Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

Back in the days of the Classic MacOS, one of the most powerful keys to hold down at boot was the space bar. Introduced in System 7.5, Extensions Manager allowed users to select sets of extensions and troubleshoot conflicts in the middle of the boot process. Holding down Apple and Option at boot rebuilt the desktop. Thankfully, those days are long gone.

MacOS X doesn’t require any such maintenance, but like all operating systems, corruption does occur. Here are a few tips.

Holding down the option key at power-up brings you into the boot manager. If you have a bootable external drive connected, it will show up in the boot manager. This is helpful if you wish to select a boot device without booting the computer all the way, and switching the preferences in Startup Disk preference pane.

Similarly, Apple-Option-Shift-Delete bypasses the internal hard drive and tells the computer to use an external device. A nice time saver when you know what you want to boot from!

Holding down Apple-S on your keyboard at boot will bring you into Single User Mode. You can do plenty of harm here, but there’s one command that’s very safe: fsck -yf . This is the same as using the Repair Disk function of Disk Utility, and is an indispensable tool when your machine won’t boot. If this process is unable to repair your disk, you’ll need something stronger like DiskWarrior. And if that doesn’t help, the best software-based recovery utility in my mind is Data Rescue II. We use both extensively in our service department.

Just like the Classic MacOS, holding down Shift at boot will put your computer into Safe Mode. In the process, the same fsck (file system consistency check) will be run while at the gray apple screen. The computer will proceed to boot without third party software and nonessentials like AirPort drivers. If your machine won’t boot in Safe Mode, it’s time to consider DiskWarrior. It might even be time for professional diagnosis.

Another tip is to not hold down the power button too long. A quick press is all it takes. If you hold it down too long, the computer will look for a firmware update, and may not boot unless restarted.

If you have a hard drive connected to your AirPort Base Station with 802.11n and are running OS X 10.5 Leopard, you should be overjoyed that you can now use AirDisk with Time Machine!

All you have to do is select Software Update from the Apple Menu and install the AirPort updates. You may need to open AirPort Utility from your Utilities folder and select Check For Updates from the AirPort Utility menu to get the latest firmware as well.

Once the updates are installed, you need only open Time Machine from System Preferences and point it towards your AirDisk. This does essentially the same thing as a Time Capsule, except with Time Capsule you get an enterprise-quality hard drive and the base station in the same shiny white box.

Tags: airdisk, leopard, time machine

Apple today announced an update to the AirPort Express. The form factor and feature set are unchanged, except the device now supports 802.11n networking. Users of the older 802.11b/g technology will be astounded at the speed boost offered by this upgrade, especially when doing wireless backups to a Time Capsule and generally transferring big files across wireless networks. It’s still not as fast as gigabit ethernet, but it’s fast enough to stream high definition video from wireless network storage to another machine on your network.

When I bought a new-style AirPort Extreme with 802.11n about a year ago, I had to run an ethernet cable to my 3-year-old Express. When you introduce a slower client to an 802.11n network, the entire network slows to the speed of the slowest client. Once I hook up the new Express, I’ll finally lose the last wire tucked along the baseboard of my living room!

The new Express is available for preorder here: http://www.smalldog.com/product/71133

Tags: 802.11n, airport, apple, express, gigabit, wifi, wireless

The Remote Disk function of MacBook Air works quite well, but not all of us have the external SuperDrive, nor another computer with optical drive and 802.11n, so the function might not be terrifically fast for you. Whenever I buy a new computer, the first thing I do is create disk images of the restore disks, and keep these in my backup system for safe keeping.

Once you’ve imaged your install disks using Disk Utility, mount Disk 1 on the remote computer. Next, connect an ordinary ethernet cable from the remote computer to the MacBook Air using the USB to Ethernet adapter), and then proceed normally with the system installation per http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307242..

This method removes two bottlenecks from the process: the remote computer’s optical drive is nowhere near as fast as its hard drive, and ethernet is vastly faster than even 802.11n wireless.

I suggest MacBook Air owners go for the USB to Ethernet adapter. In addition to speeding up reinstalls, it also dramatically speeds up the Migration Assistant and large network transfers.

Tags: air, apple, macbook, matt, notebook, owen, remote disk, restore, small dog electronics