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Which Back-up Solution for Me

P

Philgr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 27, 2005
183
0
Lakes - UK
After a very painful failure of my work laptop which resulted in the loss of quite a bit of work :(

I have learnt the hard way and i want to back up my home machines correctly, not the current when i feel like it method.

So the question is, a NAS box or Time Capsule ??

I have a wireless router, Imac, Macbook, all are on a wired network apart from the macbook (wireless) & PS3,
i currently have my Itunes directory on a NAS & Photos etc (not backed up)
My current NAS that does not work with time machine and BTH is too small anyway.

What do you recommend guys ??

Thanks in advance
 
Can you plug in an external drive to the iMac and share it thru the wireless network?
 
To do that would you plug the drive into the Airport Extreme?

If so, I might just have to do that. I have an iMac that I back up to a 500gb external drive. But I also have a 250gb external that I've been sort of shuttling back and forth between my iMac and my Macbook. I've been storing pictures and video on it. Having that drive available to both my computers would be very nice.

Let me know please.

darren
 
kixsand said:
To do that would you plug the drive into the Airport Extreme?
Click to expand...

No, you can plug the drive into a Mac that is in the same wireless network as the other computers. Then, I think you have to enable File Sharing and just choose the drive. (Don't quote me on that. I forget how I enabled it exactly)

Plugging to the Extreme would be a good solution if you have all portable machines and want to wirelessly access the drive all the time, but if you have at least 1 desktop machine you can plug the drive to that.
 
soberbrain said:
No, you can plug the drive into a Mac that is in the same wireless network as the other computers. Then, I think you have to enable File Sharing and just choose the drive. (Don't quote me on that. I forget how I enabled it exactly)

Plugging to the Extreme would be a good solution if you have all portable machines and want to wirelessly access the drive all the time, but if you have at least 1 desktop machine you can plug the drive to that.
Click to expand...

YES, you can do BOTH
 
soberbrain said:
Can you plug in an external drive to the iMac and share it thru the wireless network?
Click to expand...

Yes i can but i dont want to,

my imac is in my kitchen on the breakfast bar, my ideal solution is out of the way out of sight, i have a network patch panel in my loft where i have all stuff, Router, etc.. i would prefer to keep it out of the way.
 
Philgr said:
After a very painful failure of my work laptop which resulted in the loss of quite a bit of work :(

I have learnt the hard way and i want to back up my home machines correctly, not the current when i feel like it method.

So the question is, a NAS box or Time Capsule ??

I have a wireless router, Imac, Macbook, all are on a wired network apart from the macbook (wireless) & PS3,
i currently have my Itunes directory on a NAS & Photos etc (not backed up)
My current NAS that does not work with time machine and BTH is too small anyway.

What do you recommend guys ??

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

As for hardware if you already have a router you don't need Time Capsule. You are best off buying a few external firewire disk drives. You can plug thse into the iMac.

But what you do have to figure out is a "system". The rule that most people agree on is that you need do at least the following:
  1. Have your data on at least three different media at all times.
  2. Have your data kept in at least two different geographical locations.
This is not hard to do if you only have a few hundred GB of data you can use Time Machine to maintain a second local copy and then you buy a couple more hard drives and periodically make backup to these drives and rotate those to some off site location like your office at work.

Number one above is a little tricky because it reads "at all times". So if you are in the process of making a backup the disk that is being written to does not "count" as one of the three because for an hour or so it will not be complete. Picky? No. During a backup is prime time for a disk failure, backups stress the disk more than most things you might do to them. During a backup is the most likely time for the drive to fail.

Yes, you really do want an off site backup. Think about theft of the equipment, fire, flood, lightening strikes and so on.

OK I see that you don't want to plug a bunch of firewire drives into the iMac. Have you seen "Drobo" It seems to be the ideal device for a Time machine drive. It as space for four drives, does RAID and with "drobo share" will sit on the network.
 
Just to update this thread.

This morning i took the plunge and purchased the following:-
  • Airport Extreme Base Station
  • Western Digital MyBook Home 1TB USB2.0/eSATA/Firewire External Hard Drive

Im also intending to purchase a Apple TV to finish off my system :)

QUESTIONS:
  1. Is the best away to configure my system now to turn off the Wireless in my existing router and just use the airport extreme
  2. Can i connect a USB hub to the back of the Airport Extreme to add more hard drives ???
  3. What would be faster Ethernet or the Wireless ?, I can put the Airport extreme on my ethernet network with very little work

Thanks in advance
 
Philgr said:
QUESTIONS:
  1. Is the best away to configure my system now to turn off the Wireless in my existing router and just use the airport extreme
  2. Can i connect a USB hub to the back of the Airport Extreme to add more hard drives ???
  3. What would be faster Ethernet or the Wireless ?, I can put the Airport extreme on my ethernet network with very little work
Click to expand...
Ethernet is faster than wireless, and yes, you can use a hub to add additional drives and printers to your Airport Extreme. Just make sure it's a powered USB hub.

Regarding your first question, you could do that. Depending on how technical you want to get, you could leave your first router running the original wireless network, and then setup your new Extreme running an 802.11n-only network (with a different name, with the Airport setup in "bridge mode"). Any 802.11b/g device in your house would connect to the old routers network, and any 802.11n device would connect to your new network, allowing them to go at full 802.11n speed.

If you turn off your old router and just have one "mixed speed" wireless network, that'd work, but anytime an 802.11b/g device used the network, it would prevent the 802.11n devices from going as fast as they're capable of. Nothing wrong with that, but just throwing this out there FYI. :)
 
Thanks for the reply and answer to my questions 'aristobrat'

My current plans are this then.

I will leave my existing wireless network in place, the only things that i can see that are on my network that are not 'n' compatible are mine and the mrs iphones, and if im reading you correctly it would mean that every time either of us were home the network would drop to 'g' speeds and when we were away it would run at 'n' not ideal obviously :(

i will add a powered usb hub to the extreme and have a couple of drives on it, this means i can drive for Itunes, a drive for Photos, and a Movies, and a drive for time machine backups - all my kit would be able to access this one central point, Imac, Macbook, :apple:TV (on Order) & PS3
 
So how does the MacBook end up backing up in this scenario? Is it wirelessly or does it have to be hardwired into the network for the Time Machine computer to see it? I'm looking at a similar solution and I thought one of the advantages of Time Capsule was it automatically will do backups of a device (like a MacBook) on a wireless network whereas Time Machine will not. I guess I'm confused on what the advantage would be for the Time Capsule over an AEBS setup w/external hard drive (other than the hard drive being built-in on the TC)...
 
TuckBodi said:
So how does the MacBook end up backing up in this scenario? Is it wirelessly or does it have to be hardwired into the network for the Time Machine computer to see it? I'm looking at a similar solution and I thought one of the advantages of Time Capsule was it automatically will do backups of a device (like a MacBook) on a wireless network whereas Time Machine will not. I guess I'm confused on what the advantage would be for the Time Capsule over an AEBS setup w/external hard drive (other than the hard drive being built-in on the TC)...
Click to expand...

In Time Machine you can select any drive that is somehow connected to your computer, so over the wireless network will work.

Time Machine is the program that is in charge of the automatic backups, and Time Capsule is an Airport Extreme and a 1TB External Hard Drive mashed together. You can just plug a External Hard Drive into a Airport Extreme and it will do the same exact thing as Time Capsule.
 
Brilliant~

Regarding your first question, you could do that. Depending on how technical you want to get, you could leave your first router running the original wireless network, and then setup your new Extreme running an 802.11n-only network (with a different name, with the Airport setup in "bridge mode"). Any 802.11b/g device in your house would connect to the old routers network, and any 802.11n device would connect to your new network, allowing them to go at full 802.11n speed.

If you turn off your old router and just have one "mixed speed" wireless network, that'd work, but anytime an 802.11b/g device used the network, it would prevent the 802.11n devices from going as fast as they're capable of. Nothing wrong with that, but just throwing this out there FYI. :)[/QUOTE]

Can you tell me if the internet access is through airport extreme will the access be available to all the machines including the ones on the older g network????
 
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