Hello all,
Ordered an iMac which is en route, looking for a backup solution, what would you guys recommend? How good is the Time Capsule? Reliable? Or should I go for some other hard drive, if so, which one and why?
Thank you.
I'll only have the one iMac, once it's delivered. Data to backup is not a lot, mostly inDesign files, but need to back up daily for sure. Thing with the Time Capsule is that it looks beautiful and is wireless too, but just that I heard things about it breaking down after two years or something, that's the only reason I'm thinking about an external hd even though I feel like getting the Time Capsule.
My father is still using a 1st generation 500GB Time Capsule since day one, for what it's worth. Still works just fine.
if you get applecare , it will cover your time capsule!
thunderbolt drives can be an alternative
Which one would you recommend so I can look to see if that kind of thing is available here?
I use lacie little big disk with time machine with my iMac.
All good. It was just a suggestion.
I appreciate it, many thanks.
Off topic: How about synching docs between an iMac and a Mac laptop? If I were working on an Indesign/Word document on the laptop and then wanted to continue using it on the iMac, how is that done?
I'll only have the one iMac, once it's delivered. Data to backup is not a lot, mostly inDesign files, but need to back up daily for sure. Thing with the Time Capsule is that it looks beautiful and is wireless too, but just that I heard things about it breaking down after two years or something, that's the only reason I'm thinking about an external hd even though I feel like getting the Time Capsule.
My suggestion is do both a hard drive backup and TimeCapsule.
Reasoning: A Carbon Copy, or SuperDuper backup is a true baseline backup. If you have a hard drive crash (yes, even an ssd), you can easily and quickly put your machine back up an running with this "cold" backup.
Time Machine, is reliable to a point, but in the end, it is simply incremental file backups, not a full system backup. You can recover your files from a point in time, which is great for those older files you want back. However, it will not restore your system on it's own. It gives you that intra-day security (or security between your full backups with Carbon Copy or SuperDuper).
You can easily do both with one external drive. Simply partition it, making the first partition the same size as your machines hard drive - this is where you would CC or SuperDuper. The remainder can be used for the TimeMachine.
Time Machine, is reliable to a point, but in the end, it is simply incremental file backups, not a full system backup. You can recover your files from a point in time, which is great for those older files you want back. However, it will not restore your system on it's own.