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The best backup options for a mac book pro and a mac mini

gdeusthewhizkid

gdeusthewhizkid

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
753
41
NY|NJ
hey guys,

Im looking to backup my mac mini and macbook pro on my network. I have superdrived both machines to seperate externals and would like to do a time machine also on both thru the network. I have one of those owc mini stacks connected but it's way too nosy. Can anyone rocommend me a better one that i can connect to my airport extreme and time machine both my machines. I was looking into a time capsule but the price tag and bad reviews leaves me a bit leary.

thanks...
 
gdeusthewhizkid said:
hey guys,

Im looking to backup my mac mini and macbook pro on my network. I have superdrived both machines to seperate externals and would like to do a time machine also on both thru the network. I have one of those owc mini stacks connected but it's way too nosy. Can anyone rocommend me a better one that i can connect to my airport extreme and time machine both my machines. I was looking into a time capsule but the price tag and bad reviews leaves me a bit leary.

thanks...
Click to expand...

I bought one of the Mini Servers and backup all the Windows and Mac systems to a share on the Mini and then replicate the files between the two drives in the Mini server. Additionally all the most critical files are in Dropbox. It only took one drive failure to make me very, very paranoid about data loss. -- Saving 20+ years of creative works -- priceless.

Cheers,
 
that's exactly what happened to me and i lost of ton of music files. Im very paranoid now about losing files... Is there a link you could post for me for those mini servers you speak of ?

thanks.
 
gdeusthewhizkid said:
that's exactly what happened to me and i lost of ton of music files. Im very paranoid now about losing files... Is there a link you could post for me for those mini servers you speak of ?

thanks.
Click to expand...

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC438LL/A?mco=MTg4MjQ1MTM

That's the refurb of the 2010 model @ $849 ($999 new). I bought the 2009 refurb version @ $749. Just keep looking. The only real difference is the ease of adding ram and the better GPU (who cares since it's just a backup server) in the 2010 model.

Yeah, my music won't fit in my dropbox account but this server and manual syncs to other external drives protects the music and video files. But photos and everything else go on the backup server and the cloud.

Cheers,
 
I would avoid a time capsule because of heat. The AE gets toasty by itself, and i've felt a live time capsule; the heat is just ridiculous, and can kill a hard drive quickly.

My personal solution is an Snow Leopard Server with several TB of storage. Some drives contain master data, where one is an "internal" daily dedicated backup that all the drives, including network clients, back up to. I also back up to a 2TB G-Drive Q via eSATA which houses everything I cannot easily replace and is taken off site weekly. I run a paperless workflow, so I literally have every peice of paper i've ever owned digitized and encrypted via Acrobat 9 without the physical stuff, so data integrity and availability is very important to me.

This level of sophistication is unnecessary if you require only file storage. All you need is an external drive with robust cooling. A desktop external would be cheapest, though a mobile drive is smaller and more portable (obviously). Stay away from plastic enclosures that do nothing wrt heat. Get something robust. Active cooling (with a Fan) is ideal but not very common on mobile drives, so get something with aluminium. The OWC Elite-AL minis look like good candidates. WD's new Mybook Studio LX is very pricy, but offers an all aluminum enclosure, encryption (which you may/may not be able to take advantage of) and an LCD display.
 
Or build your own NAS. Lets you configure RAIDs or really whatever you want. They've got great cases like THIS that will allow you to even hot-swap disks. Much cheaper then an mini and much more flexible. I use freenas booted off of a usb thumb drive. Works great, low power and tons of storage.

You should be able to build a whole system including drives for about 500 bucks (depending on how much storage you want). It will also work with time machine, so you'll have your system backed up even when your laying around the house using wireless! :)
 
Eddyisgreat said:
I would avoid a time capsule because of heat. The AE gets toasty by itself, and i've felt a live time capsule; the heat is just ridiculous, and can kill a hard drive quickly.

My personal solution is an Snow Leopard Server with several TB of storage. Some drives contain master data, where one is an "internal" daily dedicated backup that all the drives, including network clients, back up to. I also back up to a 2TB G-Drive Q via eSATA which houses everything I cannot easily replace and is taken off site weekly. I run a paperless workflow, so I literally have every peice of paper i've ever owned digitized and encrypted via Acrobat 9 without the physical stuff, so data integrity and availability is very important to me.

This level of sophistication is unnecessary if you require only file storage. All you need is an external drive with robust cooling. A desktop external would be cheapest, though a mobile drive is smaller and more portable (obviously). Stay away from plastic enclosures that do nothing wrt heat. Get something robust. Active cooling (with a Fan) is ideal but not very common on mobile drives, so get something with aluminium. The OWC Elite-AL minis look like good candidates. WD's new Mybook Studio LX is very pricy, but offers an all aluminum enclosure, encryption (which you may/may not be able to take advantage of) and an LCD display.
Click to expand...

In my experience hard drives don't get hot. They get quite warm when they have been running for a while, theres no doubt about that... But they don't seem to get hot unless your reading/writing tons of data to them 24/7. And who does that?
 
polaris20 said:
http://b2.crashplan.com/

My computers back up to an Amahi Server (http://amahi.org) and then that server gets backed up to another external drive and another computer 45 minutes away at my in-laws' house via Crashplan. It's free.
Click to expand...
I really like this idea.

Can you elaborate more on it? I'm assuming your Amahi Server is another PC/Mac?

How does the server get backed up to an EX HDD?

Sorry.. not hijacking thread.
 
kidwithdimples said:
I really like this idea.

Can you elaborate more on it? I'm assuming your Amahi Server is another PC/Mac?

How does the server get backed up to an EX HDD?

Sorry.. not hijacking thread.
Click to expand...

no problem im curious to this also. There has been great suggestions here. I want to go with the time capsule option but it seems like that's the scariest option.. :confused:
 
Timely thread, as I've recently started my own exploration of backup options. Thanks to some downtime over the recent holiday, and XMas sales, I've set up:

  1. Refurb AEBS ($90, eBay)
  2. WD 2TB external drive ($80, thanks SlickDeals)
  3. A free SugarSync account to share/backup essential documents off-site/ubiquitously

With Time Machine backups set up for my PB G4 and MBP.

The next step for me, full offsite backups (as well as backups for my Windows desktop), looks like it'll involve CrashPlan, but I'm still trying to figure out how I want to use it. Do I just backup to their cloud-hosted DC, do I use them to also throw a 2nd backup copy of my Windows Machine to my local 2TB disk as well, do I talk to a geekier friend of mine, and ask him if he'll host a server in his basement for me to put a copy on as well?

Good stuff, looking forward to more contributions..
 
minister of etc said:
Timely thread, as I've recently started my own exploration of backup options. Thanks to some downtime over the recent holiday, and XMas sales, I've set up:

  1. Refurb AEBS ($90, eBay)
  2. WD 2TB external drive ($80, thanks SlickDeals)
  3. A free SugarSync account to share/backup essential documents off-site/ubiquitously

With Time Machine backups set up for my PB G4 and MBP.

The next step for me, full offsite backups (as well as backups for my Windows desktop), looks like it'll involve CrashPlan, but I'm still trying to figure out how I want to use it. Do I just backup to their cloud-hosted DC, do I use them to also throw a 2nd backup copy of my Windows Machine to my local 2TB disk as well, do I talk to a geekier friend of mine, and ask him if he'll host a server in his basement for me to put a copy on as well?

Good stuff, looking forward to more contributions..
Click to expand...



Well your current plan sounds like the plan that suits me.

1. Cloned my mb pro drive to a 320gb external.
2. Setup my new mac mini with all my logic sounds and vsts. Put my itunes library and additional sound libraries on a external drive attached to my mac mini.
3. Bought a 320 gig SATA laptop drive and a owc express enclosure will also clone my mac mini drive and put that to the side.
4. Buy a 2tb mini stack and move all my media, movies, finished tracks, tv shows, etc to it for additional storage.
5. $$$$ Buy 1 or 2TB time capsule and use that for time machine and wireless router. (this one Im still debating and reading the reviews on it.)

Defiantely looking into the web backup solutions also. Whew!!! im tired. :D
 
Last edited:
mrsir2009 said:
Well, the time capsule is designed for backup :) So I don't think it should fail under normal conditions.
Click to expand...

im leary on time capsule reading all the bad reviews about it. I may look into the Drobo system or similar. anyone have experience with the drobo? how is it...
 
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