Friday 29 June 2012

How to create clone of Mac Lion | Mac backup solution

What is Mac cloning and it's benefit?

Cloning refers to making an exact copy of your hard drive. It is the most reliable and efficient backup solution to secure data on your drive. It’s a bootable backup of disk which has copy of both operating system and data. A bootable clone routine copies all of the data on the main drive, bit by bit, and places it on a second drive.

Suppose, you are working with your Mac system with all your important official data in it and it crashed so, what to do next? In such situations data recovery software could be a rescue. But, it’s also true that precaution is better than cure. Hard disk cloning is very good solution to face such data loss situation, missing data can be retrieved from clone. Cloning your drive in this way can also save you money by minimizing the time spent by a technician repairing your Mac or PC.

Here are the tips we follow to clone Mac Lion hard drive:-
Apple has an inbuilt feature to backup i.e Time Machine, which keeps incremental backup. There are lot of third party tools available for cloning process e.g CCC, Super duper, Stellar Drive Clone etc.
Stellar Drive Clone offers fast and safe backup by using several advanced mechanism. You can create an exact sector-by-sector image of your Mac hard drive and save this image at any desired location in the system. It helps to create a bootable Mac DVD that is immensely useful for booting the system.

Features of Stellar Drive Clone:-
  • It creates a sector-by-sector exact copy of one Mac disk to a different drive/volume/folder.
  • Clone a Mac drive to another drive which is connected in the network .
  • Create image of Mac drive as a backup .
  • A user has an option to resize volumes on the destination drive .
  • It’s very easy to create a bootable DVD for Mac which can be used to clone the boot volume.
How to use this cloning software:-
Step 1: Launch Stellar clone drive. Heres the interface of application asking whether you want to clone or create image of your Mac drive. Select “Clone” and start the process.

Stellar Drive Clone

Clone at network drive:-
A user can opt to save his Mac clone either on an external drive attached to his machine or to another system in his network. Stellar Drive Clone and CCC both are good choices for this task.
The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly so keep backup regularly. Stellar Drive Clone is an ultimate solution to all the Mac cloning issues. 
For more details visit :- http://www.stellarclonedrive.com/

Sunday 24 June 2012

Optimize your Mac to increase the performance

How to take care of your Mac?

Mac OS is one of the best and fast performing technology on this earth. Other tags used with Mac machines are – reliability, accuracy and integrity. In spite of following advanced rules , sometimes (due to hardware configuration) machines could not perform as per our expectations. In such situations an insight could help to optimize Mac OS X and increase the performance.

Many Mac users do not know much about computer maintenance. In this post we recommened the following Mac maintenance tips :- 

1.Uninstall all unused applications:- Uninstall all unused application, you should double check before removing it. Drag the application to trash then manually remove it , you can remove it by using third party tools. Do not keep more icons on desktop. Delete the widgets you don't regularly use. 

2.Clear all start up items:- When you boot your system ,some applications begins automatically with login. These items just increase the Mac boot time take up memory.
Steps to remove login items:-
Go to the Apple menu. > Select System Preferences > Accounts > Login >   Select the item you wish to remove from startup and click the minus sign at the top.

3.Keep your Mac running cool - Keep your Mac in a cool, dry environment.

4.Clean up unwanted files :- There might be tem­porary Internet files junk files , language files, caches, binaries in your system which consume lot of memory space. You should remove all theses rubbish things from your Mac. There are many software available in market.
There are various third party tools available to help you to maintain your Mac:-
  • Clean my Mac
  • MacKeeper .
  • Stellar SpeedUp Mac
  • Cocktail
5. Defrag your system :- When you save any file , it is devided into chunks and stored as a scattered way in memory. New file system of Mac i.e HFS+ can defrag files up to 20 MB file size but if you have lot of heavy files and applications in your Mac then you should use third party tool. 

6. Keep at least 10 to 15 % free disk space:- Keep some free space in Mac drive to execute programmes properly. 

7. Shutdown your machine regularly:- There may be chance of hard disk crash if you do not shutdown properly. 

8. Use a firewall:- If you have a high speed internet connection. A firewall will prevent your computer from getting "hijacked".

9. Monitor hard-drive health:- Check your directory files because it keeps the track of exactly where each file is stored. When the directory divided into fragments across your drive, it can damage the directory and make it inaccurate. So, it's very necessary to check the hard drive health. Apple has an inbuilt feature called Disk Utility which helps to verify and repair hard disk. To help you keep an eye on your drives' status, today's hard drives include Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART).

10. Repair Permissions:- In Mac permissions system to determine which programs and folders a user can access. Sometimes these permissions are modified by mistake, and you can’t access folders or programs. In the situation you should repair permission to access your data and files properly.

You should perform regular maintenance tasks on your computer to keep it safe, secure, and healthy. Follow these tips, and you'll notice an amazing improvement.


 

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Possible ways to run windows on Mac Lion


What is the best way to run Windows on Mac? Is it possible to run Windows 7 on Mac Lion? - Let's find out.

Back in 90's when PowerPC platform was introduced for Mac, the world was divided into two , one for Windows users another for Mac users. It was not possible to run Windows on Mac. 
But, the sean changed when Steve Jobs announced that the Macintosh OS can run on both processors Power PC or Intel, it brought a revolution in bringing Mac and Windows users together. It means that a Mac user can run Windows and other MS applications on his machine. 

We all love to work with Mac because of it’s advance features and new technology. Suppose you have a Mac machine and want to use an application (compatible on with Windows). Here, it is not feasible to get a new PC to use that application. So, it is suggested to install Windows on Mac machine via a Mac utility called Bootcamp.

What is Bootcamp?
Boot Camp is an inbuilt Mac utility that assists users in installing Microsoft Windows os on Intel-based Macintosh computers.
As we all know windows can run over Intel so at first make sure you have an Intel-based Mac: any G4 or G5 Mac will not install Boot Camp.

Windows installation steps:-
1. Go to - Applications --> Utilities --> Boot Camp Assistant.
Boot camp creates partition in your hard drive to make space for Windows OS. It will reformat the partitions on your existing hard drive with no loss of data.
Once the partitioning is finished, you're ready to install Windows itself:

Bootcamp in Mac Lion
2. Insert the WinXP installation DVD, wait for it to be recognized by Mac OS, click on Start Installation and wait.
When you've finished the Windows XP installation, reboot your system and eject Windows CD. You have almost done.

To switch Mac to Windows, every times you need to restart your computer, hold down alt button and select Windows or Mac(options available on the screen) on which you want to work.

Boot camp makes easy to enjoy with both OS and there are no chance to any types of data loss in this process. Follow above steps , install both OS and work smoothly and full of enjoyment.

How to get rid of rebooting system to switch between Windows and Mac?
Here is the technology which replaces the need of rebooting while switching from Mac to Windows or vice versa. This is called virtualization.

Virtualization – It is a method of virtualising the Operating system where the kernel of an os allows for multiple isolated user-space instances, instead of just one. The software working with this principle create a "virtual machine" running alongside the Mac operating system. It has the ability to run both Mac OS X and Windows with virtual machine side by side. You can switch between both OS without rebooting your system.

Virtualization runs two operating systems simultaneously, but lot of memory space occupied by resources such as memory and processor power in this process. It may be the reason of sluggish performance of Mac. If you have lot of hard drive spaces then you can use virtualization method to run windows and Mac both. It will give you exciting experience.

Monday 18 June 2012

Is Defragmentation necessary for your Mac?

Over a period of time, the data on your hard drive becomes scattered and unorganized. When the hard disk is empty, the file system is free to write the data on the hard disk, but after a few deletions and rewriting processes, unwanted spaces are created ,breaking the sequence between related data. So, due to this process data on your hard drive is divided into chunks. In this condition when you open any file, processor takes more time to fetch scattered pieces of data from hard drive.
Solution to organize scattered data in sequential order:-

Defragmentation is a process that scans your hard drives for this scattered data, and puts things back into sequential order. In layman words you can say- “ Defragmentation means to keep fragmented data together in contiguous memory location.” It minimizes the data accessing time by the hard disk and helps your computer to run more quickly.
Effects of fragmentation:-
  • Fagmented files on your hard drive affects system performance.
  • It can corrupt file system and partition table.
  • If your hard drive has less amount of free space then there are chances that the files get separated into multiple fragments as they are being written to your hard drive.
Steps to perform Defragmentation:-

Windows needs defragging more often than Mac computers. In most versions of Windows, including Windows XP and Windows Vista, a disk defrag utility is embedded into the operating system. If you are using Microsoft Windows XP, you can find the defrag program by clicking here:-
Start-->All Programs-->Accessories-->System Tools-->Disk Defragmenter.
The Disk defrag dialog box will appear, choose the drive you want to defrag.

On the Linux platform, ext2 filesystems can be defragmented by tools as e2defrag, while you can defrag ext3 file systems with the 'shake' command.  If you are running a Mac or use Linux, you don't have to worry about defragmenting your disk, because new version of Mac file system i.e HFS+ has the ability to minimize the chance of fragmentation of up to 20 MB file size.

This file system works basically to prevent heavy file fragmentation, however it cannot perform free space optimization in your drive. If you want to defrag files more than 20 MB file size ,you can use third party tools available in market, idefrag are good defragmentation tools for Mac users.

You can schedule defragging program in your computer either in night before going on bed, or run the defragging utility once a week . If you are doing regular defragmentation of your hard drive this will help to keep your system running fast and and thus do more work in less time. Apart from above you can also increase USB drive performance by applying defragmentation to it.


Wednesday 13 June 2012

Tips to use Mac maintenance utilities


Is Mac maintenance necessary?
Mac Machines are considered as the most advanced technology on the earth. If we talk about number of users facing computer related issues, the major part will be on Windows side. But , it doesn't mean that Mac users never face any performance related problem. All we need to do, either on Mac or on Windows, is to perform some maintenance tasks.

Many Mac users do not know much about computer maintenance. Below, I recommend several procedures, which will help to keep it running in tip-top shape.

Mac maintenance with Disk Utility:-
Disk utility is an inbuilt function of Mac OS which is used to format hard drives, create RAID arrays, mount volumes, burn disk images (.dmg files), and fix basic disk problems. If your computer doesn’t start up normally, you may need to use a disk repair utility to fix the issue.
Disk Utility also monitors the basic S.M.A.R.T. status of any internal hard drive. If the "SMART status" of your drive is not verified then there is some issue with your drive. In this case, it is suggested to create backup of your data at some other location. Back up is very important in case of any data loss.

You can secure your data with Disk utility through compression and encryption of disk image. Additional features of Disk Utility includes disk erasing, formatting, partitioning and cloning. These features are more than enough for home users but, the users with some advanced needs, find it limited and search for some third party tools carrying great features.

Mac maintenance with Third party tool:-
There are many Mac maintenance software which are capable enough to take care of every need of your Mac. One of them is Stellar Drive Toolbox- a complete Mac optimizing software with 12 utilities. It helps to repair, manage, protect and sanitize the Mac hard drives. It has four main utilities:-

SpeedUp Mac – This module acts s a Mac cleaner, which helps to remove duplicate files ,caches, files, logs, System junks, universal binaries etc.. You can schedule cleanup task.

Partition Manager- It helps to manage Mac partitions by Adding, Deleting, Formatting, 
 Resizing and Hiding/Revealing any selected Mac volume .

Mac wipe- It helps to erase all unnecessary data beyond the recovery.

Drive Clone- You can easily create image or clone of your Mac hard drive for future backup.

Drive Defrag- Defragmentation helps to keep fast data accessing. You can do Full or Quick defragmentation via this module. It helps to optimize free space.

The other modules of this Mac maintenance application are surface scan, Drive Initialize, Drive performance, Drive status, Volume repair, Raw data Editor, Data Encryptor. Each module has several advanced features to fulfill your Mac needs.
A scheduled Mac maintenance task , keeps your Mac life healthy and full of rejoice.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

How to remove duplicate files from Mac

Most of the times, people keep storing everything on their machine, irrespective of significance of the items, for future use and forget about it. This sluggish practice of user leads to a sluggish Mac. In such cases, the useless files get accumulated blocking a large space on hard disk. It is really tough to bear with hundreds of files and duplicates scattered everywhere on the disk. It may cause a slow system performance. Such slow behaviour of Mac can be the result of many other careless practices. A user can try the following fixes for sluggish Mac.
Steps to keep your Mac clean:-
  • Try to remove all unwanted or unused widgets from the dashboard.
  • Check the system memory and upgrade the system RAM to boost your performance.
  • Reset your browser settings to regularly clear caches and delete all recent browsing history.
  • Try to delete all corrupted files.
The above tricks are effective enough to resolve slow behaviour of your Mac up to a noticeable extent. But, if you feel it difficult and time taking process then you can opt for an automatic tool to cleanup your Mac. There are so many cleaning software available in market but here we are discussing one such application called Stellar SpeedUp Mac. It has the an awesome ability to remove all unwanted files like caches, universal binaries, language files, leftovers, system junks ect. and helps to uninstall unnecessary applications. You can eaisly remove all duplicate or triplicate files just in one go. This software acts as a complete performance booster for Mac. You can schedule the clean up processes on hourly, weekly and Monthly basis.
Features of SpeedUp Mac :-
  • It can easily remove all unwanted Caches, files, Logs, System junks, etc.
  • It can delete duplicate files and large files to optimize system performance .
  • 'Quick Look' button to preview image, audio, and video files
  • It has scheduler to automatically run Mac cleanup tasks at a later time
  • It cleans up boot volume as well as secondary Mac volumes
This module includes three options :-
SpeedUp now:- This features allows us to remove all unwanted Caches, System Junks, Universal Binaries,Duplicate Files, Language Files, etc. from your Mac boot volume.
Clean my Mac:- It allows us to remove all unnecessary space from significant portion of your hard disk.
Uninstaller:- Click the 'Uninstaller' button to uninstall old and unused applications, unnecessary widgets, and plugins from your system.
There are so many advantages of this sofware e.g, you can see live status of hard disk space gained after cleanup process completed.
To know more about the features of the software visit http://www.stellarspeedupmac.com

Saturday 9 June 2012

How to format Mac Lion

How to format Mac Lion disk?
The task can be accomplished in two different ways- 1. Disk Utility 2. Third party tool

How to format Lion disk with Disk utility?
Disk Utility is an inbuilt tool in Mac to manage partition related operations on Mac disk. So, first a user needs to attach the disk externally and start the system. Please note that in disk utility, it is not possible to format startup disk. Now, follow the following steps to format Mac Lion:-

Step1. Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility. This window shows a list of all the drives currently mounted in your Mac.

Step2. Select the disk to be formatted from the list on the left. Formatting a disk will erase data permanently. So, it’s suggested to backup important data before formatting the disk.

Step3. Click the "Erase" option. The next window with all the details offers options for formatting hard disk.

Step4. The drop down list shows the various file formats.  
The most secure and frequently used file format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and this is the default. This setting is the best option for running Mac OS X. 
 
     Step5. Change the name if it is needed. This name will always appear when the disk is mounted on a Mac machine. 
     
     Step6. Click the erase button. A window will open asking to verify the erase procedure. Click the erase button in this window to start the process of erasing the disk.

You can format Mac Lion by using third party tool. Stellar partition manager is one of the best Mac partitioning utility. It has interactive GUI and simple language.

Following are the steps to format Mac disk:-    


 
Step1. Run Stellar Partition Manager

Step2. The left section lists all the drives mounted at your machine. Select the disk  you want to format and click “Format” from options in the top of window.
The other tasks performed by this Mac utility are :
  1. Resize Mac partition
  2. Create a new partition
  3. Delete Mac partition
  4. Hide/ Reveal an existing volume.

Friday 8 June 2012

How can I backup Mac Lion data | Tips to backup your Mac OS X

What is Data Backup?
Backup is the process of creating copies of data which may be used to restore the original one in case of any data loss situation. This allows you to keep your data secure even if you lose your computer or in case of any disasters happen and it is always best to prepare for the worst. You can create Your backup data either in the form of 'Image' or 'Clone'.

Following are the options available to create backup for Mac user :-

Time Machine:- One of the best backup utilities for your Mac is Time Machine. It's a free and inbuilt feature of Mac. Time capsule works as a network storage device specifically for Time Machine backups. Time Machine keeps an incremental backup in which modified portion of original data is updated rather than copying entire data.

Drop Box:-
Drop Box is a popular online application, which allows you to store your data at remote server via internet. You can store data upto 2 GB absolutely free. The user can access and modify the remotely stored data from anywhere and at any time.

Backblaze:- One of the online backup utilities is backblaze which offers to backup and store all your files on remote data storage media. It runs in the background through a system preference pane, the system will backup your files and allow you a quick method for retrieving them.

Carbon Copy Cloner:- It offers fast, incremental backups that copy only modified items that differ from the last backup . You can take backup at schedule time. You can back up to a locally-attached hard drive, to a network volume, or to another Macintosh across your network or across the Internet.

Super Duper:- You can create a bootable clone of your startup drive, and create full and incremental backups. You can use its smart update capabilities to update existing clones, instead of having to create new ones. It has number of exciting features but it is not a free tool.

Stellar Drive Clone:- You can create exact replica or a mirror image of your hard drive or any selected volume by using this tool. There are three major options in this software 'Cloning & Imaging', 'Restore' and 'Tools'. This cloning software includes so many exciting and advance features.

Cloning & Imaging - With the 'Clone' option, you can create an exact copy of the entire Mac hard drive or any selected volume.
Restore - This option helps to restore the lost data.
Tools - You can create a Boot DVD to clone the Boot volume of your Mac.

These are the ways by which you can create backup and prepare yourself to face any disaster. If you don't want to lose your valuable information then choose any of the above options to backup your data.

Thursday 7 June 2012

Create Mac Backup to regain data lost due to system crash

What would you do if your office server get crashed or you lost your laptop? In such cases, getting the data back is a million dollar question for a computer user. According to an analysis report, every week about 140,000 hard drives crash and 12,000 laptops got stolen every year. When such unfortunate situations are faced by users ,they get frustrated due to data loss .

How to stay unaffected in data loss situations:-

The best way is to keep back up of your Mac data on a regular basis so that, you can restore your origional data flawlessly. Backup is the process of making copies of data from source to destination,which may be used to restore the original one after a data loss . This backup could be either a clone or an image. It is important to note that , there lies a difference between Clone and Image. Clone is bootable copy of drive whereas an image is replica of all the files stored in drive. In cloning process size of destination drive should be equal of greater than source . It's very easy and reliable method to keep your valuable data secure.

What backup methodology are available for computer users:-

Online backup:- This can be accomplished by sending your data to a offsite data centre located somewhere else where it too will be backed-up in a more secure and protected environment at sheduled timing.

Offline backup:- This is can be accomplished simply by attaching an external USB hard drive to your Mac , mounting the volume on your Desktop, and copying the data over manually or automatically.

Incremental backup :- An incremental backup preserves successive copy of the data contains only that portion which has changed since the previous backup has been created.

Cloning software for Mac backup:-

For Macintosh users, Stellar Drive Clone software is one of the most efficient and reliable data back up solutions. It is a flexible backup tool with exciting features.

Features:-
  • It can clone Mac hard disk and volume
  • Image of Mac hard drive or volume can be created
  • Getting back volume in origional state from image
  • Permit resizing of volumes on target drive while creating clone
  • Permit to create bootable DVD and Minimal system to access your non-booting Mac
The welcome window of this Mac cloning application offers three options – 'Clone &Imaging' ,'Restore' & 'Tools'.
Clone &Imaging:- Mac user can make exact copy of the entire Mac hard drive or any selected volume by this option.
Restore:- This option helps you to restore the lost data from the image file or the cloned folder.
Tools:- By using this option, users can create bootable DVD and use it boot their machine in case of system failure or OS crash.
Mac users can easily keep valuable information safe by creating backup of the data.
For more details:- http://www.drivetoolbox.com/clone-mac-drive.php