I thought I'd just show my server drives. System is a mini with Snow Leopard Server (1TB internal on two drives). External on top is a Seagate with 1.5TB used for TimeMachine of 4 other computers. External just to the left is a 1.5TB from OWC which has overflow from the server (media files). The one to the left of that is a 1TB OWC that does an image backup of the server every night. And the toaster has a 1.5TB drive to do an image backup of the media files. Hitachi drives in the OWC cases and a Samsung in the toaster. 6.5TB total. And it's all quite quiet.
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What do most of you guys use for backup? And is Time Capsule worth it?
- Thread starter SiMBa37
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This OWC case looks great and was bundled with my SSD drive for $10, regularly $20.
OWC Express USB 2.0 Enclosure, silver, 2.5"
Bundled with 120GB SSD
Maybe I'll skip the Time Capsule and look for a third drive because I want an off-site backup too. It's no good if someone steals both your mac and your time machine backup drive sitting next to each other. Or I could just take the backup drive with me instead of the mac, and access the files on my home XP PC with MacDrive if I ever want to work on something from home.
OWC Express USB 2.0 Enclosure, silver, 2.5"
Bundled with 120GB SSD
Maybe I'll skip the Time Capsule and look for a third drive because I want an off-site backup too. It's no good if someone steals both your mac and your time machine backup drive sitting next to each other. Or I could just take the backup drive with me instead of the mac, and access the files on my home XP PC with MacDrive if I ever want to work on something from home.
6.5TB is pretty impressive, but is that Verizon Fios I see in the right hand side of the picture? That would really make me jealous.
Also, do you have GbE to handle all that backing up? And how do you handle multiple Time Machine users on one external hard drive? That's an attractive server setup because it's likely still much lower power than a big tower, even with a bunch of external drives.Yes, but "Frontier Communications" here now. I don't use its Wireless but have an Airport Extreme which works much better.
Yes, connecting to two iMacs, but my old XP box is 100Mb, and five other systems are over WiFi, which is why I really needed the Airport Extreme which does "N".
It just does it. Every system's backup is in a sparse bundle. I just noticed that it is doing five systems, not four. Most of these systems have little to back up since all the media files are on the server.
I'm certain that it is much less, although I don't have a meter to check it out. I previously used a Dell tower, which did produce too much heat!
I wish the OWC drives would power down when dismounted (the backup drive is only used about a half hour each night). I've got a couple of Lacie drives that I use for image backups of my iMac which power down when dismounted. I've got lots of drives because I maintain offsite pairs of image backups for all things that count.
I'm jealous. Of Fios. I use GbE to my systems, but my internet is choked on a 6mb cable modem. I'm lucky compared to some though. If I had Fios, I wouldn't use their crappy router though...
So you're saying that each system is backed up to a disk image that's stored on the external drive? And it treats the disk image like an actual external hard drive? So it's basically just a file server at that point in terms of the backup?
Why then is the iMac backing up to it's own externals, and not to a drive connected to the mini over GbE?
Yes, yes, and yes. However on the server I had to check a box saying that the drive was to be used for TimeMachine. So not just any drive on the system can be used without an OK.
It's backed up via TimeMachine to the mini server. The externals are used for off-site image backups. TimeMachine isn't good for off-site backups.
I have been using the Time Capsule for little over 2 years now. So far so good!
Same here I have never had any of my apple networking products die on me. The first one I owned was the the plain wireless one.. I had it till the time capsule first arrived and sold the other one (and I know its still working as I sold it to a client) then just yesterday I purchased the dual band time capsule because of the guest network capability (didn't want my guests to be able to access my hard drives) and have installed the original time capsule in my brothers house. I have had that model for about 2 years so I think a track record of 3 machines and no dying ones has been excellent. Maybe I have just been very lucky if so then fingers crossed my luck holds with my latest model. But I always have more back up of everything so no hardship if it does.