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What is your hard drive backup setup?

R

Rockadile

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 11, 2012
501
210
Hi guys, I'm a new Mac owner. I bought a 2011 15' base couple days ago. Now I have to think about external hard drives. I learned the Mac has an auto backup program called Time Machine so I'll use that.

I will use the external HD for computer system backup and RAW/JPEG files.

I'm familiar with what RAID does but never tried it before. My plan is to buy two external HD and use RAID mirroring (?) for redundancy. Is that possible?
 
You have many options and it depends on how much money you want to spend. The G drive's are popular with many people, but Time Machine will work with just about any HDD setup...Even USB although it's painfully slow.

If you really are looking for RAID solution then I throughly recommend the Pegasus range. I have an R4 (see image) It can be configured in many different ways to suit your needs, and if you are a big data consumer also comes in R8 and R12 flavours.

It's all about what you need, and how much you are prepared to spend.
 

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I want that setup it looks great :D

But I'm just a prosumer photographer with limited funds since I bought the MBP. I got $300 to spend so I wonder if connecting two portable HD will make RAID possible.
 
A time capsule is a good way to backup your Macs...I have a 3TB model that takes care of my MBP and MBA....No RAID there though. OP: With your budget it's going to be tough to get a proper RAID setup going. Maybe buy a Gdrive or similar for now. NAS stuff is also good, but with $300 It's going to be tough.

Synology make some nice stuff too.:

http://www.synology.com/index.php?lang=uk

You could use one of them in conjunction with a Time Capsule..:
http://www.apple.com/uk/timecapsule/

The TC also provides wifi for your home too....Like I said, it's all about budget really. Check the Apple refurbs in your area too....Might pick up a TC cheaper than retail.
 
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I'll just be buying a generic 1TB USB 3 external drive for my time machine backups.

Apple time capsules always struck me as a massive ripoff.
 
Macman45 said:
A time capsule is a good way to backup your Macs...I have a 3TB model that takes care of my MBP and MBA....No RAID there though. OP: With your budget it's going to be tough to get a proper RAID setup going. Maybe buy a Gdrive or similar for now. NAS stuff is also good, but with $300 It's going to be tough.

Synology make some nice stuff too.:

http://www.synology.com/index.php?lang=uk

You could use one of them in conjunction with a Time Capsule..:
http://www.apple.com/uk/timecapsule/

The TC also provides wifi for your home too....Like I said, it's all about budget really. Check the Apple refurbs in your area too....Might pick up a TC cheaper than retail.
Click to expand...
Learned about NAS & DAS. Nice tech :D
I'm thinking about getting Synology DS212j with 1 HD for it and get a external HD like Gdrive mobile for now. Seems like the Gdrive use Hitachi drives so does that mean I have to deal with Hitachi support for warranty?

Either that or get two portable external HD, plug them both in, and do the RAID mirror if that works.
 
Super Duper

Super Duper is a free ( basic version ) cloning program. You could buy a large hard drive for not much, and then copy everything to it with Super Duper. If the world ends, you can boot from the copy. It has everything on it, OS, apps, data, etc. Good luck.
 
jimbo1mcm said:
Super Duper is a free ( basic version ) cloning program. You could buy a large hard drive for not much, and then copy everything to it with Super Duper. If the world ends, you can boot from the copy. It has everything on it, OS, apps, data, etc. Good luck.
Click to expand...

This is what I do. Time machine is nice, but if the main drive dies you no longer have an OS to boot to, even though everything is backed up. With a clone you can boot right to it and continue like nothing happened until you can fix the problem with the main drive. Super Duper will sync too so that you don't clone everything every single time, just the things that have changed. Usually it's very fast unless a whole lot of things have changed.
 
Also, keep in mind that a RAID isn't always the best backup solution. What may work for you is a simple external hard drive you plug into and backup your photos to. You could buy two 3TB USB 3.0 externals for a total of about $260. One could be for your content, the other could be a backup of it.

A RAID is better for when you want high performance with some built-in redundancy to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure (RAID 5 vs RAID 0). I'm looking into a Pegasus R4 for myself for video editing.
 
I just use regular 2tb ext drive. I had to restore files few time and it worked great. The key is: you need to be sure you do time machine regularly basis. If you don't, no matter what set up you have, it won't help you.
 
2TB TimeCapsule for MacBook Pro.

Then when I want to back up large files or important files, I'm able to copy them to my PowerMac G5 server. I will move to the internal 1TB drive in the PowerMac. Then nightly, (4am) the PowerMac uses Carbon Copy Cloner to perform an archived backup of the internal disk to an external 1TB hard drive.

Works really well for me.
 
My MacBook Pro is backed up wirelessly to a 3TB WD My Book Studio connected to an AirPort Extreme.

My desktop's primary drive is a RAID 1 (mirrored) array, but I still backup important files elsewhere (pictures to Picasa, documents to Google Drive, etc...) just in case something goes wrong.
 
2TB time capsule. Its pretty slow in data transfer but I like how it works as a router and also the ease of installation. I'm sure there are some better and cheaper options though.
 
Do brands like WD and Seagate have bloatware that pops up everything you plug it in? My Sandisk flash drive did that and annoyed the hell out of me. Does Gdrive and OWC come with clean drives?

Currently I'm thinking about two portable HD and Crashplan cloud. I will use CCC for computer system and Time Machine for RAW/Jpeg? One of the HD will be kept off site and swapped time to time.
 
Rockadile said:
Hi guys, I'm a new Mac owner. I bought a 2011 15' base couple days ago. Now I have to think about external hard drives. I learned the Mac has an auto backup program called Time Machine so I'll use that.

I will use the external HD for computer system backup and RAW/JPEG files.

I'm familiar with what RAID does but never tried it before. My plan is to buy two external HD and use RAID mirroring (?) for redundancy. Is that possible?
Click to expand...

I use Time Capsule for local backups, and CrashPlan+ for offsite backups.
 
The os itself is not important to me at all, it's the media files that I care about and I have it backed up over 3 1TB drives. Although I should really take one offsite to my car or leave it at a relative's place just in case. Some of the data is also stored onto the cloud. My backups are not timelined because it rarely changes and when it does I'll manually update all the drives. Sounds inefficient and a lot of work but in reality I rarely have anything to update so this "tedious" method works for me.
 
Rockadile said:
Do brands like WD and Seagate have bloatware that pops up everything you plug it in? My Sandisk flash drive did that and annoyed the hell out of me. Does Gdrive and OWC come with clean drives?

Currently I'm thinking about two portable HD and Crashplan cloud. I will use CCC for computer system and Time Machine for RAW/Jpeg? One of the HD will be kept off site and swapped time to time.
Click to expand...

I got the Seagate portable 1TB thunderbolt drive. It came with some software, but I deleted it and reformatted the disk. The disk is pretty fast, it did an 8GB time machine backup in less than a minute. You can also use the dock thing that comes with the drive to connect any 2.5" data drive to the thunderbolt port. Plus it came with the cable, which is nice because Apple charges 50$ a piece for those.
 
I also am a prosumer photographer. I have a G-Raid thunderbolt 4TB for storing my Aperture Library and other things that I don't want on my internal drive. It is blazing fast and I believe it is the fastest thunderbolt drive currently available (slightly faster than the pegasus according to CNET). I then use a 4TB G-Drive hooked up via usb 2.0 for my backups (of both external and internal). I don't need extreme speed for the backups, so USB 2.0 works fine. The only downside to my setup is the cost!

If you are looking for the most reliable drives, I would highly recommend G-Technology. I have had about 10 external drives from them over the years and I have never had a problem with one!
 
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