I wrote Backup Reminder because I couldn’t find another utility that would do what I wanted: remind me when my hard disk is due for backing up. You may find Backup Reminder useful too, if you meet these requirements:
a) You are running System 7.0 or later.
b) You DON’T have a fancy, automatic, runs-in-the-background, you-never-have-to-think-about-it hard disk backup system.
c) You backup your hard disk fairly regularly (you really should, you know).
d) You start up your Mac daily (more or less), rather than leaving it on all the time.
At preset intervals of between 2 to 14 days, Backup Reminder will display a dialog box when you start up your Mac. This dialog will tell you it’s time for a backup, will let you select when the next reminder will be displayed, and gives you the option of launching your backup application immediately. Another useful feature of Backup Reminder is that it counts “startup days”, rather than calendar days. Startup days can best be defined with a couple of examples: If you start up your Mac once in five days, that counts as one startup day; if you start up five times in one day, that also counts as one startup day. Basically, startups are being counted rather than days, but multiple startups on the same day are only counted once.
HOW TO USE IT:
Backup Reminder is a simple little application program (not an Init or Control Panel) that goes in your Startup Items folder. The first time Backup Reminder runs--either because you restarted your Mac with it in the Startup Items folder or because you launched it by double clicking--it puts up this dialog box:
“Remind me again next startup” is the button you should leave selected if you aren’t going to get around to backing up today. Click “Remind me again in xx days” if you ARE planning on doing the backup in this computing session, and set the popup menu for an appropriate number of days. Once this is done, Backup Reminder won’t reappear until the selected number of “startup days” have passed.
If you check the “Launch backup application now” box, your backup application will be launched as soon as you click Backup Reminder’s “Okay” button. Before you can do this, however, you must tell Backup Reminder where your backup application is. You do this by clicking the “Select/locate backup application” button, and using the file dialog that appears. With this file dialog, you can select either your backup application itself, or a “settings” document created with your backup application. (A settings document, which may also be called “setup” or “options” file, is a document that a backup application uses to keep a list of the folders and files you want backed up.) If you select a settings file, this file will be automatically loaded by the backup application after Backup Reminder launches the application.
The “Launch backup application now” check box will be disabled unless you have selected a backup application, and also have the “Remind me again in xx days” radio button selected. You should only have to tell Backup Reminder the location of your backup application once; it will save this information in its “Prefs” file.
Click the little question mark icon for version information, my address, etc.
Occasionally, you may want to launch Backup Reminder directly, rather than waiting for its next “scheduled appearance” during a startup. You may want to do this to change the “xx days” setting, for example. If Backup Reminder isn’t due to display its reminder at the next startup (i.e., its next launching), it will simply quit immediately after being launched, without displaying the dialog box. You can get around this, and force the dialog to be displayed by holding down the Option key when you double click Backup Reminder. You can get the same effect by launching Backup Reminder when it isn’t in the Startup Items folder.
