Multiple Macs all need to be backed up

[poppe]

Okay heres the deal:

There are around 5 macs, most if not all laptops of some sort (one being an AIR). I have a 2 TB Drobo, and I'd like to back all of them up wirelessly.

I can by the Time Capsule, but with that many computers 1 TB won't be going back in time that much will it? How would that even work? Would they each have their own section on the hard drive?

If I got the time capsule could I add the drobo to make up 3 TB?

What would be my best solution to getting all these computers backed up?

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

What sort of backup do you need?

Time machine does incremental backups. Superduper does clones and some kind of virtual HD can off site and synce your backups.

Not all backups are created equal.

Let us know what you want to do and we can see.

 

[HiFiGuy528]

Airport Extreme & 2TB USB external hard drive is what you need. Time Machine from each Mac will see the drive as "shared/networked drive" and will back up to it. All Macs will mount and unmount automatically. No additional set-up.

 

[poppe]

What sort of backup do you need?

Time machine does incremental backups. Superduper does clones and some kind of virtual HD can off site and synce your backups.

Not all backups are created equal.

Let us know what you want to do and we can see.

I just need the time machine like back up. I don't think I need the cloning one.

Airport Extreme & 2TB USB external hard drive is what you need. Time Machine from each Mac will see the drive as "shared/networked drive" and will back up to it. All Macs will mount and unmount automatically. No additional set-up.

So it'd be stupid to buy the Time Capsule and just add the drobo to it? It would be better to just do an extreme and the drobo?

 

[ButtUglyJeff]

So it'd be stupid to buy the Time Capsule and just add the drobo to it? It would be better to just do an extreme and the drobo?

Drobo only works as a Time Machine option when its directly connected to a single Mac. It can't act as a Time Capsule and be able to do the Time Machine functions for multiple computers.

The only Drobo option would be to add Droboshare, and go to DroboAps and look for an application to copy Time Capsule. This would not be supported by Apple.

 

[HiFiGuy528]

Drobo is fine too, but it's not cheap. Time Capsule is a Airport Extreme with a hard drive, just all in one box and you are paying for the one box feature and the Apple Tax.

Keep in mind that you CAN NOT use a third party service to recover data from a TC if it dies. You are SOL when that happens.

 

[Apocrathia]

AFP shares show up as supported backups for me. Just share the drive and set it up in time machine.

 

[poppe]

Drobo only works as a Time Machine option when its directly connected to a single Mac. It can't act as a Time Capsule and be able to do the Time Machine functions for multiple computers.

The only Drobo option would be to add Droboshare, and go to DroboAps and look for an application to copy Time Capsule. This would not be supported by Apple.

4) Time Machine with Drobo on Time Capsule works, no special formatting is required

- - That's from one of the drobo Q&A websites. That's why I am confused.

Drobo is fine too, but it's not cheap. Time Capsule is a Airport Extreme with a hard drive, just all in one box and you are paying for the one box feature and the Apple Tax.

Keep in mind that you CAN NOT use a third party service to recover data from a TC if it dies. You are SOL when that happens.

I already have a Drobo with 2 TB so price is not a problem. I'm just confused if there is a better solution than to do the Drobo plus a Time Capsule. Would a Time Capsule 1 TB be okay to handle that many computers and get a lot of back ups on the drive?

AFP shares show up as supported backups for me. Just share the drive and set it up in time machine.

Thanks

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Here's my recommendation based on what I do.

I have two macs (deskto/ laptop) and they are both backed up in the same way.

1. I use iDisk for all my documents, fotos etc that I have (around 4.5 Gig). I have a copy on both hard drives which syncs everything between computers. That way I have a copy on my HD and on a remote server that I can access everywhere and if, God forbid, both computers are destroyed, I can recover. Documents and photos are usually the only thing you can't replace.

2. I use TC to back up both HDs excluding applications, system files and iTunes folder. This does incremental backups of my work, documents etc, so if I make a mistake I can recover older copies etc.

3. I clone both HDs to a drobo with redundancy so that I can have bootable copies of both HDs for system upgrades and malfunction. It also acts as a media server and a seperate copy of my itunes library with redundancy. That's quite a lot of storage, but that way I am protected.

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes

 

[poppe]

Here's my recommendation based on what I do.

I have two macs (deskto/ laptop) and they are both backed up in the same way.

1. I use iDisk for all my documents, fotos etc that I have (around 4.5 Gig). I have a copy on both hard drives which syncs everything between computers. That way I have a copy on my HD and on a remote server that I can access everywhere and if, God forbid, both computers are destroyed, I can recover. Documents and photos are usually the only thing you can't replace.

2. I use TC to back up both HDs excluding applications, system files and iTunes folder. This does incremental backups of my work, documents etc, so if I make a mistake I can recover older copies etc.

3. I clone both HDs to a drobo with redundancy so that I can have bootable copies of both HDs for system upgrades and malfunction. It also acts as a media server and a seperate copy of my itunes library with redundancy. That's quite a lot of storage, but that way I am protected.

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes

That sounds like a good way to go, but I'm still confused about Time Capsule. If I have 4 Macs all running 100 GB hard drive and a 1 TB Time Capsule.

I back up 3 times by all the computers, I've already started writing over my back ups?

Will my Macbook only write over it's Macbook files?