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Pogoplug for consistent remote backup off site.

What Should I Get?

  • Pogoplug classic with USB 2.0 or ethernet hard drive

    Votes: 1 33.3%

  • Pogoplug with USB 2.0 or ethernet hard drive

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Pogoplug series 4 with USB 2.0/3.0 or ethernet hard drive

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Don't get a pogoplug, there is a better option (please comment and list below)

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • What you are trying to do won't work without a dedicated server :(

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    3
C

CBergerman1515

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
21
0
I've done a lot of reading on this, but I figured I should ask here to get a specific answer.

Here's what I'm trying to do...

I want to backup my rMBP with a 500 GB SSD wirelessly. I live in a fraternity house on one side of the city, and my parents live on the other side of the city. I want a way to remotely backup to a hard drive at my parent's house while I am on campus. I've researched the pogoplug devices and am wondering if anyone has any experience doing remote backups to an off-site hard drive using them.

The fraternity house averages 40-45 Mbps download and 3-5 Mbps upload speed, and my parent's house averages 20-30 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed.

My concern is if I will be able to setup time machine to consistently backup across the city to my parent's house with the pogo plug, even if I have to mount the drive every time I backup (once or twice daily).

The pogoplug series 4 is of course the most convenient but I could also buy the regular pogo plug or the pogo plug classic. Has anyone had success or have a strong opinion on whether this would work or not?

If you don't know what a pogoplug is or if you need a refresher on prices and features, follow this link...
http://pogoplug.com/devices

Thanks for your time.
 
Last edited:
CBergerman1515 said:
I've done a lot of reading on this, but I figured I should ask here to get a specific answer.

Here's what I'm trying to do...

I want to backup my rMBP with a 500 GB SSD wirelessly. I live in a fraternity house on one side of the city, and my parents live on the other side of the city. I want a way to remotely backup to a hard drive at my parent's house while I am on campus. I've researched the pogoplug devices and am wondering if anyone has any experience doing remote backups to an off-site hard drive using them.

The fraternity house averages 40-45 Mbps download and 3-5 Mbps upload speed, and my parent's house averages 20-30 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed.

My concern is if I will be able to setup time machine to consistently backup across the city to my parent's house with the pogo plug, even if I have to mount the drive every time I backup (once or twice daily).

The pogoplug series 4 is of course the most convenient but I could also buy the regular pogo plug or the pogo plug classic. Has anyone had success or have a strong opinion on whether this would work or not?

Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...

The upload speed of your frat house is 3 mbit per second, that will give about 300KBps (byte). It will take a really long time backing up that hard drive. If i had to do something similar i would look at something else, perhaps only backing up specific files and folders to keep the size down. :)
 
To clarify...

I guess I should also add that my hard drive only has about 240 GB on it right now. And keep in mind time machine is an incremental backup. So the first one would take awhile, or I could do it locally at my parent's house then do wirelessly and remotely from then on.

The incremental updates wouldn't take that long even though my upload speed would be 3-5 Mbps. I wouldn't mind this to have the security of an off-site backup.
 
CBergerman1515 said:
I guess I should also add that my hard drive only has about 240 GB on it right now. And keep in mind time machine is an incremental backup. So the first one would take awhile, or I could do it locally at my parent's house then do wirelessly and remotely from then on.

The incremental updates wouldn't take that long even though my upload speed would be 3-5 Mbps. I wouldn't mind this to have the security of an off-site backup.
Click to expand...

I guess, buy it and return it if it doesn't work the the way you want. But instead of that pogo thingy i would use a time capsule. Works great with OS X, you would be able to access it directly from the finder bar. :)
 
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to use a time capsule from the other location because they wouldn't be on the same network. You read that I'll be across the city from the hard drive right?
 
I suggest CrashPlan since it's free to download and free to use.. if you have another computer at your parents with an attached HD. It sets-up easily and works great, plus you can do the initial large backup while at your parents to save a ton of time.
 
CBergerman1515 said:
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to use a time capsule from the other location because they wouldn't be on the same network. You read that I'll be across the city from the hard drive right?
Click to expand...

Yes i did read that, and you are able to do remote backups. I did it once when i was at a friends house, worked fine. Just sign in with your icloud on the time capsule and on your computer and you will be good to go.

Here you go.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3486?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Can Time Machine remotely back up or restore data from Time Capsule or its attached hard drive via Back to My Mac?

Backing up or restoring Time Machine backups remotely (that is, via Back to My Mac and the Internet instead of your local network) is not recommended. If you want to back up or restore with Time Machine and Time Capsule, you should do so while directly connected to your Time Capsule's local network.
Click to expand...

Your welcome.
 
Last edited:
iMarvin said:
Yes i did read that, and you are able to do remote backups. I did it once when i was at a friends house, worked fine. Just sign in with your icloud on the time capsule and on your computer and you will be good to go.

Here you go.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3486?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US



Your welcome.
Click to expand...

Ah I didn't know that. I'm looking for a cheap solution also. I have an airport extreme at my parents house. Could I just plug the hard drive into the back? I'm thinking the pogo plug will be easier to use...
 
CBergerman1515 said:
Ah I didn't know that. I'm looking for a cheap solution also. I have an airport extreme at my parents house. Could I just plug the hard drive into the back? I'm thinking the pogo plug will be easier to use...
Click to expand...

Don't know, but since the Extreme is basically a TC w/o a hard drive it wouldn't surprise me if it did work.

Don't really know about ease of use on the pogo plug. Try plug in a hard drive on the Extreme and set it up, if you don't like it. Get a pogo plug.
 
Ya I'll try to just plug it in. I assume the article you linked to will tell me how to set that up? I can't read it right now but I'll read it later.

Also, if anyone does know anything more about pogoplugs your info would be appreciated. Thanks
 
Pogoplug pretty much ruled out

I researched crash plan. It's awesome that it's free, but right now I would prefer not to use another computer. Maybe some day that will be a good solution.

I bought a pogoplug from Best Buy today because they had them for only 50 dollars, half off msrp. After downloading the software and setting it up, I found a few problems.

1) The pogoplug does not support drives formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This is a HUGE problem because that is the preferred format for time machine to backup to. Time machine and the pogoplug both support FAT format but I prefer to use the suggested Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

2) Even if I used FAT for the drive and wanted to back up using time machine, that is not supported by the pogoplug backup software. You have to manually choose each folder to backup. Again, this might work for some people for backing up only the essential things, but I really want a comprehensive solution that will use time machine.

I'm going to return the pogoplug and have decided to try just plugging my Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive into the back of my Airport Extreme as was suggested above. After following the instructions in the article that was linked above, my backup is currently in progress and working fine. I have only been able to test it locally as it is 1 A.M. here, so I will try to use Back to My Mac tomorrow from an off-site location.

I must also note, as this concerns me, that the article states that they do not recommend backing up using time machine remotely through Back to My Mac. I'll take my chances for a convenient, redundant, off-site backup.

I am currently backing up wirelessly to the Airport Extreme with drive connected, locally. It says that 223 GB will take about 8 hours. But that is expected with a wireless backup. I'm happy for now. But I wish there was a better solution. I'll comment tomorrow or the next day to see how the incremental backup off-site goes.
 
iMarvin said:
Don't forget to log in on your iCloud account in airport utility or the computer won't find your AE when you leave home.
Click to expand...

Right I did that. So when I go to do the backup tomorrow or whenever I would just open Finder and make sure the airport extreme is under "Shared." Then just go to initialize a time machine backup to the remote disk as usual?

Simply...
Click Finder->verify airport extreme is in shared and remote disk is mounted->click time machine icon in menu bar->click open time machine preferences->verify that the remote disk is the selected one to backup to->click time machine icon in menu bar->click backup now.

That it?
 
Any Synology NAS (WebDAV and Synology's free DNS service) and as an added bonus you can Time Machine when you're at your parents LAN.

Plus it's a hell of a NAS, you can even run your own web site, blog, forum, photo site, share files, BitTorrent, emule, Windows, Mac, Linux compatible, even has iOS apps and much more.

PS the PogoPlug is rubbish, return it to BB.
PPS the file system isn't important on a NAS (it's almost always Linux Ext3 or 4). Time Machine is done in software as it's done the Synology.
 
And you might consider doing different backups in different ways.

For example, do you really need to back up the system software? Often having a local clone is a much better way to do that, since if your drive dies you wanna get up and running ASAP, without going to the parents' to restore. So you then don't have to send as much over the 'net.

And some stuff you could probably just archive periodically, rather than needing TM's versioned backups. Copies of media files that aren't gonna be edited, for example.

Once you trim it down, the load on what you have to upload to the parents' could be significantly reduced, even for the incremental backups.

Good luck with school,
Rob
 
robgendreau said:
And you might consider doing different backups in different ways.

For example, do you really need to back up the system software? Often having a local clone is a much better way to do that, since if your drive dies you wanna get up and running ASAP, without going to the parents' to restore. So you then don't have to send as much over the 'net.

And some stuff you could probably just archive periodically, rather than needing TM's versioned backups. Copies of media files that aren't gonna be edited, for example.

Once you trim it down, the load on what you have to upload to the parents' could be significantly reduced, even for the incremental backups.

Good luck with school,
Rob
Click to expand...

Ya I have a drive I use locally for backups, and another one that i have partitioned, half for backup and half for a complete clone. I test these every so often. Then I want the one off site to be a full backup as well. I have a My Book Thunderbold Duo for all of my media files (2TB and growing). That drive is set up as RAID 1 so that if one drive fails I will be able to hot swap and rebuild the new one.

I guess you could call me paranoid. But if the fraternity house burns down, which with dumb guys coming home at 3AM and putting toast in the microwave (yes, microwave) for 30 minutes, that just might happen, I'll have a full backup off-site.
 
CBergerman1515 said:
Ya I have a drive I use locally for backups, and another one that i have partitioned, half for backup and half for a complete clone. I test these every so often. Then I want the one off site to be a full backup as well. I have a My Book Thunderbold Duo for all of my media files (2TB and growing). That drive is set up as RAID 1 so that if one drive fails I will be able to hot swap and rebuild the new one.

I guess you could call me paranoid. But if the fraternity house burns down, which with dumb guys coming home at 3AM and putting toast in the microwave (yes, microwave) for 30 minutes, that just might happen, I'll have a full backup off-site.
Click to expand...

You should make another clone that you keep by the door so you can grab it on your way out when the house burns down. :rolleyes:
 
Hi all,

This is Christopher, head of Customer Outreach here at Pogoplug.

Pogoplug and Time Machine backups can live happily side by side. Let Time Machine take care of total system backup and install Pogoplug remotely to backup your documents and media.

If you'd like Pogoplug's great remote access and sharing features and Time Machine support in one device, try our partner's product, Buffalo Cloudstor. http://www.buffalocloudstor.com/ You'll still need another Pogoplug for remote backups.

Kind Regards,
Christopher Louie
on behalf of the Pogoplug team
 
chrisatpogoplug said:
Hi all,

This is Christopher, head of Customer Outreach here at Pogoplug.

Pogoplug and Time Machine backups can live happily side by side. Let Time Machine take care of total system backup and install Pogoplug remotely to backup your documents and media.

If you'd like Pogoplug's great remote access and sharing features and Time Machine support in one device, try our partner's product, Buffalo Cloudstor. http://www.buffalocloudstor.com/ You'll still need another Pogoplug for remote backups.

Kind Regards,
Christopher Louie
on behalf of the Pogoplug team
Click to expand...

Is there any advantages of using this instead of the features inbuilt in the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule?
 
The remote backups using time machine and the airport extreme with attached usb hard drives are working fine. Since I already owned these products, this was of course the cheapest solution for me.

Looked at the Buffalo Cloudstor but it seems like that is an added expense without much advantage, so I'll stick with what is working. Thanks again for the help everyone!

And chris from pogoplug. If you ever add native support to the pogoplug devices that let users back up remotely to an off-site hard drive with a FULL TIME MACHINE backup, I'd be all over that! But for now I'm going to stick with the apple-only solution. It's working fine.
 
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