2009 3
My Cloud is in my Pocket
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I don´t know if many people do this. But personally I can´t live without my “cloud” in my pocket. I have different Macs. At home I have a big iMac. At work I have another one. I also have a MacBookPro that I carry around sometimes but I find it very heavy and with a horrible tendency to overheat. But even though I use 3 different Macs I have a system by which they are constantly cloned. Whenever I use a Mac I use an external bootable 500GB HP hardrive. I use the same HD whatever Mac I use. Whenever I start with a new Mac I boot off my HD by pressing Power and ALT at the same time. So in the end I always have the same info whatever Mac I use. So what I take around is a HD in my pocket, not a laptop, my pocket cloud. I have not found a way to do this with Linux, nor with Windows.
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perell on November 3, 2009 ·
Resumiendo:
arrancar el ordenata (compu) desde el iphone como hd externo (sin que deje de funcionar el iphone por supuesto…)….
llegas y conectas el iphone via usb al ordenata i punto!
Mismo SO/mismas aplicaciones/desktop en todos laos…
Easy!
Mira que es facil ser visionario…
perell on November 3, 2009 ·
Trad. from previous message (sorry I’ve missed it and I though I was posting on the spanish blog):
Sinthesis:
You want to use the iphone as an external usb boot disk (but the iphone should remain completely usable as smartphone during the operation, of course!)
At home/office you will plug the iphone via usb on to your computer and boot from it and that would be all!
Same SO/same apps/desktop everywhere….
Esay pie!
As an example: http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iphonedrive/
giabar on November 3, 2009 ·
You try dropbox and jolicloud
mctokyo on November 3, 2009 ·
Nice solution but to save carrying around a hard drive, you could try sugarsync. This loads any/all files on one computer to a cloud server and then you can sync as many computers as you like to this one. This means you have all your computers synced and in addition a cloud back up of everything – and even better the other computers don’t need to be online to sync – they just sync to the cloud next time they are online. I use it to solve the same problem you have of 3 computers all needing to be in sync and it works very well (I use dot mac to sync all the PIM stuff like ical and preferences etc). All changes immediately saved to the cloud. Works well with Snow Leopard too. http://www.sugarsync.com.
Martin Varsavsky on November 3, 2009 ·
I use Dropbox will try Sugarsync. But those sites while great do not solve the underlying issue. When I carry a 500GB drive in my pocket I have an exact replica of the computer, with new software, videos, pictures, anything. It is not just the files. Even the software updates. It is a very different concept.
Martin Varsavsky on November 3, 2009 ·
Jolicloud is also a more comprehensive solution. Closer to what I need. But Linux distros lack great photo, video and music programs. Dropbox is perfect if all you want is to sync files, not apps for example.
mctokyo on November 3, 2009 ·
That’s very true about the software updates and applications. Dropbox is too limited for me as you seem to need to place files into the dropbox whereas sugarsync syncs any files – although annoyingly it has issues with iphoto and itunes. Your point about this, apps and updates makes me want someone to develop something beyond sugarsync that not only syncs everything but also manages updates. Might seem a lot just to avoid walking around with increasingly tiny hard drives but it would be nice not to have to think about carrying anything – I currently like that with sugarsync for files, and the fact that you can access all the files from an iphone/touch.
Martin Varsavsky on November 3, 2009 ·
the best solution could be to carry a phone but with the memory of a large iPod and boot off the phone or use the phone
or a netbook that offers both choices
antoin O Lachtnain on November 3, 2009 ·
The basic reason you can’t do it on linux or windows is the diversity of hardware it runs on. Apple has quite a uniform hardware platform. This clearly has advantages, but it also has disadvantages (principally price – PC’s are available at cheap price points compared to Macs mainly because the competition for PC hardware is so strong, whilst Macs are a monopoly.)
I would say that for this approach, it might be a good idea to spend the extra money to get a solid-state drive (like http://www.memorydepot.com/details.asp?id=FTM56GLEX1). The reason is simply that if you are carrying around a hard drive a lot, it should be less likely to develop a fault than a mechanical drive. That’s the theory anyway, though I’m not flush enough to have one myself.
Martin Varsavsky on November 4, 2009 ·
But you can´t even do this with Windows among computers that are the same models…
Diego A on November 4, 2009 ·
and how often do you backup your mobile 500Gb ?
Martin Varsavsky on November 5, 2009 ·
once every 10 days
James on November 4, 2009 ·
Martin, I carry around a bootable Xubuntu pendrive on a USB stick which I created with pendrivelinux.com. On my PC I just interrupt the boot up sequence to choose to boot from the USB drive. Does the trick for me.
MArk on November 5, 2009 ·
I think this should be possible on Linux too, although I have not tried since I do not need such a configuration. You need to create a installation on a usb-stick or drive with a persistent home, this is possible with many distros. Sidux is well known for it. This installation then contains a bootable iso, which adapts to the local hardware on boot. All changes to that installation are stored to a sepate directory. I do not know if this also means program installations. I believe this is possible, but if not, you would have to create a custom iso before.
About great Music, Video and Photo programms, I believe Linux has some great offerings with KDE: Amarok, Digikam, KDENLIVE and Kaffeine. But I have to admit I can not compare, since I do not run a mac and I did not like it, when I tried. But if you are happy with your Mac, then there is no need for a change. Just wanted to point to the fact, that in general it should be possible on Linux too.
Nestor on November 17, 2009 ·
Can anyone tell if these ‘clouds’ are to store virtual desktops? And where can I find them? I found something related to hostings… but it doesn’t feel like anything mentioned here.
The usb-pen seemed like an attractive solution for having different workplaces. Here are my thoughts.
Weak point: Boot and installations are very, very slow. AND the pen drive has a life cycle which is consumed fast!!! I burned my 75eur in less than 1 year. It was so tragic.. I never thought about it =)
Lucas Baamonde on November 19, 2009 ·
Do you test on a dedicated server and connecting remotely? While one should take some security measures, it’s really interesting, I work on this, and i use this, and I think that is another option to the desktop of the future;) Saludos!
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xabi on November 3, 2009 ·
Did you try https://www.getdropbox.com/ or http://www.zumodrive.com/
xabi