Time Capsual with Time Machine

[bluap84]

i have been racking my brains over how to extend my storage. I completely forgot about the time capsual apple do. This would simply be used for time machine.

i dont have any ports left on my switch, so data backup would have to be wireless. which im guessing is not advisable.

what are your opinions on the time capsual

 

[Hellhammer]

Can't you get a USB hub to get more ports? Time Capsule is okay but quite expensive and as it's wireless, it's also slow.

 

[r0k]

i have been racking my brains over how to extend my storage. I completely forgot about the time capsual apple do. This would simply be used for time machine.

i dont have any ports left on my switch, so data backup would have to be wireless. which im guessing is not advisable.

what are your opinions on the time capsual

Time Capsule has a few issues. First of all, if you back up wirelessly, there is the risk that your backup set could get corrupted...

Can't you get a USB hub to get more ports? Time Capsule is okay but quite expensive and as it's wireless, it's also slow.

Secondly, there is the issue of speed depending on the type of wireless network you have. We use an airport extreme and I'm satisfied with the backup speed over wifi at least for incremental backups.

Thirdly there was a rash of bad power supplies in first gen Time Capsules. Apple replaced mine for free but my data was still gone (unless I was willing to pry open the TC, take out the disk and back up the data before sending it back to Apple).

I use a firewire external drive so my usb ports are freed up for sd card reading and occasional backup and OS upgrades of my iThings. If you don't have firewire, I suggest a usb hub. Apple keyboards act as USB hubs but there are limits on what you can connect to them. USB mice are fine but some hard drives want too much current and won't work if daisy chained through an Apple keyboard.

If you're looking for more storage, the best value is a local usb or firewire disk. The Time Capsule internal volume can be used for data files but I prefer to keep things separate. Another option is to attach a USB drive to the Time Capsule and use that drive for data over the network. Then you aren't sharing the drive used for backups and you can unplug and keep your data if anything ever goes wrong with your TC. I have a 2TB USB drive I plan on connecting to my TC to use as NAS when I find the time.

 

[bluap84]

If you're looking for more storage, the best value is a local usb or firewire disk. The Time Capsule internal volume can be used for data files but I prefer to keep things separate. Another option is to attach a USB drive to the Time Capsule and use that drive for data over the network. Then you aren't sharing the drive used for backups and you can unplug and keep your data if anything ever goes wrong with your TC. I have a 2TB USB drive I plan on connecting to my TC to use as NAS when I find the time.

thanks for the advice dude, i currently have a 1TB WD drive split 500/500. One is time machine other is a external drive. Id would like to use the whole drive for either TM or external data.

Im getting into video atm, so looking to get a decent firewire drive for my data. been looking at the G-Tech RAID mini, as well as a scratch drive.

what do you suggest?

 

[r0k]

thanks for the advice dude, i currently have a 1TB WD drive split 500/500. One is time machine other is a external drive. Id would like to use the whole drive for either TM or external data.

Im getting into video atm, so looking to get a decent firewire drive for my data. been looking at the G-Tech RAID mini, as well as a scratch drive.

what do you suggest?

I'm not familiar with G-Tech. I saw them when I was shopping for my external drive but decided on a Lacie. My approach is to have backups of backups of backups so I'm not at the mercy of any particular piece of hardware ( except that one 1st Gen TC that took my daughter's Mac Mini data to its grave). I combine a TC, AEBS with external USB, Iomega Storcenter (DON'T buy from Iomega, this thing was a mistake and I'm working to replace it), Buffalo Linkstation, Lacie external firewire drive and some files get copied up to mobile me or dropbox. Lightning would have to strike in about 4 places at the same time for me to lose absolutely everything.

I keep all my video editing and photo editing stuff on the external Lacie drive. While the photos are backed up, the video editing work files are not backed up as a single iMovie project can rapidly grow to over 2 gig. I do back up the resulting videos but not the works in progress as I normally finish them in an hour or two of editing. So I can vouch that the Lacie is fast enough for iMovie but if you are using a more advanced product such as Final Cut, I can't offer any advice. I also depend heavily on external media so I could make sure I had room for Xcode and the entire iOS 4.2 SDK which clocks in at over 8 gig combined. But the 3.5 gig install dvd image is sitting on the Lacie external drive, again not backed up. I can download it again if I need to. All the photos on the Lacie are backed up to at least one NAS drive and some are also copied to Mobile Me.

Sorry I can't vouch for a particular model of external drive but I can provide examples of how I use them and which ones are "good enough". I was using a USB drive but it was a lot slower than the firewire drive. YMMV as on newer Macs, USB performance might be better than it is on my 3 year old Macbook.

I should also mention my lack of luck with iPhoto. I lost my entire iPhoto library by copying it off to the external drive and finding it was mysteriously "corrupted" when I attempted to copy it somewhere else. I had deleted the original before succeeding in making a backup of the backup which violates RULE NUMBER ONE but I didn't mind so much as the underlying photos are backed up elsewhere so I only lost the iPhoto specific meta data. Big whoop. I now refuse to let iPhoto copy photos to its library and now I can organize photos in iPhoto with about a 20 to 1 ratio of photo sizes to iPhoto library size. You can recover stuff from iPhoto by picking iPhoto Library and picking "show package contents" and you can browse around and find stuff inside. I didn't bother because I never put my only copy of any photo into iPhoto Library. I never let iPhoto copy photos from any of my digicams. I never let it have photos from my iPhone either. It gets them only after I've backed them up twice. Only after making at least 2 copies, I delete the photos from the device that captured them. I import them to iPhoto when I get around to it, again not allowing files to actually get copied to iPhoto Library. To me, iPhoto is just for metadata not original photos.

 

[bluap84]

Thanks for all the advice r0k

Maybe giving you an outline of what i need will help too, riiight hope this makes sense.

i have recently bought a gopro im venturing off on a snowboarding holiday with 2 other gopro users. We will be attempting to make a snowboard movie. I also ride downhill mountain bikes. So potentially thats a lot of footage. I will also get into photography once i have my pennies / cents saved up

I use Premiere CS5 to edit my movies. I also use Photoshop CS5 to edit photos.

These both require scratch disks. I can also see the above creating a lot of data. So...

i was thinking:

1tb - scratch disk

1tb - time machine disk - to back up the OS drive / music / misc photos / files etc

2tb - firewire drive for photo and video - how ever im not sure it would be worth having a drive for each subject?? I would imagine that type of data would require a RAID ?

hopefully this will help...with all your great info im still slightly fuzzed about how best to set it up for my needs.