MacBook Pro and external HD wireless backup

[ReenieD]

Hi there

I have a MacBook Pro and a USB 1TB external hard drive. I currently have them time machine backing up to a USB 2TB external hard drive.

I'd like to move to a set up where I can back up both the MacBook and external 1TB hard drive wirelessly. Would rather use time machine, but happy to used something else if needed.

I tried about a year ago with a WD wireless passport drive but the transfer speeds were so unbelievably slow that I gave in and took it back.

I can't back up to cloud as my broadband is too slow, so I will have to try again with a wireless hard drive on the same network.

I'm in the UK and have a sky router.

What are my best low cost options, please?

Thank you!

Catherine

 

[grahamperrin]

best low cost options

If there's a free Ethernet port on the router, I recommend FreeNAS on a low cost (or free hand-me-down) computer.

 

[Superspeed500]

There is a lot of elements to consider here:

• How far away is your Mac from the router?
• What bandwidth, signal strength and PHY-mode(802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n or 802.11ac?) are your router operating at?
• What types of walls (steel, brick, wood?) do you have in your house?
• Do you have microwave ovens or other electronic equippment that outputs noise on the 2.4 GHz band?

All of the elements listed above alters your wirless signal and you transfer speed to the disk. I do not know about any cheap solutions that can give you wirless backup unless your sky modem have a USB port for disks.

Both the Airport Extreme and Airport Time Capsul can share disks. The time capsul do also have a built in disk. Ther are also other brands creating NAS-devices that you can use for storage. Another alternative is to creat your own NAS disk from an old computer like mentioned above.

Remember that time machine only works with HFS+ disk shared via the AFP protocol at the moment.

Edit:

If the AFP service provided by the Time Machine server conforms to Apple's specification, then the device providing the service need not use HFS Plus for its disks.

(The Time Machine client, the Mac, will create a sparse bundle disk image of an HFS Plus file system. That file system is seen to the Mac, not the server.)

 

[jerryk]

I backup to my ReadyNAS over Wifi all the time. When I make major changes it can take several hours (60-100 GB backed up), but since it does not interrupt my work that is fine. The daily backups seem be smaller (1-5GB) and take just a few minutes, but since it runs automatically I really do not notice much impact.

 

[grahamperrin]

time machine only works with HFS+ disk shared via the AFP protocol at the moment.

Not quite.

If the AFP service provided by the Time Machine server conforms to Apple's specification, then the device providing the service need not use HFS Plus for its disks.

(The Time Machine client, the Mac, will create a sparse bundle disk image of an HFS Plus file system. That file system is seen to the Mac, not the server.)

 

[Superspeed500]

If the AFP service provided by the Time Machine server conforms to Apple's specification, then the device providing the service need not use HFS Plus for its disks.

(The Time Machine client, the Mac, will create a sparse bundle disk image of an HFS Plus file system. That file system is seen to the Mac, not the server.)

Oh, didn't know that. Thanks. Will correct it in my post.