Advice needed for NAS and Time Machine

[Woodcrest64]

I'd like to keep all my and my wife's photos and videos on a NAS so I don't have to use an external USB drive.

I would also like to Time Machine everything on the NAS in case I accidentally delete a file on the NAS or one my files gets corrupted.

Is this possible to do with just one NAS device or would I need two separate NAS devices?

Thanks in advance!

 

[canuckle]

Easily possible with synology or qnap, can't speak for other brands. I use synology exactly like that.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Easily possible with synology or qnap, can't speak for other brands. I use synology exactly like that.

So how exactly does that work? Can you tell the Synology NAS to use one of its internal drives for the Time Machine and the other for your data ?

 

[glenthompson]

So how exactly does that work? Can you tell the Synology NAS to use one of its internal drives for the Time Machine and the other for your data ?

I have two mirrored drives in my Synology with 2 shares, Media and Backup. The Backup share is used only for time machine backups while the Media share holds movies, music, books, etc. the drive mirroring gives me protection against a single drive failure but I still have a backup of the Media files off-site.

I could have dedicated the drives to a particular purpose but preferred to implement mirroring. You can also bond the two drives into one big drive but you then lose everything if a single drive fails.

 

[djarum69]

With the Synology you can set a quota limit on the Time Machine shared folder to keep it from eating all your available space. These machines are so flexible.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Correct me if I'm wrong. If I had a 4 bay NAS with quad 3TB drives, I could allocate 500gb to my wife for her Macbook's system back up for time machine, 500gb for my macbook time machine, 2tb for my videos and photos on the NAS and another 3tb for time machine for that data of my videos and photos on the NAS?

 

[djarum69]

So you want your videos and photos to live on the NAS, and your backups of those same files on the same media? That doesn't seem like much of a backup to me. I hang a USB drive off my NAS to back up the files that live there.

 

[Woodcrest64]

So you want your videos and photos to live on the NAS, and your backups of those same files on the same media? That doesn't seem like much of a backup to me. I hang a USB drive off my NAS to back up the files that live there.

Should it not be okay if the NAS is running in Mirror Raid 0 mode? Cause if the one drive dies with the time machine backups along with the other files then the other drive in the NAS will have a duplicate copy right ?

 

[glenthompson]

Should it not be okay if the NAS is running in Mirror Raid 0 mode? Cause if the one drive dies with the time machine backups along with the other files then the other drive in the NAS will have a duplicate copy right ?

While that offers protection against hardware failure, it provides nothing in the case of theft, fire, flood, or stupid user tricks like deleting everything or formatting the drive. Any system needs an external backup, preferably off-site.

Disk drives are a lot cheaper than replicating all my data.

 

[maflynn]

Should it not be okay if the NAS is running in Mirror Raid 0 mode? Cause if the one drive dies with the time machine backups along with the other files then the other drive in the NAS will have a duplicate copy right ?

You always need a backup strategy, RAID (other then RAID 0) gives you data redundancy, not data protection. You need to back up your data regardless of where its stored.

I use a DAS now as I found little need for a NAS, but I still backup my the drobo mini to another external disk because stuff happens and I don't want to lose my photographs that I've taken or any of my other data.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Thanks for all the help. From the sounds of it I should have the NAS, then an external USB drive attached it to running at Time Machine backup of the data from that. In addition I should look into an offsite solution.

The problem is I'm in Canada and I can't find any service that offers an external hard drive delivery of your data to Canadians. I have 1.5TB of data and uploading that or downloading that would take forever.

EDIT: What about using Transporter with a service like Crash Plan. I could keep one drive at my dad's place which is 2.5 hours away from me. So in case of an Earthquake, Flood or whatever I'd have an off site solution. I'm just trying to figure out what is the best option is for me and how to set this up.

I'd like to have all my data on my local network to get rid of these USB cords and have my wife's computer backing up with out her having to think about it.