The Differences in the Mac OS X File system

Robbie Ferguson: So tonight Tyler, you are going to be looking at Data Backups on the Mac System. And in particular, I am curious as to how things differ on Mac between, you know, the Mac System. I am a Linux user myself, we’ve looked at Windows XP. How does the File System essentially being a UNIX-based Operating System, how does that differ in the Mac OS 10.5 Operating System? Tyler Steingard: Well, it’s—from my experience with Ubuntu, I don’t actually find it terribly different. The only difference I do find, at least with the way that the finder works. I am not sure what the equivalent is in Ubuntu, is it where you’d manage your files? Robbie Ferguson: Like Nautilus. Tyler Steingard: Okay, yeah. Robbie Ferguson: Like the quote and quote my computer kind of window, is that Nautilus. Tyler Steingard: Right exactly. Robbie Ferguson: Okay, yeah Nautilus, if we’re on Ubuntu. Tyler Steingard: Right. So in Windows, in the Mac OS X Leopard, you have the finder and it basically is quite similar to the layout of the iTunes and that you have the ability to obviously view in different ways. You can do it all your folders. You can view it on list, with details, you can view it in a nested sort of formats. So that when you’re drilling down on applications and folders, you get this sort of side view and it scrolls through. Alternately, you can also do another list view that actually shows you a preview of your document or your video or whatever and if you hit the spacebar and it does a quick zoom in called Quick View and then you can actually scroll through if you have a document or whatever. So, that is just a quick overview of the finder and how it works. Also you’ll notice on the side, there, is some very easy-to-use, sort of drop downs here with other options. So for instance, these are the mounted devices I have on my system. Robbie Ferguson: Yup. Tyler Steingard: So, similarly to any UNIX file system, you have mounted volumes— Robbie Ferguson: Just kind of pausing there just to sort of express what’s the difference between like—this is kind of goes back to what I was talking about last week with Linux, how our File System uses mount points as opposed to Letter Association like the Windows has the C drive or the D drive, things like that. So, Mac OS has stocked with that mount point style File system. Tyler Steingard: Exactly. Robbie Ferguson: Where would we find—where will we find like for example our Home folder, where are documents and all of our files are stored? Just so that we know where we would need to backup from? Tyler Steingard: Right exactly. From your primary volume, you have—I believe Apple just kind of hides some pointless files for your so that you don’t have to go model through on your Raw drive but there is a users folder and inside of that, you simply have your users and your shared folders right in there. So for instance, I am logged in into a user right now that I used for video production, primarily so it’s a little scale back for my normal day to day but in there, you can drop down and there is some—there are your primary folders. For instance, your Desktop, your documents, downloads, movies, music, so all your items probably will— Robbie Ferguson: These are essentially the folders entitled that we would want to backup when we setup our backup or does Mac OS work differently as far as how we select our backups? Tyler Steingard: Well, out of the box, there is a system called Time Machine and it primarily rate like you just literally plug in another drive and you say go basically in it and as long as it’s big enough, it will do a complete backup of your system right down to Preference files. So, that’s one out of the box solution that I really prefer. So, I’ll just do quick backup of my entire system and then day to day, it goes through and it does snapshots of anything that I’ve changed since the initial, you know, chunk backup.