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Can Time Capsule Work From Within A Safe?

I suppose it depends on how much you actually value redundancy in terms of spending (recurring) money on it.

I have an encrypted offsite backup of my business data picked up every day from two locations, housed in two different locations. Companies such as Recall offer services like this. I'm not sure what the minimum charge is (we pay about the equivalent of $6K/year for two sites for daily exchange), but in terms of a constant reminder to rotate your backups and not to waste time transporting offsite backups elsewhere a service like this can be valuable.

I also have remote live data replication and disaster recovery services for email and data, as well as internal replication. I use Sungard Availability Services for remote replication, although unless you're in a similar situation to me you might find the prices charged by these organisations a little hard to swallow. The poor man's equivalent - Jungledisk - as referred to above should be enough for the private user, and typically something like TC + Jungledisk should be enough for the most part.
 
if it has a power socket, then use homeplugs ethernet over powerline?


although TBH I use time machine as a convenient 'snapshot' backup, not a full backup. Thats a superduper clone to two hard drives, one of which goes out of my home to my office.
 
How much data do you have to back up? You could easily get a small hard drive or even a flash drive and back it up. If you don't have anywhere outside of your home you could at least put it in your car's glovebox or something.
 
I think with a safe you are only saving the theft aspect, not the fireproofing.

That said just put it away somewhere hidden. Most thieves look for the obvious. Put it above a shelf or somewhere near the ceiling, it will be fine.

What are the odds your info is stolen, then your main computer dies, then your online goes up and on top of that your safety deposit box is robbed?

I think you can be a little lax in one area, although I applaud you for the backup schedule.
 
kellen said:
What are the odds your info is stolen, then your main computer dies, then your online goes up and on top of that your safety deposit box is robbed?

I think you can be a little lax in one area, although I applaud you for the backup schedule.
Click to expand...

What still concerns me – despite all the backup efforts – is that the individual backups won't hold up. For example, I just tried to update my second time machine drive (which is stored in a bank safety deposit box) and the backup was corrupted. How do I know that all these backups are even done correctly?

The only time when you'll find out if the backup works, is when you need to recover the data. By then, you could be in for a nasty surprise: all this time, your backups weren't really there.

Also, the most complete backups are the Time Machine HDDs (all data) and Aperture Vaults (only photos). The online versions of my photos are JPGs. I have 100's of GB's of RAW files that aren't practical to upload. The hi-res JPGs would be the final compromise if I couldn't recover the original RAW's.

I made a couple of corrections and improvements to my backup system:

1- The HDD in my safety deposit box is now a clone of my MBP's 320GB HDD. I'm using Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm only using Time Machine on the single Time Capsule at home.
2- I'm attaching a Kensington Lock to the Time Capsule in my apartment (thanks Benjamindaines for that suggestion).
3- I'm adding a second Aperture Vault. The first is in the safety deposit box, the new one will go in my girlfriend's apartment, offsite.
 
Seriously - a safe deposit box, how sensitive is the data you have? Are you that worried about getting robbed?
 
If you are that concerned with your privacy (which i'm not saying is a bad thing) make sure you truecrypt your entire drives AND make a hidden partition within a protected outer partition. I did this for my financial documents. One password to get into the external shell and a long password which requires an additional token to get into the internal one. Even after you mount the drive it will show up as a corrupted partition until you mount it with truecrypt.

DHS can kiss my :apple:.
 
r.j.s said:
Seriously - a safe deposit box, how sensitive is the data you have? Are you that worried about getting robbed?
Click to expand...

When your entire life's work and your family's memories are stored on the magnetic records of a computer's HDD, you need to take measures to be sure that it won't be gone in an incident such as theft, fire or nature.

I'm not worried about getting my home broken into – I live in a safe neighborhood and city – but I simply won't allow for that small possibility.

I've had my laptop stolen in the past from my car's trunk so I know how violated it feels to be robbed. Back then, my backup regimen was much less strict but it happened during a vacation, before which I had backed up. All I lost were the photos from that vacation. Phew!
 
Try losing 300+ Converted DVD's that took a Months to do. I then learned my lesson how valuable time is.

Nowdays I Raid 1 my drives, then clone it. Then on top of that I make DVD backups. Thank god for blue ray burners these days.
 
if youre crazy about security you should ditch the timecapsule and get a backup drive with a biometric scanner. i know lacie makes them, and im sure others make them as well.

http://www.lacie.com/ca/products/range.htm?id=10062

there is a fingerprint reader on the drive itself which is necessary to unlock and read/write to the drive, likewise a fingerprint will relock it.

im also pretty sure they are compatable with mac, but you should read up on it a bit

but it seems that its not access to the data youre worried with, sorry, i browed thru the tread after i posted.

anyway, it sounds like what you want is a drive with a chainlock. i hate to keep pushing one company, but lacie also makes them
for example:
http://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?pid=11026

unfortunatley all of their Raid1 drives dont have the lock because the disc drives themselves are hot-swappable incase one fails.

the problem with almost all of the solutions that are here is that they really arent backups per se (neither is the solutions i have given you). if you have a fire at home, or there is an earthquake and your house collapses, everything is lost. having a HDD is more of a storage solution, the backup would be backing up your storage drive onto a tape or something and then storing that offsite, perhaps in a safe at work or something, so you have two copies of everything in two different locations. you would have to have two separate devestating events occur at the same time in order to lose all your data.
 
ipedro said:
I have sensitive data that I couldn't afford to lose so I have a pretty good backup regimen.<snip>
Click to expand...
Some questions for you:

1. How much data do you need to back up?
a. Dynamic.
b. Static.

2. Since you mention worrying about your data being physically stolen, anything small can easily be carted away by thieves. In addition, most small safe device locks are easily bypassed.

3. What about storage at your work site? On a weekly basis backup your data to an external HD, then take it to work. Each week you swap out your external HD. Only takes two this way. And if you have a secure place to put it in your work area, this option provides a simple and easy way to keep your data in multiple locations.

4. Cloud storage may be a good option to consider. There are many available services. Be sure to check them out thoroughly. Some are slow. Some have bandwidth caps. Don't forget to check out MobileMe.
 
Hi

The simple way, instead of getting time-capsule inside the safe (losing wireless) couldn't you get a extra usb HDD, and just pass the USB cable to the inside, and use that drive with time machine, leaving time-capsule perfectly outside a few meters away from the safe connected to the hdd on the inside.

(sorry if my english isn't the best)

nexp
 
It would be a very bad idea to store a TC inside a safe. The hard drive would be way too hot and would eventually fail due to the heat.
 
dlegend said:
I found the solution to your request. Here's a safe that's fireproof and waterproof with USB plugs through it. You'd have to bolt it down or something though.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9100956&type=product&id=1218022583960
Click to expand...
Sorry, but this won't solve the OP's concern.

Something like this is very for the thieves to take with them. Then back at their own place take all the time in the world to open it and view the information.

Simply a waste of time.
 
iPedro, you are a hot Mac genius!

:D:apple::eek:
ipedro said:
I have sensitive data that I couldn't afford to lose so I have a pretty good backup regimen. However, while Time Capsule is part of the routine, I can't help but realize that in the unfortunate possibility that my MBP were to be stolen from my home, why wouldn't the thief take the Time Capsule too?

My suggested solution would be to put the Time Capsule inside a safe. There are safes that have a power outlet inside so it could run in there.

The problem arises when it comes to wireless transfer from within a 2 inch thick block of steel.

Does anybody know if it's possible to rig a wire to the Time Capsule to serve as an external antenna?
Click to expand...
 
Sorry but you are ridiculously over the top. Unless your house doesn't actually have walls then I'd leave it alone.
 
So I ended up getting a Kensington lock to prevent the remote possibility that my apartment could be broken into and the TC carried away. My data (photography work for those who asked) is safely stored at home and a less frequent backup is in my bank safety deposit box. See my diagram on the first page of this thread.
 
You can run an external drive from a Time Capsule (or airport extreme for that matter). I'd do that, and put the drive in the safe. Leaving the airport base station elsewhere where it's signal won't be impeded by the safe.
Many drives are powered from USB ports now, so you'd likely only have to run 1 cable to it.
 
ipedro said:
So I ended up getting a Kensington lock to prevent the remote possibility that my apartment could be broken into and the TC carried away. My data (photography work for those who asked) is safely stored at home and a less frequent backup is in my bank safety deposit box. See my diagram on the first page of this thread.
Click to expand...

I would also keep a copy in the "cloud." If you get a program like Jungle Disk, your data will be encrypted and slowly transmitted to Amazon's S3 servers. All GB's and GB's.

http://www.jungledisk.com

Amazon S3 pricing:

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB of data uploaded
$0.17 per GB of data downloaded
Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 upload requests
$0.01 per 10,000 download request

Edit: You may already do, I didn't take the time to read your other thread. Anyways, Jungle Disk recommendation still stands.
 
My backup plan is similar to yours. I have a Time Machine drive next to my iMac; keep my User folder backed up to a free Mozy account; and keep a bootable clone of my iMac, which I swap out with an updated drive weekly in a safety deposit box, and I swap out with an updated clone weekly. I'm not concerned with sensitive data on my computer being compromised in the event my iMac is stolen since I use 1Password and am in the process of deleting all saved form data in my browser.

Fires destroy people's property every day. Having an offsite backup in a safety deposit box is the best way to go for immediate access to data in the event that the computer is destroyed. Online backups are great but can take days or even weeks to download. I tried Jungle Disk and it was going to take 7 days to upload all of my data so I gave up and decided just to use a free Mozy account to keep my User folder minus Pics and Music backed up. At least my Library folder with all of my serial numbers and such is safe. If my computers are stolen or destroyed I will be able to get back up and running in minimal time on a new computer.

I think the Kensington lock is the best solution to your problem.
 
So I went ahead and updated my backup system.

1) I added a Kensington lock to the Time Capsule
2) I replaced the second Time Machine HDD (Time Machine isn't made for multiple backups so I gave up on the workarounds) with a Carbon Copy Clone in my safety deposit box, which also holds my first Aperture Vault.
3) I replicated those copies, and stored them in my girlfriend's apartment.

I think now I can breath knowing that my data is tripled in 3 different locations + my most important work is also stored on my photo site in full resolution.

New diagram:
 
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