Comments on: LifeBoat Review

By: Teejay

Teejay — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:36:21 +0000

Tried this under 10.5.7 and it was very erratic – it appears to be working but the back up on the USB stick isn’t there when its opened. It locked up when trying to open a saved Lifeboat, didn’t show in the ‘Force Quit’ window, requiring a restart, after which my saved Lifeboat had disappeared . Emailed the developer a couple of times but no response – appears to be abandonware. Avoid.

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:26:44 +0000

Actually you can mount .dmg files under Linux and I assume Windows as well. For Linux do the following

mount -o loop OS.dmg /mnt/apple_tv/

Linux can read and write to hfs and hfsplus but there is no journaling support so if the filesystem is journaled than you can only read on Linux.

This is a good idea though. I do something similar with udev on Solaris and Linux. I’m still new to Mac but I’m sure it could get compiled on Mac with some need scripts for doing backups.

By: dan

dan — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:15:46 +0000

Could the need for DMG be because it is trying to preserve meta-data as well?

By: Donald Perreault

Donald Perreault — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:36:29 +0000

I purchased LifeBoat about 6 months ago. I had to purchase Lifeboat to demo the app. because the developer has set a very small file limitation to the number of files you can backup with the demo. This limitation is so low that you really can not test the application properly. And of course after purchasing Lifeboat the numerous backup problems began. Honestly, I had nothing but problems with every backup I created. I contacted and worked with developer via email for a couple weeks trying to resolve the numerous problems but he eventually got frustrated and refunded my money.Bottom line: Every LifeBoat backup needed a Life Preserver and was not dependable. I was sorely disappointed with this application ;(

By: tycho

tycho — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:17:32 +0000

I use a Folder Action to do exactly this. Whenever I plug in my Cruzer USB drive, predesignated folders are zipped and copied onto the drive. The previous backups are deleted and the new one renamed.

Automator + Folder Actions = you get what you expect, and it’s FREE!

By: Macspertise

Macspertise — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:15:02 +0000

Isn’t Lifeboat a wee bit out-of-date now Leopard is ready to jump (with Timemachine!)? At least for those updating their system, that is…