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How To Backup Mac Device With Time Machine

by on 3 February 2015in blog No comment

 

We all know we should back up but how many of us actually do, should we bother.  Short answer is if you value your digital life then YES and often.

 
Why!!
The device your currently looking at and reading this on is purely that, an electronic device, a device that can fail at any given moment for no apparent reason. It could get lost, damage, stolen, broken the list goes. DATA can be lost in a instant for a number of reason. This of course may not happen to you, but it could. You need to protect yourself.

Any DATA that is important to you and is in a digital form should be in at east two places at any given time, that does not mean “I have a copy of it on my desktop and another in my documents folder” thats still in the same machine on the same drive that can fail, both will be gone.

How:
The Mac for may years has made this task easy, you plug in an external hard drive and switch on Time Machine, then the mac does the rest. At the simplest level that is it.

1. Get any external hard drive.
2. Make sure its in the right format, Time Machine requires “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) if the drive is new out of box, Time Machine will prompt you then reformat it for Mac if it was a PC formatted drive. If it does not you can erase the external drive with Disk Utility from your Utilities folder.
3. Go into the “Time Machine” preferences from the System Preferences or from the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.
4. Switch on Time Machine and select the backup drive from the list. You can encrypt the backup is you wish.
5. Sit back and Time Machine backup everything.
6. If your on a laptop make sure the charger is plugged in and the machine is not going to sleep.

The first backup can take a long time depending on how much stuff you have, after that when ever the drive is plugged in whatever files change on your Mac they will be backed up every hour. Don’t have time to wait for the hour, You can also force a “backup now” from the time machine menu bar.

Time machine will let you restore individual file or in the event of a drive failure it can restore the machine back to how it was before.

When:
Backup as often as you can, if you don’t like having the drive plugged in all the time on lets say a laptop, then plug it in after you have done some important work and feel a copy of that should be made. Then select the backup now feature from the menu bar.

If you forget to run a backup, Time Machine will remind you after so many days you have not performed a backup and will keep telling you until you do.

You can also have more than one backup hard drive running on Time Machine and if you really want to be safe, setup another drive and maybe update this every week and store the drive away from the computer, ideally in a different room or location (even consider off site)

Hard drive are cheap, DATA for some people is not replaceable at any cost.

Your next step….. go and backup.

Ray Allen
Apple Certified Technician
Alary Technologies

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Alary Tech Holiday Header

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday

by on 23 December 2014in blog No comment

Our first year in business has been successful & exciting with all your support and encouragement. Thank You! We wish you & your loved ones an enjoyable holiday season & a very happy New Year from your friends at Alary Technologies.

 

Holiday Office Hours
We will be closed from December 25th – January 4th. During this period we will be responding to inquiries via email and available by appointment only.

 

Xmas 2014

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Yosemite Upgrade

by on 29 October 2014in Uncategorized

Introducing  the new Apple Yosemite update

The Yosemite upgrade is finally with us! here’s a list of which machines you can use it on:
  • iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)
Make sure you have enough RAM for Yosemite, we recommend 4GB minimum and ideally 8GB. Before installing any new system always backup your machine, the simplest way is Time Machine it’s built into your Mac OS.
Remember we can assist you with all your backup needs, we can setup your first Time Machine backup, and it will continue to backup automatically every time you plug it in.
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Spilled Water On Your MacBook Pro? Here’s What To Do

by on 4 July 2014in Uncategorized
Liquid spills on Macbook Pro are one of the most common accidental damages that occurs to a Mac.

Unfortunately your Mac is not water proof and liquid will damage it when/if got inside. The damage is regularly is caused in two ways:

• Through corrosion of the conducting parts by the liquid, the corrosion intensity and time to effect will depend on the liquid chemical properties.
• Liquids are generally very conductive and will short out circuits when live.
If you have a computer with liquid just spilt; DO NOT attempt to power it ON to see if it still works; leave it OFF! if it’s ON turn it OFF immediately. Having the computer ON with liquid inside it will cause the components to short out and possibly burn, in addition the fan with push the liquid all over the insides of your computer.
Bring your Mac to us as soon as possible, we will take the machine apart, professionally clean every component and let it dry completely. We will then assemble it back together, and run a full test on all components.

We may need to replace some parts however, the objective is to reduce the damage as much as possible. We can’t guarantee what the outcome will be but we will do our best to save your computer and data.

MLB

Liquid Spill on Macbook Pro

by on 4 July 2014in blog No comment

Liquid spills on Macbook Pro are one of the most common accidental damages that occurs to a Mac.

Unfortunately your Mac is not water proof and liquid will damage it when/if got inside. The damage is regularly is caused in two ways:

• Through corrosion of the conducting parts by the liquid, the corrosion intensity and time to effect will depend on the liquid chemical properties.
• Liquids are generally very conductive and will short out circuits when live.

 

If you have a computer with liquid just spilt; DO NOT attempt to power it ON to see if it still works; leave it OFF! if it’s ON turn it OFF immediately. Having the computer ON with liquid inside it will cause the components to short out and possibly burn, in addition the fan with push the liquid all over the insides of your computer.

 

Bring your Mac to us as soon as possible, we will take the machine apart, professionally clean every component and let it dry completely. We will then assemble it back together, and run a full test on all components.

 

We may need to replace some parts however, the objective is to reduce the damage as much as possible. We can’t guarantee what the outcome will be but we will do our best to save your computer and data.
[caption id="attachment_465" align="alignnone" width="300"]Logic board with coffee stains Logic board with coffee stains[/caption]

 

[caption id="attachment_464" align="alignleft" width="300"]Cleaned MacbookPro logic board Cleaned MacbookPro logic board[/caption]

 

 

[caption id="attachment_466" align="alignnone" width="237"]MacbookPro internal components let to dry MacbookPro internal components let to dry[/caption]

 

 

ALARY Technologies joins Apple Affiliation program

by on 15 May 2014in blog No comment

We are very excited to announce that we are now part of the Apple Consultants Network business affiliation program, this will allow us to continue to support our clients through the recommendation of Apple products and the Apple business teams, however in a more structured way.

Our clients will be able to purchase their Apple products through a link on our page, they can choose to ship directly to them, or ship to our office for pre-installation and configuration. Please click on the link bellow:

7 Tips to manage your online passwords

by on 27 November 2013in blog No comment

About two days a go I received an email from Evernote (a cloud based note taking tool) informing me that there was a security breach at Adobe that may have exposed private information, including Adobe passwords, email addresses and password hints of millions of users and is now for sale in the black market! The Evernote team did a cross reference and I was on the breached list.

The good thing is that I don’t use the same password for Adobe and Evernote. That’s a relief!

Evernote showed leading edge pro-activeness and technology leadership.  Shouldn’t I have received something from Adobe by now? What happened to personal information security [PIPEDA]…ADOBE!

A common question from my clients is about the insane number of passwords they need to memorize to live in this digital age. Many IT security experts will tell you to make your password complex, 14 characters, use a different one, rotate it several times a year AND never write it down! Seriously?

After working with corporate and individual clients for over a decade the sacrifice of such a demanding regiment is security strategies that just fall apart, because they are unrealistic for the busy.

Here are 7 easy techniques that anyone can follow and feel safe (this is not suitable for computer accounts passwords):

1- Use alpha-numeric and special characters where possible: Don’t make it too simple. Add numbers and special characters [$ or !]. Did you know that if the word is found in the dictionary, it can be cracked in 8 seconds.

2- Do NOT tie a password to an email: The worst thing you can do is use a particular password when using a certain email, this is a bad practice because if one site gets breached it will have your email and the password that goes with it.

3- Categorize your passwords: Don’t use the same password for your online banking and your supermarket rewards. Break them up into 3-5 categories according to the value of information, for example; A – Highly secured bank account and other financial related accounts like pay pal, B- Emails, C- social media, D- Generic low impact etc.

4- Write them down: IT security experts will disagree with this! Write it down and keep it somewhere safe in your house (not in an open office where several people come by your desk). Your home is pretty safe and even if a burglar breaks into your home, the odds of him being a cyber criminal as well are extremely low.

5- Be creative: Try not to use your name or someone you love’s name and birthdate, try to look for other significant things that you can remember, and if you run out of options just look around you, find something visual you can remember, modify it to be more secured, (1966 Ford truck becomes 66F0rdTruck) and use it!

6- Use a password vault: There are several utilities out there that will save your passwords in an encrypted form, some are local like the Apple Keychain and some are cloud based and offer syncing options across your devices (the new Keychain in Mavericks and iOS 7). I am not a fan of the cloud ones as you are back to putting all your eggs in one basket and trusting somebody else with it!
I would stick with the local one and even with that; don’t put the most critical passwords there.

7- Password recovery is important:   Whenever possible review the password recovery options and strengthen them with relevant and secure information, this practice will also educate you on how secure that site is with your password. Some will ask you several personal questions and some will just send you a reset link to your email.

 

 

Ahmed Kufaishi 

Apple Certified Technical Coordinator

   

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