iCloud In Mac – Some facts need your attention

iCloud was developed by apple inc. and was released on 6 June 2011. It offers cloud storage and cloud computing services. It allows users to store data on remote servers. It also possesses additional features like data sync center for emails, contacts, calendars etc. iCloud allows users the option to restore data from on line backup without connecting to a computer. However like any cloud application, iCloud users will face potential threat when we talk about data security and privacy.

In one aspect it allows users to accommodate and sync huge amount of data on cloud. Also exposing data to numerous threats like virus attack, hacking etc. which can result in loss or corruption of vital data and manipulation in sensitive information. Various issues on keeping data on clouds are:

• less transparency about the process of backing up of data. User have no idea on what happens to their data, whether it is encrypted or protected ?

• iCloud account is administered by single user ID. Which naturally makes data vulnerable to various threats. By importing single ID and respective password one can access every possible data present.

• One of the convenient feature of iCloud is sync of single data across Apple devices. Which can also result in molding of data from single device.

• Users privacy is always at the risk as authorities can view their data in certain situations.

According to apple inc. all data including picture, audio/video files are stored encrypted on disk except emails. We know that emails are vital mode of communication in todays corporate world.

Email carries vital information about organization which should be accessed by authorized person. Using cloud application it is clear that users data is always insecure from outside world.

Another threat is corruption of data, as data is surmounted on a platform which possess varieties of infectious program.

How and why should I Repartition Mac Boot Drive

Partitioning means dividing hard drive into logical separations in order to keep different category wise data. Partitioning is necessary in hard drive no matter what operating system you have. Here I will explain you Repartitioning Mac Boot drive. Repartitioning means partitioning your existing partitions again. Boot drive is that drive which has Mac operating system in it. By default all the applications of installed third party tools are also stored in Boot drive.

 

Need of Repartitioning:

Sometimes during initializing your new Mac drive, often you do not have the exact idea about how many partitions you actually require. And many times partitions we have are not enough to keep our changing diversity in data as time passes.

These situations usually leads to repartitioning of your existing partitions to create more number of volumes in your disk.

When you want multi boot system or we can say you need to install windows on your Mac it also require repartitioning of Mac drive. So implementation of windows on Mac world is posssible by repartitioning of drive(By creating partition on Boot camp you can install windows or any drivers).

Disk Utility is an inbuilt utility of Mac which is used to partition and repartition your existing Mac Drive. I will explain step by step process of partitioning in my next blog on Disk utility.

Risk in Repartitioning Boot Drive:

Suppose during partitioning of drive if your system is turned off due to some reason, this may cause a severe loss of data or you can lose your precious files and volumes.

Repartitioning of boot drive often cause severe data losses if precautions are not taken.

Precautions should be taken before Repartitioning Boot Drive:

However, as we know repartitioning involves disk initialization operation, so it is always suggested and if one who really cares his data must take complete backup of the original partition before performing or going through any partitioning or repartitioning operations.

There are plenty if software available in market for partitioning Mac drive. I personally recommend to get Stellar partition manager as I found many features in it and high performance.

How to Repartition our Boot Drive using third party software:

Being the prime storage location of your Mac machine, it is the hard disk that stores all important data in it. If we give attention to the internals of the hard drive, you will notice that there are various electro-mechanical components in it, including the Read/Write Head, platter etc.

Apart from this, hard drive is responsible for the conversion and storage of your data (documents, videos, photos, and other files) in digital format. On the magnetic platter of your Mac drive, there are tracks and sectors to store data systematically(in order). However, 'Bits'-­- it is the tiniest magnetized region of sector, which stores the actual data in digital form. 
 
The users new to Mac do not find Disk Utility easy to use. All such users can use Stellar Partition Manager, for enjoying friendlier and interactive graphical user interface(GUI). This Mac partitioning utility provides you options for partition creation, deletion, formatting, and resize your drive/volume. Along with these this reliable software is capable to hide/reveal Mac partitions to protect against unauthorized data access.

Backup Utility for Apple's Mac: Time Machine

Time Machine refers to a Backup Utility introduced after release of Mac leopard or Mac OS X 10.5 . Time Machine is an inbuilt application provided with your Mac for Backups and Restore purposes. It works with device called “Time capsule” - a backup device that works wireless with Time Machine in OS X. 

What is Time Machine and how it works?

It keeps a copy of files at the destination drive (external hard drive, another internal drive, another partition at same disk etc.) that was designated by you in your hard disk.So, Time Machine protects you in case of any disaster or data loss situation.

It creates a folder on our selected volume.This folder name is saved as current date and time of process (by default). 

 

Things that Time Machine can do for your Precious Data: 

 

Keep incremental backups:

Incremental backup process updates only those files which have undergone changes since last backup.

Now, one question should strike to your mind is- is it possible to get my file back in previous form?

Answer is 'Yes' . All you need to do is just click that day from backup ladder. As it keeps copy of all your files for each of your backup sessions. Time Machine stores just one copy of a file but make it appear to be in several places in your machine at once. This is possible with help of Hard links. Due to this, your disk doesn’t fill up with multiple/duplicate copies of files that haven’t changed. Thus duplicate of files not occur and memory also not effected.

But, still we have not reached to how we get our previous data back. In Time machine you can set your preferences of keeping backups for hourly/daily/monthly/yearly basis according to your requirement. So, if you choose to keep hourly backups you can get back your previous hour data only.In case of daily backups you can get back upto previous day data only. While selecting monthly backups you can get back files that are older than a month and so on.

Easy to Restore Files:

Steps to retrieve a file from your backups:

• Click on the Time Machine icon in the Dock.
• Click on up and down arrows or use the time line on the right hand side to scroll through your backups list to look for specific items or folders.
• Older dates are appear in pink, indicating the data saved on your backup drive, while the most updated data on your Mac is indicated or visible in white.
• Click on the Restore button and your file comes back to the present.
  

Restores your Entire Disk (including OS X itself):

Although this one is somewhat time-consuming, but Time Machine can also return your entire hard drive (including OS X itself) to its state at some point in the past.

Runs Automatically/Manually both:
If you don't want to operate Time Machine’s hourly/daily schedule, you can turn it off and can run backups on manually basis at any time.
So, this post comprise all vital information related to backup utility of Mac. Beyond Time Machine advantages its have some limitations also. Soon, I will discuss upon why this utility is not enough for backup and let you know how to overcome this issue.

Defrag Mac to boost Mac performance

There are many reasons of slow Mac out of which 50% we can avoid by taking proper steps. One of the most prominent reasons is fragmentation which can't be dealt easily unless we use any defragmentation software for it.

What and How data is fragmented?

The first thing we need to understand is how data gets fragmented. When our hard disk is empty, the data can be placed anywhere on the hard drive because file system is free to write the data anywhere on the disk. Whaen data is stored on disk it is broken into pieces and each piece is allocated a specific memory location in drive. If the memory location is not contiguous the pieces are called fragmented.

Reasons of Fragmentation:

• Fragmentation of data means “breaking the sequence of related data” it is occured after a few processes like edit of large size file,deletions, more read/write operations.
  Due to this unwanted spaces or gaps are created between the related data. This process lead to division/scattered of your data on hard drive into chunks.

• If your hard drive is almost full then there are more chances that the related files get separated into multiple fragments or pieces while they are being written to hard drive.

Defragmentation:Solution to organize scattered data into sequential order:-

The Data of your hard drive becomes scattered and unorganized after a long usage due to which Mac runs slowly. Whenever you click to open any file, used to find the files which usually takes 1-2 minutes to open, now takes 5> min.

It is because of more time taken by processor to search and fetch a particular file(supportive files) in scattered data on drive.

So, defragmentation is the process of keeping related data into sequential order in order to avoid spaces between related data. It is an optimization technique inbuild in many operating system to avoid fragmentation upto some extent. If you are running Mac,you need not to worry about defragmenting your drive, because this operating systems has the ability to defrag the data upto certain limits.For example in Mac , HFS+ file system has the ability to minimize the chance of fragmentation but only up to 20 MB file size.

In simple words, you can say- “ Defragmentation means to keep fragmented data together in contiguous memory location.” It minimizes the data accessing time by the OS and helps your computer to run more swiftly.

Ill Effects of fragmentation:-

• It can corrupt the file system and partition tables.
• It decrease system performance by slowing down processing speed.

Defragmentation using Third Party Tool:

Windows users can defrag their drive using the inbuilt application in system tools but there is no such tool in Mac to defrag the drive.The HFS+ file system of Mac OS can't defrag your large files like audio,video/media files (larger than 20 MB). So, if you have those files you must go for third party tool.

There are many tools for defragmentation of Mac hard drive. I found Stellar Drive Defrag the most suitable one to defrag and maintain your Mac performance.

This software scans your Mac drives for this scattered and unorganized data and puts things back into sequential order.

To know more about this defragmentation software visit:http://www.stellardefragdrive.com/