Extract Directly from Time Machine
Normally you use Time Machine to restore lost data in a file like this: within the Time Machine interface, you go back to the time the file was not yet messed up, and you restore it to replace the file you have now.
You can also elect to keep both, but the restored file takes the name and place of the current one. So, if you have made changes since the backup took place that you would like to keep, they are lost, or you have to mess around a bit to merge changes, rename files, and trash the unwanted one.
As an alternative, you can browse the Time Machine backup volume directly in the Finder like any normal disk, navigate through the chronological backup hierarchy, and find the file which contains the lost content.
Once you've found it, you can open it and the current version of the file side-by-side, and copy information from Time Machine's version of the file into the current one, without losing any content you put in it since the backup was made.
Submitted by
Eolake Stobblehouse
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Alert! Most Likely to Succeed, If...
Of the new programs I saw, MAXA's Alert shows the most promise if it lives up to all of their promises. Apparently the main developer did a lot of the work on Norton Utilities for Macintosh, and although his contract forbids him from working in the same areas as Norton Utilities, he decided to create a program that could work in much the same way, actually fixing problems rather than just reporting them. Since disk problems were out, he created Alert, which will scan your disk for conflicts and problems and fix them for you. OK, I was skeptical too at this point, so I pushed for some details.
Alert essentially goes through your disk and looks for things that it knows are wrong. So, if you have a program that requires a minimum memory partition of 1024K and for some reason you (or someone) has set it to 666K, you're probably going have problems (potentially of more than one sort). Alert will discover that problem, and can fix it by increasing the memory partition, without you doing anything. It can also do things like determine that certain programs aren't 32-bit clean and that you are running in 32-bit mode even though you don't have more than 8 MB of RAM and you aren't using lots of virtual memory. As a fix, Alert turns off 32-bit addressing, and using a database which MAXA promises will be the most extensive in the industry (more comprehensive than the one that comes with Help! from Teknosys), Alert will provide you with the phone numbers for the vendors of the offending programs so you can find out how to upgrade. The database will be either free or cheap for two years after purchase, unlike Help's quarterly subscription deal.
To make Alert more useful to consultants, MAXA designed it to work not only over an AppleTalk network, but also over a modem. So if you're an independent consultant and a client calls with a problem, you can run Alert over a modem connection to determine and automatically fix the problem on their machine.
My basic impression of Alert is that if it works and has a great deal of depth (and those are big IFs) it will become an important tool for all of us who are in some way responsible for keeping less-knowledgeable users' Macs running (Hi Mom!). Unfortunately, it's the sort of program that will require extensive testing on many Macs before I'll be able to make that judgement, and since it's not shipping yet, it will be a while before I can start the testing process. If it turns out that Alert never tells you anything you didn't already know, or if it isn't complete in its reports about what it has done while you weren't looking, it will quickly wither away.
MAXA -- 800/788-6292 (US and Canada)
Information from:
MAXA propaganda
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