder, in this case, then Time Machine will ask you if you want to keep the original item, the restored item or both.
• Your My Resume.doc file will be restored to your Documents folder.

Apple has written similar instructions on how to restore an individual file as well as how to restore your entire hard drive. They also provide an overview of Time Machine.

You can use these instructions to retrieve any password from your keychain such as the password to your wireless network. The keychain is a secure place to store passwords, when you initially connected to your password-protected wireless network your password would have been stored in your keychain if you checked the “Remember this network”.

• Go to /Applications/Utilities and open Keychain Access. This application lets you view the passwords (keys) stored on your keychain. You’ll notice that the application’s icon is a ring with keys on it.
• Use the Search field in the upper right corner. Type in the name of your wireless network.
• Click on the name of your wireless network from the list of found items. If there are multiple items with the same name then here are some clues on how to find the right one. It’s Kind will be Airport Network Password. It’ll be on the “login” keychain.
• Go to the File menu and select Get Info
• In the lower left corner of the Get Info window check the box named “Show Password”
• You’ll be prompted to enter your administrator account’s password. (This is you main computer password. This is the password you use when installing software updates.)
• Click the “Allow Once” button.
• The password will be displayed.

Monitoring and testing a backup system are two critically important steps which many people skip. If you don’t monitor your backup system to ensure that it’s running and you don’t test it periodically to have confidence that it’s backing up file properly then you might be in for a big surprise when disaster strikes and you try to retrieve files from your backup system.

In my Tech Tip about setting up a comprehensive Macintosh backup system, I encourage everybody to setup both Time Machine and Copy Copy Cloner. Here are simple instructions to ensure that Carbon Copy Cloner is creating a full and bootable backup copy of your Mac’s hard drive.

• Quit all applications that you’re working in.
• Go to the Apple menu and select Restart.
• Immediately after you hear the startup chime hold down the Option key.
• After 10-15 seconds the “Startup Manager” will appear. The Startup Manager will display a row of icons on a blue background. You can release the Option key.
• Once your cursor becomes an arrow then click on the hard drive icon for your full bootable backup made by Carbon Copy Cloner to select it. In these instructions I’ll assume your full bootable backup is named “Full Bootable Backup.” If you don’t see your full bootable backup drive listed in Startup Manager that is an indication that your full bootable backup didn’t work properly. In this case follow the instructions I list in this Tech Tip about setting up Carbon Copy Cloner.
• Next click the button with an arrow pointing to the right to tell the computer to continue to start up.
• Once the computer has started up go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac. In the section labeled Startup Disk you should see Full Bootable Backup listed. If you see Macintosh HD listed then the full backup didn’t work properly since the Mac failed to startup from the full bootable backup. In this case follow the instructions I list in this Tech Tip about setting up Carbon Copy Cloner.
• Close the About this Mac window.
• Now test a few important files. For example open some important word processing files. Open iTunes and verify that you can play some songs. Open iPhoto and ensure that your photos are there.
• Go to the Apple menu and select Restart.
• The Mac should startup from Macintosh HD.

You’ve successfully tested your full bootable backup made by Carbon Copy Cloner!

The final step is to have your Mac startup from its internal hard drive as it does typically. Go to the Apple menu and select Restart. Let your Mac startup and it’ll automatically revert to starting from its internal hard drive. Once it’s started you can verify this fact by going to the Apple menu, selecting “About This Mac” and seeing which hard drive is listed as the startup disk.

Here are instructions on how to have Time Machine switch between two backup hard drives.

My recommendations for setting up a comprehensive backup system for your Mac include swapping between two external hard drives. While one hard drive is being used to backup your Mac the other drive is kept off-site in a secure location. Using multiple drives provides protection against fire, floods and burglars which could affect both your Mac and the backup drive sitting next to it.

In last week’s Tech Tip article, I described how to configure Carbon Copy Cloner to perform a full bootable backup whenever the backup drive is reconnected. If you swap your two backup drives on a weekly basis then Carbon Copy Cloner will automatically update it’s full backup each week. In other words, Carbon Copy Cloner can be configured to backup to multiple drives. On the other hand, Time Machine can not be configured to backup to multiple drives. Instead, each time you switch your hard drives you’ll need to manually select the currently attached drive and configure Time Machine to use it.  The good news is that Time Machine will look at the attached hard drive and see that it has stored backup data on this drive previously and will pick up where it left off. It’s important to understand how Time Machine performs its backups.

Time Machine performs automatic incremental updates. Time Machine is scheduled to run automatically every hour as long your Mac is turned on and is awake. The first time it performs a backup it’ll take many hours since it needs to backup all files on your Mac. It actually skips some files including items in the Trash, cache files, log files and a few other files. Subsequent backups take much less time since Time Machine only needs to backup modified and new files. It’s also useful to know that Time Machine doesn’t hold onto every hourly backup forever. It performs some automatic deleting of backups. It saves hourly backups for the last 24 hours. Beyond that it saves daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until your hard drive is full. Once a backup drive becomes full then it’ll delete the oldest weekly backups to make room for new backups and notifies you when it does this.

When you swap backup drives, Time Machine performs a scan to determine what files are new or have been modified since the last time Time Machine performed a backup to a particular drive. In our case, when you swap the drives, the most recent backup would be about a week ago. Time Machine thus performs an incremental backup of all files that are new or have been modified during the past week.

Specifically, here are instructions on how to re-configure Time Machine each time you swap your backup drives. Let’s assume you have two backup hard drives named “Time Machine Red” and “Time Machine Green”. For simplicity, I’ll just call them Red and Green.

1. Let’s assume that Green is currently connected to your Mac. In this case, you’ll see an icon named “Time Machine Green” on your Desktop.
2. Drag this icon to the Trash this tells the Mac to unmount (logically disconnect) the hard drive.
4. It’s now safe to physically disconnect the hard drive from your Mac. Unplug the FireWire or USB cable and power cord, if present, from Green.
5. Connect the power cord, as needed and FireWire or USB cable to Red.
6. In about 15 seconds you’ll see an icon appear on the Desktop named Time Machine Red. (If your drive is partitioned for use with Carbon Copy Cloner then you’ll see two icons, one for each partition.)
7. Go to the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon
8. Click Select Disk
10. Select Time Machine Red from the list of available hard drives.
11. Click the “Use for Backup” button
12. Close the Time Machine Preferences window. Time Machine will start to perform its backup shortly.

Whenever  you swap between Red and Green simply follow these same instructions but replace every occurrence of Red with Green and vice versa. Once you’ve done the swaps a couple of times you’ll see that there’s nothing to it.

In a previous Tech Tip article  I encouraged users to setup a comprehensive backup system by partitioning a hard drive into two pieces and then configure Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine to  backup to the two partitions. Here are some more detailed setup instructions.

Connect a FireWire or USB hard drive to your Mac with a cable, turn it on and wait for its icon to mount on the Desktop. Go to /Application/Utilities and open Disk Utility. Select the hard drive from the left-hand list. The hard drive is typically named by its size, manufacturer and sometimes a model number. (In the image below you can see that I’ve select the drive named 750.16 GB OEM.)

Paritioning in Disk Utility

Next, click the Partition tab. In the Volume Scheme section select 2 Partitions. Fill in appropriate names and sizes in the fields on the right-hand side. I recommend making the first (top) partition your partition for storing Time Machine backup data and the second (bottom) partition your partition for storing your Carbon Copy Cloner full bootable backup. The reason for putting the Time Machine partition on top is so that you can more easily make the second partition larger, as needed, in the future.

To determine appropriate sizes you should click on your Mac’s hard drive icon on your Desktop. Then go the File menu and select Get Info. Look at how much space, measured in gigabytes (GB) is being used and look at the drive’s total capacity. At a minimum the size for your Carbon Copy Cloner partition needs to be large equal to the number of gigabytes currently used. I typically make the partition at least 10-20% bigger to allow for growth in the amount of data on your hard drive.

I suggest naming the partitions something like Time Machine Backup and Full Backup. If you’re going to follow my recommendation and switch between two backup hard drives then you should add letter or number designators in the partition names, such as Time Machine Backup A.

Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Click the Options button and make sure you select GUID Partition Table if the drive is connected to a Mac with an Intel processor. Select Apple Partition Map if the drive is connected to a older Mac using a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor. Click the Apply button so the drive will be partitioned and then formatted. When Disk Utility finishes the drive is now ready for use. If my instructions are too brief, you might benefit from Ken Stone’s detailed instructions with lots of pictures.

Two icons representing the two hard drive partitions will appear on your Mac’s Desktop. Go to the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon (Mac OS X 10.5 or newer is required). Click the Select Disk button and pick your Time Machine and then click the Use for Backup button. Apple offers a succinct introduction to using Time Machine.

After you download and install Carbon Copy Cloner, open it from your Applications folder. In the Source Disk section select your Mac’s internal hard drive which is typically named Macintosh HD. In the Target Disk section select the smaller partition which you created in Disk Utility. Click the padlock icon in the lower left corner and enter your Mac OS X administrator password. Then click the Save Task button. In the Scheduler window that appears enter a name for the task in the Scheduled Tasks section. On the right-hand side, in the Run this task: section select When Target  is Reconnected. Click the Save button in the lower right corner to save this configuration. The developer offers lots of support and instructions for Carbon Copy Cloner.

Carbon Copy Cloner

You have now partitioned an external hard drive and configured Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner to backup to each of the partitions. If you follow my recommendation of buying two external backup  hard drives then you’ll want to repeat this setup procedure for the second drive. Next week, I’ll provide instructions on how to swap between two hard drives and have Time Machine backup to both hard drives.