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Need help for a backup scheme

V

Vinxi

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 20, 2007
31
0
Hi everybody,

I need your help. I have a Mac Mini as home, NAS and TimeMachine server and two other macs connected to the network. I'm thinking about a backup scheme for all three of them plus my shared data on the server.

I thought buying an external enclosure with 4 HDD attached to the Mini, and make them in two separate software RAID1 arrays, one for the shared data, and the second one for the Time Machine backups of the two macs and for the Time Machine backup of the Mac Mini itself including the data on the first array.

Once in a month I would clone the first array on an external drive and keep it offsite.

Is that a good idea?
Sorry for my english, it's not my first language.
 
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Then buy the smart NAS device like a Synology DS415 Plus or a smaller one like Synology DS214 Play. I say this because you could use them as Time Machine backup for all your Macs and to save your iTunes Media onto one according to this video.

Here it is:

This way your iTunes can be saved on central NAS and backup for iTunes, Time Machines, pictures video and oh so much more. Plus with the RAID it backups all the data on the NAS in case a drive fails. Lastly this way if you upgrade your Macs then all your pictures,music, videos are always ready.

Now to answer your question I say get the NAS and use the Mac Mini with HDMI port as a Plex server for your TV.
 
First, RAID is not a backup. It's for fault tolerance. It allows you to keep working if a drive fails. It does nothing if the enclosure burns up, gets stolen, or files get deleted or overwriten.

Second, never backup data to the same enclosure for the reasons mentioned above. The array can make a good backup of the mini and the other macs but not the data stored on it.

My preference is to use two different backup techniques. My MBP is backed up to a mini server via time machine. In addition it gets cloned to an external drive. For off site I use Crashplan. I store media files on the mini and those get copied to an external drive periodically as they don't change that often. They are also backed up to Crashplan.
 
glenthompson said:
My preference is to use two different backup techniques. My MBP is backed up to a mini server via time machine. In addition it gets cloned to an external drive. For off site I use Crashplan. I store media files on the mini and those get copied to an external drive periodically as they don't change that often. They are also backed up to Crashplan.
Click to expand...

Indeed, a very good strategy, because there is no point having duplicated backups if both use the same technique, because if that technique has a fault (and I had a bug with TM which prevented a restore) then all copies will have the same issue.

I backup 3-ways, using TM, local copies and offsite automated backups to a cloud service, not crash plan but similar. The first backup to a cloud service can be problematic if you have slow Internet and a lot of files. I believe some of the cloud services send you a disk you can backup locally and post to them to get you start.
 
glenthompson said:
First, RAID is not a backup. It's for fault tolerance. It allows you to keep working if a drive fails. It does nothing if the enclosure burns up, gets stolen, or files get deleted or overwriten.
Click to expand...

As I understood the question, RAID was supposed to be used for the backup, i.e a backup with redundancy. It seems like using a single drive backup is more likely to fail than a two drive mirror. Although I agree that it's probably better to separate the backup physically in a separate enclosure, RAID or not.
 
subsonix said:
As I understood the question, RAID was supposed to be used for the backup, i.e a backup with redundancy. It seems like using a single drive backup is more likely to fail than a two drive mirror. Although I agree that it's probably better to separate the backup physically in a separate enclosure, RAID or not.
Click to expand...

Actually, a 2 drive raid has double the chance of a disk failure. Same as twin engine airplanes being more likely to lose an engine. It does let you continue when a drive fails. Nis that worth the extra cost? For some people, yes. For most, they are better getting two separate disks.
 
glenthompson said:
Actually, a 2 drive raid has double the chance of a disk failure. Same as twin engine airplanes being more likely to lose an engine. It does let you continue when a drive fails. Nis that worth the extra cost? For some people, yes. For most, they are better getting two separate disks.
Click to expand...

Yes, but in this case the RAID level was 1, a mirror, so data loss is twice as unlikely since you need to lose two drives for any data loss. Same thing with the airplane engine.
 
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glenthompson said:
My preference is to use two different backup techniques. My MBP is backed up to a mini server via time machine. In addition it gets cloned to an external drive. For off site I use Crashplan. I store media files on the mini and those get copied to an external drive periodically as they don't change that often. They are also backed up to Crashplan.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I didn't mean using RAID as backup solution.
So a good strategy for me would be having two 2-bay external enclosures in RAID1 (two arrays), one for Time Machine(s) of the 3 Macs and the other one for the data shared between them.
Then I should use two external drives for cloning the RAID array for the data, and the second one for cloning the second RAID array (time machine) or the internal HDDs of the 3 macs.
Is that correct?
 
Vinxi said:
Thanks. I didn't mean using RAID as backup solution.
So a good strategy for me would be having two 2-bay external enclosures in RAID1 (two arrays), one for Time Machine(s) of the 3 Macs and the other one for the data shared between them.
Then I should use two external drives for cloning the RAID array for the data, and the second one for cloning the second RAID array (time machine) or the internal HDDs of the 3 macs.
Is that correct?
Click to expand...

Close but you don't want to backup a time machine backup to another device. A backup of a backup can cause issues. Better to make two separate backups.
 
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