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Alternative To Time Capsule?

wrkactjob

wrkactjob

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
1,357
0
London
I am thinking of buying a macbook pro and converting much of my DVD and music collection to it.

I would want to back this up ideally to an external drive but have started to read all the thousand of bad stories regarding TC's breaking down after 18 months.

On the assumption Aplle are not resolving this situation what alternatives are available?

Ideally a backup device should be super secure and reliable.
 
I use my older G5 PowerMac. You can use any computer I guess. If you don't have enough internal memory you can get any highly rated external drive.
 
So (excuse ignorance) would an Apple laptop be compatible to back up its storage with any external hard drive?...are some more reliable than others?
 
How do you use a diff. computer?

I thought that was a Snow Leopard Server feature (to be a time machine destination)

Are you saying I could make my old Mac mini 'be' a time capsule, minus the routing?
 
I recommend getting an external hard drive and use the program Carbon Copy Cloner (search for it on Google, it's free) to backup your hard drive. Do it however often you see fit.

I prefer this because it literally 'clones' your hard disk onto the external, so should something ever go wrong with your main drive, you can boot to the external, or just hot-swap them for each other and carry on like nothing ever happened.
 
pepe suggested using a different program, carbon copy cloner. That's another option for backing up. While it's great, I don't think I'd recommend it for a novice. I'd stick with Time Machine.

With Time Machine, there are two ways to backup:
1) A "local" drive, a drive plugged into your computer in some way or another
2) A network drive, a drive plugged into your router (or in the case of the time capsule, integrated with it)

If you choose option 1, then just drop by Best Buy and grab a USB external hard drive. Get a "bus powered" drive. That means you only need to plug it into your computer, rather than the computer + electrical socket.

If you choose option 2, I really would go with a Time Capsule, out of pure simplicity since it doesn't sound like you're a power user. I consider myself a power user, and I still use Time Capsule, purely because it's so easy, and I prefer having one device on my shelf, instead of two.

If you want to go with a networked drive and you don't want to buy Time Capsule, you can plug a disk into an Airport Extreme, buy a NAS (networked attached storage), or build a mini-server. Those three options are in order of easiest to hardest, but either way, it won't be an officially supported Time Machine backup solution.

So I know I'll get some pushback here from others, but I highly recommend the Time Capsule, especially the new one, which i have. But best of luck whichever route you choose!
 
Thanks for that Spaceball!

Is the new Time Capsule you have the same as the one everyone is having problems with or is it improved in some way?

If it isn't improved are you not concerned if it's money well spent if your going to wake up to a brick after 18 months?

I'm guessing people would only really panic if their TC went down and then they had some kind of catostrophic failure of their primary computer thus loosing evrything.

Of course some people more clever than I would simply start extracting hard drives and getting the data back off it.

So if I buy a 1tb TC for £230 and 18 months down the road it breaks down, will I get a replacement from Apple?..how long is it guaranteed for?
 
I'd go with an Airport Extreme and an external hard drive. In fact, I did.

I got one of the hard drive enclosures designed to stack with a mac mini, which is the same size as an Airport. Works just like a Time Capsule, except that if either ever fails, the other will still work.

Purchased both of eBay, got the Airport for $25 because the seller thought it was broken, and a 320gb hard drive for $33 because the seller had a some typos in his listing.
 
wrkactjob said:
Is the new Time Capsule you have the same as the one everyone is having problems with or is it improved in some way?

So if I buy a 1tb TC for £230 and 18 months down the road it breaks down, will I get a replacement from Apple?..how long is it guaranteed for?
Click to expand...
No... the one people are having trouble with is the first generation model. The model I have was just released a couple weeks ago. This version is much improved, but since I haven't had it for more than a couple weeks, I can't speak to its reliability. But so far, I'm quite happy with it. As for the warranty, there's a 1 year warranty on it, I believe.
slapguts said:
Purchased both of eBay, got the Airport for $25 because the seller thought it was broken, and a 320gb hard drive for $33 because the seller had a some typos in his listing.
Click to expand...
Very nice! how did you find it if there was a typo??
 
spaceballl said:
Very nice! how did you find it if there was a typo??
Click to expand...

He was selling two of them, one had the drive in it, and the other was empty. He cut and pasted the same description for both listings. I sent him a message, and he clarified that one had a drive in it, so I bid, and go it. The empty drive sold for $3 more.
 
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