Backup Stratregy

[pexel]

Thanks to a growing media and photo library my 250GB MBP drive is almost at it’s capacity. I’ve researched drives and have settled for the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue as a replacement but it’s now dawned on me that there could very well be an alternative solution.

Would I benefit from storing my photos and music on a NAS and freeing up space on my laptop? I’m not in strong favour of this as I do prefer having my music on my laptop when I travel but I can be persuaded. The only backup of my home folder I have is off-site through Carbonite so would this still continue to function with a NAS?

I would also like to start using Time Machine and an on-site backup. Is a NAS the way to go or should I stick to a external drive and backup my machine through Time Machine?

 

[Lomaxfairchild]

Thanks to a growing media and photo library my 250GB MBP drive is almost at it’s capacity. I’ve researched drives and have settled for the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue as a replacement but it’s now dawned on me that there could very well be an alternative solution.

I would definitely upgrade the HD - OS X likes lots of free disk space.

Is a NAS the way to go or should I stick to a external drive and backup my machine through Time Machine?

Time machine is so damned easy that I wouldn't overcomplicate matters using anything else.

A NAS would only make sense if you have multiple machines wanting to access a shared media library.

 

[maflynn]

NAS is the hardware and Time-Machine is software, so you're more or less confusing two different items. Though many of the NAS products include various software that will help you back up.

Drobo is probably the more popular brand at the moment and take a look at them.

I'd also recommend looking into a portable external drive for off-site backups. If something happens to your home office, fire/theft etc the backups will also be affected.

 

[pexel]

Thanks for the replies - I don't have an immediate need to share my media library so I'll go for a HDD upgrade on my machine (what should I do with my old HDD)?

I'd like to use Time Machine with an external drive but not an Apple Time Capsule - any recommendations on a drive that Time Machine will use wirelessly, I don't want the hassle of physically connecting it each time.

 

[maflynn]

but an enclosure and use it as an external drive. I purchased the OWC Mercury on-the-go portable enclosure. I then used that for my offsite backups. I use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone my drive weekly, and then take that hard drive and bring it to work. That way I have a backup of my HD offsite.

 

[bobovic64]

Time Machine Backup

To keep an off-site backup of my time machine backup (not to get too confusing), can I just copy the "latest" folder from my time machine file to my portable HDD?
Thanks,

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Get an iPod.

/thread

Just kidding. With 80 gb of storage available (intel x25-m) i've learned how to keep lean installation and one of the ways to do it is to utilize some of the 32 gb's of space on my iphone for portable media storage. Everything else is stored either on my server (3.5 tb) or my external fw 800's (1 tb). But I havn't backed up in a few days. I've been trying to use a bit of a complicated setup by having the Windows Server backup itself and my macbook pro (and it's hard drives) but my custom build so far isn't very reliable (BSOD every couple of hours). Even if I didn't have an iPhone/iPod I still wouldn't have very much media on the go. Maybe a top-xx playlist but I find that whenever i'm out of the house I should probably be working (whether it be school or work related) so no extra activites for me.