Use Airport drives to clone USB drive?

[SCOLLAND]

Hi.

I have a Mac Mini as a media centre with a 1TB USB drive attached. I want a way to backup this and my macbook.

I am thinking something along the lines of a Time machine to backup the 2 computers and then an 'airport drive' attached to the Time machine to simply clone the USB drive (I don't want different generations of things, I just want to guard against hard drive failure or bad sectors etc).

However, I need all of the above to be automatic, as I'm useless at remembering to run things like this.

Any suggestions over whether this would work, or what might be a better idea? - I'm pursuing a network solution as then I can put it in the garage (separate building) to guard against fire or theft.

Thanks in advance.

 

[7on]

I would look into a RAID1 system.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10953

Remember, if it's set in RAID1, you're getting only half the storage as the drive is mirrored to the other drive.

 

[merl1n]

I would look into a RAID1 system.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10953

Remember, if it's set in RAID1, you're getting only half the storage as the drive is mirrored to the other drive.

I would stay away from LaCie drives! There have been a lot of threads on this. Their warranty is only 1 year and I have had a lot of their drives and many problems of failures due to inferior power supplies and bad controllers.

Check out OWC for drives (eshop.macsales.com). They have good warranties, good tech support, customer service and their drives are very reliable. They also have some of the best prices around.

I agree that you should use RAID 1 (Mirroring) for your TM backup solution.

If you are backing up multiple macs with a lot of storage attached to each, you better plan on a "pair" of 2 TB drives for the RAID solution.