While I was working on a ReceiptWallet issue, I needed an older data file, one that was in XML format and created from an older ReceiptWallet version. I have recent backups of all my data, but don’t generally keep an archive of the data as the amount of storage space to keep regular archives is enormous and I’ve only thought about using archives once or twice in the last 10 years. I thought I was hosed, until I realized I had backups from my server before I retired it. Problem was that my server backup drive were formatted as ext3 (Linux format) and couldn’t be read on the Mac without installing some extra stuff that might not even work on Leopard and could make my system unstable. So I looked for an alternative. I downloaded a CentOS virtual appliance from VMWare’s Appliance Marketplace, ran it under VMWare, plugged in my backup drive, in VMWare, connected the USB drive, mounted the drive, found my backup, tar/gzipped the directory and then FTPd the archive back to my Mac. It sounds complicated, but the most time consuming part was downloading the 691 MB archive of the virtual application. The rest was just a few simple UNIX commands.
While Fusion worked great in this scenario, it isn’t working with the Slide/Negative Scanner I just bought. I bought it to transfer some of my old negatives into digital format even though it got mixed reviews. With the lifetime guarantee that Hammacher Schlemmer offers, I couldn’t go wrong if it didn’t work or the quality was awful. Maybe VMWare will be able to address this issue with the next release; I suspect that the device is trying to pump too much data through USB or is doing something non-standard with USB.