Saturday 30 March 2013

Should I backup my Mac before switching to Mountain Lion

Mac is the most secured operating system against virus attack and data safety purpose but, sometimes you face unusual behaviour of your Mac and it leads to data loss. Many people believe that no need to keep backup, if you are using Mac . But, when you start searching over internet through various Mac forums, you came to know some worst situation suffered by many Mac people, who shared their experience like sometimes their Mac drive got crashed during upgradation of OS or any other applications.


Data is never safe on your Mac machine until you keep regular backup. Every Mac user must keep backup to avoid data loss. Time Machine is a great backup utility but, you cannot create bootable backup with it. To have a bootable backup you need to create clone of your Mac.

You have noticed that sometimes, your hard drive produces clicking noises while booting it. These are the indication of it’s bad health and it may crash or fail any time. In this case , cloning is the best precaution to protect Mac data. You must keep clone of your Mac in following situations:-

1. At the time of upgradation of old Mac OS to new Mac OS
2. When you transfer data through Migration Assistant
3. When you switch one Mac Machine to another
4. At the time of increasing RAM or upgrading hard drive.

There are many options for creating clone of your Mac data . Super duper, Stellar Drive clone etc.  These software helps to keep backup of your Mac and avoid data loss. Stellar Drive Clone is easy, fast, reliable and can create image of your Mac in few clicks.

Transfer data through Migration assistant between Macs

Migration Assistant is a Mac utility which is used to transfer data from one Mac to another. Its primary purpose is to duplicate the contents and configuration of an old computer on a new one. It helps to transfer user accounts, user files, applications, printer and fax descriptions, network settings , whole Mac backup from one Mac machine to another and this process is very easy.

Steps to transfer data from one Mac to another via Migration Assistant:-

1. You need Firewire or a standard Ethernet cable to connect your Mac and another way is connect both Mac in same wi-fi network.  The Macs don’t need to be running the same version of OS X , but they do need to have the latest updates and patches installed. So,you need to run Software Updates before doing  anything else.

 
2. Open Migration assistant -  It is pre-installed on all Mac. You can find it at  /Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app. On the new Mac, load Migration Assistant and you'll be prompted to close all running programs, select 'From a Mac or PC' and load Migration Assistant on the computer you'd like to transfer data from. 

3. On the old Mac, select 'To another Mac' and wait for them to detect each other.

4. After sometime, Migration Assistant will helpfully provide a list with the contents of the old Mac's hard drive, You also have the option of picking and choosing folders to transfer. It gives you the option for importing files along with the user account.  You can transfer data with user account, if you need.

These are the simple steps which help you to transfer data from one Mac to another to keep it safe or backup purpose however, there are many backup third party tool available in market. Clone utility of Stellar Drive ToolBox helps to create backup of your Mac. For more details check here -  http://www.drivetoolbox.com/clone-mac-drive.php

Friday 29 March 2013

Reasons of slow Mac after updating Mountain Lion


I am a Mac user since last 5 years, I upgraded my Mac OS X to Mountain Lion, a couple of weeks ago and I found sudden fall in my Mac performance. It started running slow. I thought it was a hard drive problem but, when I tested hard drive status via Disk Utility, everything was OK. After some R&D and online search, I found following reasons.

1. Not enough memory - Every Mac OS needs sufficient RAM to operate, Mountain Lion needs at least 8 GB RAM. Once you’ve installed lots of new apps, disk space gets quickly be eaten up and your Mac starts run out of disk space. Mac won’t need to use hard disk space as “virtual memory”, if you have sufficient RAM. it’s advisable to install as much memory as possible . 

2. Non optimal preference - Every application on the Mac has a setting that controls how it behaves, either in System Preferences or it’s own preferences. Mail should be configured to check for new messages at a sensible frequency – there’s no point to checking your POP email every 5 minutes because it will consume valuable resources. 

3. Old CPU:-  If you upgrade Mountain Lion on your old Mac Machine, it will affect  your Mac performance. Check the compatibility of hardware with new OS. 

4. Incompatible apps- Incompatible apps may cause for unusual behavior of your Mac. Check your applications, run them and check to see if any unusual behaviour occurs. If things don’t look quite right, open up Activity Monitor from the Applications -> Utilities folder and track down the errant app or process to see what it’s CPU usage. 

5. Too many upgrades- Too many upgrades of applications stores unused files and it consumes memory to make your Mac slow. 

6. Login items- If you have too many login items set to open automatically, your Mountain Lion can easily become quite unresponsive. To change your login items go to System Preferences then Accounts and click the Login Items tab and delete unused login items. 

7. System junks- If your Mac has too much duplicate files, caches, language files etc. stored then it may be one of the main cause of slow Mac performance. Remove all these by using any third party tool like Stellar Speed Up Mac. It is an amazing tool to increase your Mac performance.

These are the simple steps which helps you to avoid slow Mac performance after updating of Mountain Lion.

Friday 22 March 2013

Disk Utility does not have Defrag option

Disk Utility can solve disk related problem in Mac. It is an inbuilt utility and it has many options for maintaining and managing your hard drive. But, have you ever noticed that disk utility does not have options to defrag Mac. There are many Mac people who believe that Mac doesn't need defragmentation. But, you have noticed that over a period of time, your Mac gets slow because of fragmented Mac data.

Experts believe that new Mac file system has the ability to minimize chances of fragmentation up to 20 MB file size. HFS+ file system has been designed to avoid fragmentation at file level. It does not save a new file in a recently freed space but rather, it searches for a large free space to save data in disk. 

OS X checks for highly fragmented file, more than 8 fragments, it automatically defrags it. ‘Hot File Adaptive Clustering’ is a great feature of Mac, it keeps an eye on all recently used files which needs frequently in various process, OS X moves these files to most frequently accessed ‘hot zone’ on your hard drive which is called Hot File Adaptive Clustering. These are the reasons why Disk Utility does not have defrag option.

If your Mac has less than 10% free space and you wish to save video files or any large files then there might be a chance of fragmentation. To avoid this problem you should keep a third party tool to defrag Mac because it causes slow Mac. Stellar Drive Defrag is one of the favourite tool among Mac users. It can safely remove all fragmented data from your Mac and keep it fast.


Wednesday 20 March 2013

Steps to create Disk Image with password protection


      Data safety is the main issue in this fast technology era. Everybody wants to keep their data safe from unauthorized access. Disk Utility is the Mac inbuilt utility which helps you to keep your files password protected. You can easily hide your sensitive files, like your tax returns, confidential data etc. Following are the steps to keep your confidential data protected:- 

     1. Click to Disk Utility from Applications > Utilities
    2. Go to the menu and select File > New > New Blank Disk Image 
        3.  Select a name for your encrypted disk image
    4. In Volume size, choose the largest capacity so that you can keep encrypted folder easily. 
       5.  In Encryption method, choose at least "128-bit encryption." If you're running 10.5 or later, you can choose "256-bit encryption" for industrial strength protection. 
      6.  In partitions select "GUID Partition Map" if you are Intel-based Mac users and  for PowerPC-based Mac users (G4, G5) select "Apple Partition Map."
    7. In image format, choose "sparse bundle disk image" , Sparse bundle disk images were introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard because they make it easier to back up encrypted files with Time Machine.
    8. Click to create. 


        9 . Enter a memorable password.  Uncheck the box to "  Remember password in my keychain.
   10. Now drag and drop the files you want password protected into the new disk image. To access your files again, double-click the disk image and enter your password.

If you want to keep your Mac data safe then you can follow above step to create password protected Image of file however, same work can be done via Stellar Drive ToolBox. It has encryption utility which can encrypt your data to such level that no other utility can decrypt it.

Friday 15 March 2013

How to get rid of slow Mac


You have noticed, there are many people in Mac forums who asks questions related to slow Mac and the process of improving Mac performance. Here we are explaining through video to get rid of slow Mac performance.  Over a period of time there are lots of system junks stored in Mac and it causes slow Mac, but Stellar Speed Up Mac is one of the best tool to increase your Mac performance.
Check this video:-