https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/report-apple-will-begin-selling-macs-with-its-own-processors-in-2021/
God help us if they're abandoning x86.
― Nhex, Saturday, 25 April 2020 16:31 (four years ago) link
did we have this discussion already? once backblaze does it's initial back-up, it's pretty harmless. I've never noticed it doing much at all.
I wouldn't bother with cleanmymac though. I'd run Onyx every now and again, and use appzapper or appcleaner to clear out old applications and their files.
― dan selzer, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:31 (four years ago) link
I use daisydisk (mostly because my old license is still good) and use it to dig into where the clutter is hiding but otherwise don’t have anything lording over my files
― mh, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:36 (four years ago) link
ppl on reddit having the same problem (some with replies saying "i'm baffled this shd not be happening") https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/9rgacc/backblaze_bztransmit_process_is_chewing_up_almost/https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/aoeb4s/ballooning_wired_memory_usage_from/
we did discuss it before (when i was wondering abt reinstalling it): ppl (= tracer and dan s i think) said it shd not be a problem bcz it's not a memory hog. so i re-installed and it stated to be a problem again. one solution i guess implied by the reddit threads is "simply have less files" which is a thing i plan to make happen. maybe that will solve it. or maybe something else is going on (this is literally all magic to me, if i installed a grasp of how it all works in my brain i wd be getting spinny disk problems in my head)
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 17:55 (four years ago) link
Having 10% of your disk space free is critical - have you checked that lately?
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:16 (four years ago) link
yes and i do
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:19 (four years ago) link
Grrrr
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:30 (four years ago) link
i plan to empty it further when i can gather the will but
― mark s, Saturday, 25 April 2020 19:37 (four years ago) link
I like Grand Perspective for a visualisation of what is taking up disk space.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Saturday, 25 April 2020 21:21 (four years ago) link
have I recommended the ol hurl into the sea recently?
― silby, Sunday, 26 April 2020 02:22 (four years ago) link
under lockdown i cannot access the sea
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 12:22 (four years ago) link
Out the window then
― calstars, Sunday, 26 April 2020 13:38 (four years ago) link
lol so i took ed's suggestion and DLed GrandPerspective:
https://i.imgur.com/VzlQdKW.png
the big red square in the bottom right is backblaze
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 14:28 (four years ago) link
ii: ilxor tips on what i can clear out of ancient garbage which cleanmymac™ fails to dig out― mark s, Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:52 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Have you ever used OnyX? It probably won't help much with visualizing your HD space to delete junk from your HD, but I think it does a good job of cleaning out the cobwebs (and, once you've run through a few of their recommended sweeps, ends up deleting 5-10gb of HD junk that you probably would never have felt comfortable deleting. I'm using a Late 2008 Macbook running El Capitan, and I feel like OnyX has helped keep everything running smoothly (probably run it whenever things start getting unstable, prob about once a year, and it usually helps).
― ヽ(´ー`)┌ (CompuPost), Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:18 (four years ago) link
will try thk u
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:30 (four years ago) link
Has backblaze finished its backup?
― dan selzer, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:45 (four years ago) link
i thought i could catch it on a brief pause in its endless backing up and tried to answer yr question but of course it started backing up again, it's p much always backing up
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 15:57 (four years ago) link
the schedule ive given it is "start at 22.oo end at 8.oo" (ie overnight when i am sleeping and/or worrying) but it does not seem to respect this schedule
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:00 (four years ago) link
How much work are you doing? It should take a week or two to back everything up. After that it’s just incremental. Are you not letting it finish the initial backup?
― dan selzer, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:04 (four years ago) link
the initial back-up took place a long long time ago (some years ago) and yes i think to 6-8 days i forget now, the "just incremental" element is constant if not quite non-stop
don't really know how to answer "how much work are you doing" -- i'm a writer and an editor so i'm working all day daily on documents in word and/or scrivener but i can't imagine this is creating enough vast new material in itself to justify the amount of incremental backup apparently required, even if a doc is like 200,000 words or whatever
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:11 (four years ago) link
i mean i am quite likely doing something wrong and dumb! but it is not evident to me what it is (beyond having way too much stuff on my laptop but that's kind of a different issue, the vast bulk of it is entirely unchanging)
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:13 (four years ago) link
if backup software is constantly chugging memory all the time, isn't that... wrong?
― Nhex, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:51 (four years ago) link
this is my feeling yes
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 16:57 (four years ago) link
Mark, the chugging may have its own bad causes but it does suggest that you've got a spinning HD rather than an SSD. If you wanted to switch to the latter for a big leap in performance I can recommend a friend who is a whizz at Macs and works locally - he could do the job for you as he did for me and gave my MacBook a huge new lease of life a few years ago. I do keep AV stuff on an extetnal HD though as those files take up too much room for an affordable SSD. He's Pablo at http://applecoreservices.com
― Alba, Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:02 (four years ago) link
yeah. I have a 9-year-old computer on BB and I've never noticed it actually doing its thing. Every now and again I check the logs and it is actually backing up overnight. I think I have mine set to 2am-6am but it generally only spends about 15 minutes backing up.I would say reinstall and start the whole backup from scratch. If that's possible. Something must be corrupted somewhere - not what you want in a backup!Upgrading to an SSD would be a great move regardless!
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:04 (four years ago) link
All this agita about online backups has me thinking maybe it would be easier to just plug in a drive
― calstars, Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:05 (four years ago) link
doesn't help with robbery, a flood, etc (though mark does live in the top floor so flooding probably not high on the risk register)biggest win potentially here is mark dispensing with reliance on the jackass of hackney road
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:06 (four years ago) link
yes
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:10 (four years ago) link
I’m dealing with gigabytes if data. Huge audio files, image files etc. I have a 2017 iMac with a 4 drive enclosure, all backed up via backblaze and I notice no problems at all. I also have a cheap huge WD drive on my desktop for time machine. If you’re not working off an SSD that’s your first problem. Then if you system drive doesn’t have TONS of free space that’s the second. Get stuff off that drive. External hard drives are cheap. Thumb drives are cheap. If those two things don’t fix your problems something’s buggy and you should be nagging backblaze support.
― dan selzer, Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:14 (four years ago) link
ok
― mark s, Sunday, 26 April 2020 17:49 (four years ago) link
Just as a point of reference, my equivalent block of Backblaze was only 631MB, NB I have very fast internet upstream so my initially backup only took a few hours and I almost never see Backblaze at work.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Monday, 27 April 2020 02:38 (four years ago) link
I put a ssd in an imac a few years ago and it was great until the last update didn’t play well with the upgrade. It’s glitchy and I have to research how to fix it.
― Cow_Art, Monday, 27 April 2020 03:08 (four years ago) link
It's so messed up that the only Macs that aren't thermally limited are either (1) $7k+ (2) built-in everything, including the screen.
― lukas, Thursday, 30 April 2020 23:11 (four years ago) link
Thermally limited ?
― calstars, Friday, 1 May 2020 03:49 (four years ago) link
processor throttling afaict
most aren’t that limited and, I would argue, opting in to limiting for battery life should be an option
― mh, Friday, 1 May 2020 03:59 (four years ago) link
Yeah it throttles down CPU speed when it gets too hot. Conventional wisdom has it that this is an issue for Macbook Pros and Mac Minis but maybe the Mini at least has gotten better? Better enough to run Witcher 3 with an eGPU in Bootcamp though? eh? eh?
― lukas, Friday, 1 May 2020 04:06 (four years ago) link
update on my backblaze issues: since i switched to "backup now" as my option to decide ive had 0 problems with the return of the spinny disc -- will follow up on SSD as advised at some future point (like when i can get a bus to this guy's workplace and not a 4-hr round walk lol)
i also found some more space just via deleting attachments in mail which had built up since i last had a clear-out and will maybe try OnyX at some point also to really get into the dusty nooks and crannies
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 11:32 (four years ago) link
If you mean my friend Pablo he says he does pickups.
― Alba, Friday, 1 May 2020 12:42 (four years ago) link
oh does he? i didn't see that on his site -- i need to send off the query anyway (since cost is also an issue given i have 0 work currently)
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 12:51 (four years ago) link
get me work alba
I guess he doesn't promise it on his site as he doesn't want to be racing across London to trace an iPhone battery but this i world be a bigger job and his mum still lives in Hackney so I guess he's there quite a lot! Yeah I think the cost of an SSD is worth it but not inconsiderable if you're out of work :/
― Alba, Friday, 1 May 2020 12:55 (four years ago) link
Replace not trace, he's not a spy
― Alba, Friday, 1 May 2020 12:56 (four years ago) link
the spy is you doxxing his mum :D
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 12:57 (four years ago) link
anyway thx yes, i will pursue this
SSD prices have dropped a lot just in the past year. you can get 1TB for about a hundred quid.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 1 May 2020 13:07 (four years ago) link
Oh that's good. Yeah I think it was about twice that when I got mine.
― Alba, Friday, 1 May 2020 13:08 (four years ago) link
They’re also easy to install depending on your computer. Hi to OWC and buy the drive and they’ll send you the tools and a link to a video.
― dan selzer, Friday, 1 May 2020 13:32 (four years ago) link
Ah yeah - by all means give that a go. I wasn't brave enough to do it myself.
― Alba, Friday, 1 May 2020 13:44 (four years ago) link
while tidying up i happened to look a little bit more carefully at the packaging for my replacement laptop battery and i'm pleased to say the warning on the side says "Risk of fire or bum if mishandled"
― mark s, Friday, 1 May 2020 14:00 (four years ago) link
i: do backblaze fans know any ways to dial down its space hogging ii: ilxor tips on what i can clear out of ancient garbage which cleanmymac™ fails to dig out― mark s, Saturday, April 25, 2020 2:52 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink
― mark s, Saturday, April 25, 2020 2:52 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink
mark i've logged several tasks to BB about the space hogging (which I can see from my periodic GrandPerspective scans. they repeatedly send a pre-prepared blurb that doesn't quite answer the problem - so why have i got a 15gb BB block just sitting there when I'm all backed up? In the end I bought a 1TB SSD and it's all good now because I'm not close to the edge storage wise. BB is good, but it's not always that good.
― lefal junglist platton (wtev), Monday, 4 May 2020 22:19 (four years ago) link