General Storage / Backup Setup on Budget

[tomnavratil]

Hello friends,

I need your help with a new backup / data setup with my new iMac (1TB Fusion Drive) please.

I used to own a MBP and external USB2.0 drive for Time Machine backup as my MBP only had 250GB drive. So at the moment I'm looking at new setup.

I had this planned:

1. Buy an 2TB external drive, which will be used for data - Photos, Videos, probably iTunes library, working files for Adobe Suite etc. - no documents or sensitive data. - This would be either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, I was looking at Buffalo Drivestation DDR, which seems to get good reviews and quite fast speeds.

2. Store the system and the applications on the Fusion drive so most of the stuff I use daily should be running through the SSD part.

3. Get a second, 3TB external drive, which will be backing up both the external with data and the Fusion. - This will be purely a backup drive, which will be backed up using Time Machine. I was thinking that any 3TB drive will do the job done.

Along this, I'm planning to purchase Crashplan, only for important files as my upload speed is limited.

I was thinking about 2-bay RAID 0 for my data drive, which would give me even higher speeds but I didn't find an ideal enclosure (either Thunderbolt or USB3.0) yet.

I don't need NAS or use a Time Capsule as I'm the only user of this setup and I don't really need to access these files from a different device.

I know that it all depends on how much I value my data but I'm looking for a system, which will be relatively robust, will protect my data and I won't have to spend £500 and more on it.


Any comments on the setup would be much appreciated guys as I'm really unsure and I'm searching for various solutions for too long.

Thanks very much,
Tomas

 

[Bear]

Depending on how full the 1TB Fusion Drive and the 2TB external drive will be, you might want to consider a 4TB external drive for Time Capsule so you have a decent amount of backup history. It isn't that much extra for the 4TB drive over a 3TB one.

Your basic plan seems decent.

 

[tomnavratil]

That is a fair point, thanks for that. I don't think, I'll fill up these drives quite quickly but you never know, rather be future-proof a bit. Now I'm just choosing 2.5 and no power and 3.5 for the data drive (the backup will be 3.5 as I won't transfer it anywhere).

I guess really, it's a question of running a 5400rpm drive with the flexibility or 7200rpm drive connected to iMac.

 

[Bear]

That is a fair point, thanks for that. I don't think, I'll fill up these drives quite quickly but you never know, rather be future-proof a bit. Now I'm just choosing 2.5 and no power and 3.5 for the data drive (the backup will be 3.5 as I won't transfer it anywhere).

I guess really, it's a question of running a 5400rpm drive with the flexibility or 7200rpm drive connected to iMac.

7200RPM drive will be noticeably faster.

 

[tomnavratil]

Yeah that's what I know, which means I go for 3.5 drives, thanks.

 

[Outrigger]

crashplan doesn't really work well with time machine. my original plan was to back up to an external via time machine and then backup both the internal and the external to crashplan. problem is the way crashplan sees time machine. it sees every instances of a time machine backup (incremental) as a whole new backup. so if you back up every hour or every day, your crashplan backup would grow exponentially.

do a search for crashplan and time machine issues and you'll see. in essence, I had about 2.2TB total, but crashplan was seeing upwards of over 6TB. got rid of time machine and started using CCC instead. another option is to exclude the time machine backup files when you're backing up to crashplan.

 

[flynz4]

crashplan doesn't really work well with time machine. my original plan was to back up to an external via time machine and then backup both the internal and the external to crashplan. problem is the way crashplan sees time machine. it sees every instances of a time machine backup (incremental) as a whole new backup. so if you back up every hour or every day, your crashplan backup would grow exponentially.

do a search for crashplan and time machine issues and you'll see. in essence, I had about 2.2TB total, but crashplan was seeing upwards of over 6TB. got rid of time machine and started using CCC instead. another option is to exclude the time machine backup files when you're backing up to crashplan.

It is always a mistake to make a backup of the backup. You are much better off having totally fully independent backups. Ideally they would even use different programs... to prevent any programatic issues.

/Jim

 

[tomnavratil]

That's the point I think. I would only use Crashplan in the first instance as the backup for important documents. Time Machines would backup both the external and internal drive then.