External drive solution

[gsusser]

I recently acquired lots of movies and my hard drive capacity is being tested. I have a 2TB internal drive in my iMac and use about 1.7TB. I have 2 external drives, an Airport Time Capsule 2TB and a 1.5TB drive.

I was using my 1.5TB drive for Time Machine, but now it is too small to back up everything. I use the 2TB drive to do a daily backup of the entire drive (using SuperDuper).

Issue 1: I am adding more movies and soon I will run out of space on my internal drive.
Issue 2: I would like to use TM to do a complete backup.

I want 2 backups of everything, especially my music. If I lose my music, I have no way of getting it back and it's a lifetime collection.

I ordered a 2TB drive from amazon for $125. I was going to replace the 1.5TB drive with this and use it for TM. I would then put all my movies on the 1.5TB drive and take them off my internal drive, freeing up quite a bit of space. I am not overly concerned about backing up the movies.

Anyway, I figure there's got a be a better solution. And I'm not sure if I can daisy chain the 3 external drives. Any suggestions?

 

[maflynn]

I want 2 backups of everything, especially my music. If I lose my music, I have no way of getting it back and it's a lifetime collection.

I'd look to a NAS perhaps that will hold your Time Machine backup and movies. Since you mention you don't care about backing those up, it does not matter if you hold the movies on the same physical drive of the backup.

You can then use another external drive to back up the NAS. Many NAS units have a USB port so you can backup the NAS.

 

[gsusser]

Thanks for the response. However, I admit I had to look up what NAS is. I'm still not quite sure I understand, but is something like this what you had in mind:

http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-4TB-Per...qid=1388058658&sr=8-3&keywords=my+cloud+drive

 

[maflynn]

I was thinking of something from Synology or Qnap. A multi-bay enclosure that will have RAID redundancy and the firmware allows various services like streaming.

 

[gsusser]

Do you recommend exclusively using a NAS? This would obviate any need for external drives?

Oops, I see you mentioned using an external drive to backup the NAS. But how is this possible if I buy a 8TB NAS?

 

[maflynn]

Do you recommend exclusively using a NAS? This would obviate any need for external drives?

You still want to back up the NAS. I think having multiple back ups is a philosophy to have which means you still need an external drive or two.

 

[gsusser]

You still want to back up the NAS. I think having multiple back ups is a philosophy to have which means you still need an external drive or two.

Would you recommend this?

http://www.synology.com/en-us/products/overview/DS212j

I guess you missed the edit of my previous post. If the NAS holds so much more data, how am I going to back it up on an external drive? Maybe I'm missing something. And can an external drive be daisy chained to the NAS, or is that not something I would want to do?

 

[Fishrrman]

How about one, or even two, USB3/SATA docking stations?

Then, you can use bare drives for your backups, swapping them around easily.

There are even some "dual docks" that accomodate two bare drives at once, making "duping" easy (so you can have that "second copy" of a drive).

No, these don't look as "elegant" and snazzy on your desktop as might an "enclosed" drive -- they are designed more for functionality than for "style". But they get the job done VERY well.

Go to amazon, enter "usb3 sata dock" in the search box, and you'll get many options.

A few of interest:
http://plugable.com/products/USB3-SATA-U3
http://plugable.com/products/pss-dd1 (dual 2.5" drives)
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Docking-...N906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331669817&sr=8-1 (I have an older Syba USB2 dock that has worked well for a few years now)