Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Daniel's Advice

Reviving the Lost Art of Archiving

Manuel Mejia Jr - 2002.02.04

With the advent of the newest iMacs equipped with CD-RW devices ("CD Burners"), the large complaint Apple faced has been put to rest. Since the release of the first Bondi iMac, many Mac users have been commenting on the lack of a built-in floppy drive. Many users had to either get a third party external floppy drive and plug it in or resort to some ethernet network solution that tied the iMac to a Mac with a floppy drive.

Without a floppy or other removable drive or some type of network solution, early iMac users had to depend on either the internal drive or some external Internet-based file server to hold and move their files and applications. Most users just stored their data on the iMac's hard drive.

While hard drives are convenient for quick file access, they are not the optimal device to store files for the long term. Computer users will accumulate letters, memorandums, photographs, drawings, music files, and other files as time goes by. This information has to be archived.

As immortal as the Mac seems to be, components do age and die. If one of those components happens to be your hard drive, that data will not be easy or inexpensive to retrieve - it may not even be retrievable.

In the early days of the Mac, users of computers such as the Plus did not have the now ubiquitous hard drive. Many Plus users used floppy drives to store their information. Those who had some extra money to spend did buy small 20 MB hard drives [they seemed big at the time! dk]. However, the user would often have to transfer files to floppy in order to make room for the applications that they used.

The result of this early disk usage was the development of the habit of archiving floppy disks. This was a good habit. If the hard drive broke down, the odds of losing all your data were nil. You can always go to the backup floppies and load the information onto a replacement hard drive.

When the iMac was marketed, data backup became a chore that many Mac users decided not to do. For many, backups were also impractical because certain files, such as pictures, were simply to large to fit onto a floppy.

Storage for such large files required file compression or use of a larger storage device, like a Zip drive (whose disks seem to be subject to breakdown, according to some users) or CD burners (which cost a great deal of money at the time). As a result, people are no longer archiving data, and they risk losing everything to a hard drive failure, reformat of the hard drive, or malicious deleting to the Trash.

[Don't laugh. One of my sons got in a snit and trashed VirtualPC and the disk image from the family iMac, losing a week's worth of home schooling for himself and two of this brothers. Fortunately we still had the disk image from a week earlier on another Mac, but now we're backing up daily. dk]

Now that CD burner technology has matured and is becoming more common on computers, it is likely to become the storage device that will replace the venerable floppy disk. Large files can be stored with no compression.

Now that data removal and storage has been made easy again, it's a good to revive the lost art of archiving data.

Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

WiFi Hardware Compatible with Desktop Macs Running OS X, MetaPhyzx, 03.11. USB, ethernet, PCI, and other wireless hardware compatible with Mac OS X.
WiFi CardBus Adapters Compatible with PowerBooks, MetaPhyzx, 03.11. CardBus hardware and drivers compatible with PowerBooks running Mac OS X.
WiFi PC Cards Compatible with PowerBooks Running OS X, MetaPhyzx, 03.11. PCMCIA/PC Card hardware and drivers compatible with PowerBooks running Mac OS X.
WiFi PC Cards for PowerBooks Running Mac OS 9, MetaPhyzx, 03.10. PCMCIA cards and drivers reported to be compatible with PowerBook running the Classic Mac OS.
More in the Mac Daniel index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Mac mini Core Solo, Feb. 2006 - The only Mac to use a Core Solo CPU, this model ran at 1.5 GHz, has integrated graphics, and includes a Combo drive
Group of the Day: SuperMacs is for those using Umax SuperMac clones.
November 24 in LEM history: 98: Microsoft's heavy hand - 00: Looking at the iMac - 04: The best Mac for the holidays - Picking the right replacement for a dead mouse - Better battery for 15" AlBook
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best G4 iMac Deals, 11.24. Used 15" 700 MHz CD-RW, $150; 800 MHz Combo, $229; 1 GHz, $289; 17" 1.25 GHz, $200; 20" 1.25 GHz, $509.
Best MacBook Air Deals, 11.24. Used from $899; refurb from $1,099; new 1.6 GHz/120 HD, $1,150 after rebate; 1.8/64 SSD, $1,150 a/r; 1.86/128 SSD, $1,350 a/r; 2.13/128 SSD, $1,694 a/r.
Best PowerBook G3 Deals, 11.24. Used 233 MHz WallStreet, $75; 266 MHz, $160; 400 MHz Lombard, $199; 400 MHz Pismo, $289; 500 MHz, $350.
Best 12" PowerBook G4 Deals, 11.23. Used 867 MHz SuperDrive, $348; 1 GHz Combo, $379; SD, $519; 1.33 GHz, $529; 1.5 GHz Combo, $549; SuperDrive, $609.
Best Mac Pro Deals, 11.23. Used 2.66 GHz 4-core, $1,300; 3.0 4-core. $1,919; refurb 2.66 4-core Nehalem, $2,149; 2.93, $2,549; 2.93 8-core, $4,999; new 2.26 8-core, $2,290.
Best Time Capsule and AirPort Deals, 11.23. Used 802.11g AirPort Extreme, $49; 500 GB Time Capsule, $150; new, $190; 1 TB dual-band, $280; 2 TB, $469; 802.11n AirPort Extreme, $170.
Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.