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chrislund

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New Mac Mini 4 years ago

I've had my 2.4 TB Photos library on external solid-state storage for six years now with no issues. Four years were via a laptop and so the drive was only connected when needed (to import photos into it or to back it up). The remaining two have been with it permanently tethered to a Mac mini. Of note is that I don't use iCloud Photos, though. Not sure how macOS would handle things if I did. If you had it always connected I bet it'd be seamless. If not, probably There Be Dragons. IIRC back in the days when I didn't have my Photos drive always connected, macOS would occasionally instantiate a fresh Photos library in ~/Pictures on the internal drive for Photo Stream (which I have turned on) photos.

Depending on your market, Sanden and Mitsubishi make air-source DHW heat pumps where the evaporator/heat source source is remote (i.e., outdoor) rather than integrated with the tank. I can't speak to Mitsubishi's line but IIRC Sanden has the DHW go straight to the outdoor unit, but then you may need freeze protection, which I think Sanden provides via heat trace. When my current water heater bites the dust, I plan on getting a Sanden, and looking in to the feasibility of making a glycol loop between the outdoor unit and an indoor "indirect" tank to eliminate the need for freeze protection.

They aren’t in all markets but there are heat pumps that use CO2 as the refrigerant that can make quite-high output water temps. They’re often used for domestic hot water. I haven’t looked too deeply in to them but IIRC they have COPs around 3–4. Sanden is one manufacturer, Mitsubishi and their Ecodan line is another.

Not trying to peddle hearsay, but with just some cursory Googling I can't pull up any citations. IIRC there were several complaints of data loss in the ArqBackup subreddit [0], I think mostly around botched Arq 5 imports (Arq 6 uses a new format and perhaps data was lost in conversions gone awry).

Michael Tsai has a good summary of the situation that he wrote when Arq 6 was just out, and echos my recollection of issues with data loss [1].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Arqbackup/

[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/04/13/arq-6/

FYI: I've used Arq for nearly a decade and have loved it, but the latest version, 6—which was something like a complete refactor IIRC—seems to be riddled with bugs (including, I think, data loss) and the support experience has not been good (both being deviations from normal). I'm not up-to-date on the whole saga but it's been disheartening to watch. I'm sticking with 5 for now. I just Googled around and it looks like a v7 is in beta testing and reports are that it's better than 6...

I wonder then if iOS would’ve ever happened. Probably not, unless they still somehow got Steve Jobs.

Apple at least incidentally got some of the benefit of BeOS, or really, the talent behind it: Dominic Giampaolo, who contributed significantly to BeFS, has been with Apple for some time now working on their file systems. I think he is/was a principal on APFS. I’m sure there are others!

Also, muni! From robot frog!