Wednesday 27 February 2013

Encrypt and Protect your Private Files

If you have some confidential data in your Mac and you don't want to reveal it with anyone, what should you do?

It is often hard to guarantee that no one can access it. Leaving your Mac logged in the office or at home may allow other people to gain access to your important data. In these cases, users need to keep their data into encrypted form whether you are working on Mac , Windows or Linux. No one can read your encrypted data before decryption because encryption changes your data into unreadable form.
Keep your Mac data safe

You can create an encrypted disk image by inbuilt tool of Mac, go to Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities), click File menu and choose New, Blank Disk Image. Choose a name for your disk image and where you want to save it from the dialogue box. Now, when you click on Create button, you will be prompted to enter your password. You can choose password with the help of Password Assistant. This tool ( Password Assistant) will help you to choose a password that is both easy to remember and hard to crack. Press Ok and your data gets encrypted now.

Although, the best place to keep your data safe is Library folder, put your files in this folder. The main benefits of this , it isn't searched by Spotlight. Mac users can encrypt their data by Encryption tool of Stellar. It is very effective and it has many features. You can choose any file or folder from your Mac and encrypt them to an unreadable format by using this tool. 

Features of Mac Data Encryptor

  • It encrypts files and your data with password.
  • You can hide encrypted data.
  • You can locate all hidden encrypted files in the system
  • It has option to verify, whether the listed hidden files or folders really exist in the system or not.
  • It encrypts your Mac data so that no decryption utility can decrypt it.

Stellar Mac Data Encryptor comes with Drive ToolBox tool which is a complete pack of 12 Mac maintenance utilities. For more details: - http://www.drivetoolbox.com/data-encryptor.php

Golden rule to prevent data loss in Mac


One of the biggest reasons of loss of is corruption of hard drive directory. There can be various reasons responsible for the corruption of hard drive directory and some of the common ones are power outage, improper system shut down, bad sectors on hard drive, virus infection, etc Mac people thinks that, they are working on the most advance OS of this world so, they don’t need to keep backup. But, it is not a good idea, every Mac users should keep backup of all their data to prevent any data loss situation.

Backup simply means, you are keeping at least one copy of the original data. If the data is important, store your backups at an off-site location. It helps to keep your backup safe from damage, in case of a fire or disaster. However, it is said by experts that precaution is better than cure, so if you take some precautions, then you can avoid such unexpected data losses to some extent.


These are some effective strategies to avoid data loss from Mac:-

1. Keep regular backup of your data- You should keep regular backup of your data. You can do it with Time Machine utilities. But, if you want to make bootable backup then you need to create clone of your Mac data. Stellar Drive Clone software is the best solution to create cloned backup.

2. Strong Power Backup Plan- If you are using Mac desktop, then having UPS is the best option so that, you could avoid improper machine shutdown.

3.Proper ejection of external data storage- It is always recommended to eject external drives properly from your Mac to avoid abrupt machine shut down.

4. Maintain your Mac on regular basis:- The maintenance activity includes regular backup, updating anti-virus software, checking and repairing Mac hard disk and disk permissions to keep Mac healthy.

If you follow above recommended steps then you must keep your Mac data safe. Stellar Drive Clone has many features, it can keep your data in the form of image or clone as per your need. You can check it on various review sites, where users has given good reviews for it.

Sunday 24 February 2013

Tips to defrag Mountain Lion


OS X Mountain Lion is the latest update of Apple OS and it is very popular among Mac users. Although Mountain Lion has more polished and several new features as compared to Lion but, if you want to keep your Mac in healthy state then you need to follow some maintenance work on regular basis. Many Mac people ask questions through different forums that they are facing slow Mac. There are many reasons of this problem:-



1. Lots of unnecessary system junks stored in your Mac, which consumes useful memory spaces.

2. Fragmented data in your Mac disk.



Mac cleaning is a significant task which should be performed to improve Mac efficiency by every Mac user to clean all unnecessary system junks from Mac. Now, come to the fragmentation point in Mac disk- If the files are stored in a contiguous way, your Mac will perform faster. But, over a period of time, large files are broken down into small data chunks, at the time of storage and gets stored in noncontinuous memory locations. It leads to slow data processing and low response time during your work.

Mountain Lion OS X

There are many problems which occur due to fragmentation. This includes severe system errors, application conflicts, program failures, etc. However, Mac OS X can prevent fragmentation of files up to 20 MB file size . But, you need to defrag your Mac to stop large files from being fragmented. You can defrag your Mac with Stellar Drive Defrag , it is recommended by experts. This can easily arrange all scattered fragments of data in a Mac volume in contiguous memory locations and optimize free space for the use of new data.



New features of Stellar Drive Defrag tool:-



1. You can see fragments of file in layout view with coloured block.

2. You can see the path of file by mouse over on memory blocks.

3. You can set automatic Email notification after the completion of defragmentation process.

4. It has temperature scale to show you temperature of your Mac hard drive during the defrag process.

5. You can set any tone to play and make you alert after the completion of defragmentation.



There are many features added by Stellar developers in this new version of Mac defragmentation tool to make it easy and understandable for people. By using this tool you can keep your Mac running as like as newly purchased state.


Alternative of Mackeeper to fix slow Mac performance


One of my friends was facing sluggish behaviour of Mac from last one month. We started search through internet “how to get rid of slow Mac” through many forums and we were suggested by some Mac users to clean system junks and unnecessary stuffs from Mac to gain more free spaces.

Some of them suggested a cleaning tool -Mackeeper , it's price was $99 . We downloaded and found that it is a complete pack of 16 utilities like Data control, cleaning tool, optimization, Security. Out of 16 utilities, we need only cleaning tool.


However, it cleaned all junk files on the hard drive in order to free up space. Smart Uninstaller removes widgets, applications, preference panes and plugins. It removed the preferences, web caches and log files. But, the problem is use of other utilities associated with Mackeeper pack, we don't need that. So, going through a complete pack, it is a good idea to purchase single cleanup tool.

After two-three days, I saw good reviews of Stellar speed up Mac at other forums and it's price was just $39. Therefore, came to an idea that it is better to go for just a single utility instead of complete pack of any software. Stellar speedup Mac is only $39 and it's features are very advance.


From my point of view Stellar speed up Mac is the best alternative Mac clean up tool and it can remove all unwanted data and applications from your Mac and make your Mac faster. The new version v2.5 of this tool has many more features.

Stellar Speed Up Mac

1. You can schedule cleaning task.
2. Easily clean up unwanted Applications, Widgets and Plug-ins in just few clicks.
3.You regain the space being consumed by useless files and applications.
4. This tool is very easy to use and user-friendly.
5. Mac users can clean either single volume or whole Mac.

The above mentioned facts can easily be verified with lots of positive reviews at verious Mac forums and users groups.

Friday 22 February 2013

Alternative of iDefrag to remove fragmented data


Many Mac user's complains through various forums that ,with the passage of time ,Mac system starts slowing down and it affects their work.. We suppose every file is saved in continuous memory block on the Mac disk but, in case of low disk space , large files divided into several chunks and there are not much contiguous spaces available to save these files . Many files on the disk splitted into several pieces and scattered over Mac disk. When we open those files , processor takes long time to pick up each fragments and open it. 
There are no any inbuilt defragmentation tool available in Mac like Stellar Drive Defrag ,iDefrag etc.. Stellar Drive Defrag is a famous defragmentation tool of Stellar. It helps you to defrag your Mac and optimize free spaces. It is very effective to improve the life of the hard drive, and makes it faster. 
Options inside this tool:- 1. Full Defrag:- You can defrag whole Mac including files, metadata, and unused space by using this option.
2. Quick Defragmentation:- You can defrag all fragmented files within short span of time.
3. Optimizes Free Space:- This tool puts all scattered free spaces in Mac hard drive.
4. Bootable DVD:- The feature allows you to create a bootable Mac DVD before starting defrag on boot volume.
5. Email Notifications:- You can set automatic email notification after the completion of defrag process.

Features of Stellar Drive Defrag:-
1.It allows to defrag various metadata files, such as the attribute files, allocation files, catalog files etc.
2.This tool helps to optimize scattered free spaces and increase efficiency of data storage in Mac .
3.You can see the fragmented files both in graphical and layout view and temperature thermometer is also attached to this tool. You can see the temperature of Mac hard drive.
4.It fully supports Mountain Lion. 

System Requirements:
Processor : Mac PowerPC (G4 & above), Mac – Intel
Operating System: Mac Operating System 10.4 or above
Memory : 512 MB
Hard Disk : 25 MB of Free Space
 

There are many competitors of this tool like iDefrag but, there are some limitaions with it. iDefrag can work with HFS and HFS+ Mac volumes. As far as I am concerned Defrag tool of Stellar is the best defrag tool for Mac users because it's features and customer services are very good. If you want to gain more knowledge for this tool visit this video:- 

Monday 18 February 2013

How to resolve permission issues in Mac OS X

I am facing problems in saving files in My Mac system from last few weeks. It always prompts an error message saying simply that the file can not be saved. I tried a variety of things to fix it – rebooting, saving the file in different folders but, it didn't work. One of my friends suggested me to repair file permissions. It really worked and fixed the problem. Now, I can save files easily.

What are file permissions, and why are they important?

Every file on Mac file system has specific file access permissions. File permissions are a set of rules that specify which users are allowed to read, write, and execute the contents of a file or folder.
It can be set for a file’s owner, owner group, and for all users on the computer. Mac OS X also uses a set of extended file permission attributes, which gives additional access privileges to users.

If a program does not have the correct permission to access to a file, the program does not work properly and may cause issues. The unpredictable behaviour in one program can cause unexpected behavior in other applications.

How does verify/ repair disk permissions work?

Every installed application has a specific type of log file, which keeps track of access permission for each file of the program. Verify/ Repair Disk Permissions check values listed in log files and change file permissions for files to read and write.
Disk Utility

How do I verify/ repair disk permissions?

  1. Open Disk Utility, It is stored in the Utilities folder (within your Mac’s Applications folder). You can open it by searching for Disk Utility in Spotlight.
  2. In the source list (left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your Mac’s startup disk.
  3. Click the Verify Disk Permissions button. Verify Disk Permissions will take a few minutes.
  4. Once Verify Disk Permissions has finished running, click the Repair Disk Permissions button. It repairs all disk permissions.
You can solve all disk related problems through Drive ToolBox. Volume Repair utility of this tool helps to verify, repair, Rebuild Mac disk permissions. Verify button checks Mac volume for all potential problems whereas Repair button repairs incorrect permissions on Mac OS X and through Rebuild option you can safely perform the 'Verify' and 'Rebuild' operation simultaneously.

Does verify/ repair permissions check the permissions of each and every file on my Mac?

No. Verify/ repair permissions only verifies permissions on files that were placed on your Mac with .pkg installer which has log file to keep track of permissions.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Mac defragmentation helps to speed up performance


Although according to Apple, Mac users don't need to defrag their Mac OS X because of it's advance file system i.e HFS+ . This file system has the ability to minimize chances of fragmentation of up to 20 MB file size. But, if you are working with heavy files and applications like photoshope then you must need to defrag your Mac because with the passage of time Mac files scattered over Mac disk in small pieces. As a result of this process, when you install new applications or start working with existing, OS takes too much time to execute operation.

There are many Mac tools which can resolve this problem but Stellar Drive Defrag is one of the best software which is recommended by experts. This tool has several advance features which helps to defrag your Mac and increase it's performance. If all files will be together in contiguous memory then it becomes easy for OS to fetch these files from memory within short span of time and show it.

Since defrgmentation process takes lots of time so it would be good work if you will do this process at night. With the help of defrag tool you can easily see the status of each file with number of data chunks in layout view. You can see the temperature of drive during defragmentation. 
Defrag Mac
Mac guys can easily defrag either whole Mac or any single volume. Defraging the Mac hard drive will speed up file access because the files will be contiguous location and the hard drive read/write head/s does not need much time to retrieve the files. 

Conflicting opinions about Mac defragmentation:-
1. If you defrag your Mac frequently, you will shorten its lifespan because of the work it needs to do during a defrag process.
2. Files can be damaged during defragmentation.
3. You get few performance gains if you defragment your hard drive, it does not free up memory space , just keep data in a arranged way

Conclusion:- 
Do not defrag Mac too often. Defragmentation process helps to increase Mac performance.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

How to speed Up Mountain Lion


Apple’s latest and greatest Mac OS is OS X Mountain Lion. It is considered to be better, faster than Mac Lion. But, Mac users are facing some problems related to performance with this Mac OS. There are many tips , which helps you to improve Mac performance. Speed Up utility of Stellar helps to increase your Mac performance.

For more details please check below added video:-


OS X Mountain Lion is Apple’s latest and greatest Mac OS - See more at: http://www.chriswrites.com/2012/07/12-ways-to-speed-up-mountain-lion/#sthash.rM0bnnad.dpuf

Monday 11 February 2013

Why Disk Utility Does Not Have ‘Drive Defrag’ Option


The ‘Disk Utility’ of your Mac OS X contains various options for maintaining and managing your hard drive, but it does not consists of any option to defrag the drive, have you ever thought why? Many of you may answer that Mac based hard drives do not get fragmented and this is the reason why ‘Disk Utility’ does not have any such option. Well, this is not true completely, as the basic data storage mechanism of hard drives make them fragmented within a period of time.

According to this mechanism, your hard drive stores data from top to bottom and if any data is deleted, then the data below it cannot be shifted to the deleted data’s space automatically. This naturally creates fragmentation in between the files as you keep on saving and deleting data on your hard drive. Therefore, this again says that hard drives get fragmented overtime, then why the useful utility of Mac does not have any option for defragmentation. Well, this is because the file system of Mac has some inbuilt safeguards that prevent it from getting fragmented easily:

  1. The HFS+ file system of your OS X is designed in a way that it does not save a new file in a recently freed space. This prevents hard drive from getting fragmented at file level as they are not stored just to adjust them to small space left on the drive. Moreover, it searched for large contagious area on its hard drive and saves the complete file there.
  2. OS X automatically collects all the small files scattered over the hard drive and saves them on a larger area on the drive. Moreover, while moving these files to a larger area, it defragments them (if it finds any fragments).
  3. Moreover, the OS X checks for highly fragmented file, when you access it and if it finds large fragments (more than 8) in it, then it automatically defrags it.
  4. The ‘Hot File Adaptive Clustering’ feature of Mac OS X keeps an eye on all recently used files that do not change frequently, and moves these files to fast accessed ‘hot zone’ on your hard drive. While moving these files to hot zone, Mac OS X also defrags them.

Therefore, these are the reasons due to which you do not require a special option as disk defragmenter for Mac. However, if your Mac is having less than 10% free space or you have big amount of large files like video files stored on it, then you may require a professional defrag tool as in such situations these safeguards fail to do the needful.

How a badly fragmented Mac drive can affect performance

Before proceedings to Defragmentation topic, it is necessary to understand how data is stored in your Mac disk. Operating system attempts to store data(file) in contiguous memory location in the form of 0 and 1(digital form) during every read/write process. It is easy to keep data in contigious memory space when the disk is half filled or empty. But, after sometime files gets divided into small chunks and these chunks get scattered over Mac disk.

With the passage of time ,your Mac drive becomes badly fragmented, in such situations, OS will not find enough contiguous space available to store data, therefore the file will be broken up into several chunks and stored in multiple locations. This phenomenon affects performance of your Mac because OS will take more time to fetch pieces of data. You can see a heavily fragmented data here-


Fragmented files
To solve this problem you need to Defrag Mac drive. Stellar Drive Defrag has many advance features to resolve the issues of slow Mac due to fragmentation. This tool is very popular among Mac users.

1.You can do Full Defrag of your whole Mac or any particular volume.

2.You can even see the graphical view of fragmented data of Mac volume so that you could decide on which volume you need to run defrag activity. You can see each file with number of fragments data very clearly by using this tool.

3. Since, processor gets much involved in this process so, temperature of hard disk increases and you can work with any other installed applications but, don't bother there won't be any problem in your system. You can monitor temperature of your Mac disk with the help of temperature bar in this tool. If temperature increases too much, Mac system gets automatically shutdown or whatever process assigned in preferences.

4. You can set email notification so that after finishing defrag process you will get an email.

Temperature Bar

Mac system gets little slow because defragmentation is a lengthy process but, after finishing this process you will have a fast Mac and you can do your work smoothly without wasting your important time.

Saturday 9 February 2013

Issues with Mac Mountain Lion


OS X Mountain Lion is the latest release of Apple. This new OS has many advance features but there are some problems also. Many Mac users shared these problems through different forums. Following are the some major problems shared by Mac guys:-

Mac Mountain Lion
1. Migration Assistant failure:- If you run the Migration Assistant to migrate to Mountain Lion, you may find that the Assistant app crashes. 
Resolution of this problem:-
On the destination Mac:
  1. From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
  2. From the View menu, choose iCloud.
  3. Turn off Back to My Mac.
After your migration has successfully completed, you can turn Back To My Mac on again in iCloud preferences.  

2.Login issue:- After upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion, your Mac may be to the login window after logged in. It occurs because of incompatible Login Item. During installation, Mac OS X has the ability to move known-incompatible applications to a folder named "Incompatible Software" at the root level of the Mac hard drive. If you check this folder on your Mac, you can see what applications are in it, then check with the application's developer for available updates. 

3.No Wi-Fi after waking from sleep:- Many users wrote their reviews on various forums that Mac does not automatically re-connect to the local Wi-Fi network after waking from sleep mode.
Solution:-
Go to Network System Preferences and click the Advanced button;
  1. From the Wi-Fi tab, delete all the known networks
  2. Return to the main Network display and delete Wi-Fi from the Services list.
  3. Finally, add a new Wi-Fi service (by clicking the + icon at the bottom of the list section).
4. Mail issues:- New version of Mail in Mountain Lion has trouble to assign the correct address for email replies. If you have multiple email accounts, when you select to reply to an email, Mail should use the account that received the message as your “from” address but, it doesn't happen in Mountain Lion.

Have you downloaded OS X Mountain Lion yet? If yes then you must shoot your experience with us.

Thursday 7 February 2013

Increase Mac performance with Mac OS X inbuilt utilities


OS upgrade, backups, installing new applications, format disk, Partition Mac drive , keeping backup etc. are the common activity which is performed by every computer user. Over a period of time, you get slow Mac performance and many disk related issues start occuring. Apple provides many inbuilt application, with Mac OS X, for maintenance. All of these items/ uilities can be found inside Applications/Utilities folder on Macintosh hard drive. Some of them are :Disk Uttility, Network utility, Airport utility, FileVault etc.

Mac OS X

Disk Utility- It is used to format hard drives, create RAID arrays, mount volumes, burn disk images (.dmg files), and fix basic disk problems. The Repair Disk function is used to fix simple volume or filesystem errors. Disk Utility also monitors the basic S.M.A.R.T. status of any internal Mac hard drives. It helps to keep backup in the form of image.

Network Utility- This Utility helps to check Ethernet, Airport or Bluetooth Port Info, Ping, Lookup, and Traceroute internet addresses, and scan for open ports and vulnerabilities.

Airport Utility- It is used to control Apple Airport equipment: Airport Express, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule. Airport Utility will allow you to add new items on your LAN or reconfigure existing equipment, check and apply firmware updates, and find out why the light keeps blinking yellow on the front of your Airport Extreme.

Keychain Access- Sometimes you may forget important loging password of any application , email accounts, server logins, WiFi passwords, dont bother most of these items can be found in the system keychain. Keychain Access is the utility used to view, change or delete these stored items.

Console:- It keeps track of normal and abnormal operations of your Mac as startup, network activity, installations, errors and crash details. When sudden problem occurs, you can check it from console to find out it's reasons.

FileVault- It was introduced with Mac OS X panther. It encrypts your Mac data to prevent unauthorised authentication but it does not encrypt startup volume . When FileVault is enabled, Mac system invites the user to create a master password. If you forget this master password, you will lose all your data, password or data can't be recovered by any tool.

Monday 4 February 2013

Repair Mac disk permission with Disk Utility


Mac systems are very reliable computer among Mac users but, some common problems, such as applications not loading or exhibiting strange behaviour etc. are faced by Mac users over a period of time.
When it comes to diagnose and resolve these problems, most Mac users rely on Disk Utility. Disk Utility can resolve many problems—such as damaged hard drive directory structures and permissions problems with Mac OS X’s system files.

So, what are Mac disk permissions and how do you fix them?

“With the passage of time, various installations, un-installations, upgrades can wreak havoc on the permissions of certain files.”

Disk Utility
To repair permissions follow these steps:-
  • Open Disk Utility, located at /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
  • Select your startup disk on the left of the Disk Utility window
  • Select First Aid from the tabs
  • Click the "Repair Disk Permissions" button
When you “repair disk permissions, it means, you are giving instruction to your Mac ,fix any files whose permissions are changed now. You can do this by clicking on First Aid tab inside Disk Utility window. If it shows any problems just click on “Repair Disk Permissions”, it will fix problems easily. Disk Utility verifies your Mac startup disk (volume) without starting up from another volume. This feature is called "Live Verification."

How often Mac users should repair their Mac?

If you are not experiencing any permission-related problems, there is no reason to run Repair Permissions. ”

Important things to remember
1.Live Verification only works on Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)-formatted volumes. If you try to verify a non-journaled disk, Disk Utility will display this message: "ERROR”.
2. Once you start a Live Verification, you can not cancel it.

Permissions as a routine maintenance procedure or as like a precaution before system updates. Repair Permissions will only fix permissions of Apple installed software. It will not affect permissions on user data.