Should I move from NAS to DAS? And TM backup?

[BeatCrazy]

Since 2006, I have used a ReadyNAS NV from Netgear (formerly Infrant). It's a 4-bay enclosure. For the past several years, I've only used one bay, to house a 2TB drive. I have media on there, as well as TM backups for my 2011 mini, and my wife's 2012 Air.

I'm pretty sure 10.9.3 broke Time Machine backups to my NAS, and I have been considering for at least a year to go to a DAS. My media collection is not really growing, so even a single HDD enclosure would probably be OK, two discs at max. I'll probably stick a 3TB or 4TB drive in there and be good for another 5 years.

My plan was to upgrade from 10.9.3 to OS X Server, and add this docking station. That would take care of my local media, and backing up my wife's Air. But what to do about backing up my machine? Should I get two of them? One for local storage, and the other for TM backups?

How to best make a backup of my Time Machine image to keep off-site? In my current setup, I attached an external HDD to my NAS, hit a button, and it backs up everything. It is a bit of a pain, because it's manual, and slow as molasses via USB 2.0.

Attached to my mini is the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station, so I have 3 USB 3.0 ports at my disposal, plus a couple of spare USB 2.0 ports on the mini. The FW800 is taken up by an external BD enclosure.

 

[hfg]

I may be a bit paranoid about this, but I like to keep as much isolation between my data storage and my backup as possible. Obviously, this means separate disk drives for each, but I also wouldn't put these two functions within the same enclosure where a simple power supply failure could destroy all disks connected to it at once.

I have one of the disk-docks you linked and find that it works very well.

There are also several OWC disk enclosures which exactly resemble the Mac Mini and stack nicely. Mine has USB 3.0, FireWire 800, and eSATA. The FireWire can be daisy chained through several enclosures if desired and your BD optical drive could be at the end of the chain.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack

 

[BeatCrazy]

I may be a bit paranoid about this, but I like to keep as much isolation between my data storage and my backup as possible. Obviously, this means separate disk drives for each, but I also wouldn't put these two functions within the same enclosure where a simple power supply failure could destroy all disks connected to it at once.

I have one of the disk-docks you linked and find that it works very well.

There are also several OWC disk enclosures which exactly resemble the Mac Mini and stack nicely. Mine has USB 3.0, FireWire 800, and eSATA. The FireWire can be daisy chained through several enclosures if desired and your BD optical drive could be at the end of the chain.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack

I share your concerns about separating data storage and backup. I actually had a NAS PS failure a couple of years back, luckily no data was lost.

That ministack is pretty interesting! Price seems reasonable. What would be the benefit of the ministack vs. a couple of the horizontal dock I linked to? I'm guessing saving some USB ports, but at the expense of file transfer speed (USB 3.0 vs. FW800), and just $$ expense in general.

 

[MrX8503]

I wouldn't switch to DAS unless you can upgrade to USB 3. I have a NAS running WHS with PC backups, time machine, and plain storage. It's also my media streamer. Really convenient, but 100MB/s isn't fast enough for me and I'm considering a DAS via thunderbolt.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I wouldn't switch to DAS unless you can upgrade to USB 3. I have a NAS running WHS with PC backups, time machine, and plain storage. It's also my media streamer. Really convenient, but 100MB/s isn't fast enough for me and I'm considering a DAS via thunderbolt.

I do have three USB 3.0 ports available via my CalDigit Thunderbolt Station.

 

[hfg]

I share your concerns about separating data storage and backup. I actually had a NAS PS failure a couple of years back, luckily no data was lost.

That ministack is pretty interesting! Price seems reasonable. What would be the benefit of the ministack vs. a couple of the horizontal dock I linked to? I'm guessing saving some USB ports, but at the expense of file transfer speed (USB 3.0 vs. FW800), and just $$ expense in general.

I suppose the advantage of the Mini Stack is mainly cosmetic in that it looks like it belongs with the Mini, and there is a quiet fan inside to be sure the drive is cooled. Using FW800, while convenient, is lethargically slow ... however you indicated you had a CalDigit dock which would provide USB 3.0 at the expense of some cable clutter.

My Mac Mini (2011) has Thunderbolt, but unfortunately doesn't have USB 3.0 built in. So my choices are either Thunderbolt based ($$$), or require a TB expansion dock (I just got a Aikito dock to try), or slog along with FireWire 800. My Mini is used as a media server, but I am wanting to add TimeMachine backup as a NAS to it as well. The "server" functions are currently satisfied by the internal drives (240GB SSD and 1.5TB hard disk), but I need several TB of external disk space for the network TM backup storage.

 

[BeatCrazy]

I suppose the advantage of the Mini Stack is mainly cosmetic in that it looks like it belongs with the Mini, and there is a quiet fan inside to be sure the drive is cooled. Using FW800, while convenient, is lethargically slow ... however you indicated you had a CalDigit dock which would provide USB 3.0 at the expense of some cable clutter.

My Mac Mini (2011) has Thunderbolt, but unfortunately doesn't have USB 3.0 built in. So my choices are either Thunderbolt based ($$$), or require a TB expansion dock (I just got a Akito dock to try), or slog along with FireWire 800. My Mini is used as a media server, but I am wanting to add TimeMachine backup as a NAS to it as well. The "server" functions are currently satisfied by the internal drives (240GB SSD and 1.5TB hard disk), but I need several TB of external disk space for the network TM backup storage.

I see. I'm not too concerned about aesthetics, as all of this is in a 15U server cabinet.

Sounds like I need to go with a couple of those bare drive docking stations, and purchase OS X Server.

I could be persuaded into a Time Capsule, but the price is rather high, considering I don't need the routing or WiFi capabilities.