I am thinking about using a Time Capsule for my Time Machine backup for 2 computers.
I currently have a backup device (WD) for one of the computers. It already takes up 1.67 TB of a 2TB drive.
When I add the second computer and let them both run on time machine for a while I anticipate that space will eventually (possibly soon) be limited.
Is there a large Time Capsule in the works or a method to string more than one together? Or?
You can plug a USB drive into the TC.. and use that for one computer.. and the internal disk for the other.. the USB is slow but if you are using wireless it is slow regardless.
Is there a large Time Capsule in the works
No idea.. apple announce new hardware when it goes on sale.. And they are totally secret about developments until announcements.. even suing people who release info so we know just as much as you do.. nothing.
Even if they upgrade it I doubt it will go to more than 4TB.
a method to string more than one together?
You can plug one TC into another.. but it is wastefully expensive.. the hard drive is all you are after and that is 1/3 of the cost of the TC.. so you are buying another wireless router for no purpose.
If the USB expansion doesn't work for you.. don't buy a TC.. buy a proper NAS.. all the major companies make NAS of several TB.. that support Time Machine.
You can plug a USB drive into the TC.. and use that for one computer.. and the internal disk for the other.. the USB is slow but if you are using wireless it is slow regardless.
Is there a large Time Capsule in the works
No idea.. apple announce new hardware when it goes on sale.. And they are totally secret about developments until announcements.. even suing people who release info so we know just as much as you do.. nothing.
Even if they upgrade it I doubt it will go to more than 4TB.
a method to string more than one together?
You can plug one TC into another.. but it is wastefully expensive.. the hard drive is all you are after and that is 1/3 of the cost of the TC.. so you are buying another wireless router for no purpose.
If the USB expansion doesn't work for you.. don't buy a TC.. buy a proper NAS.. all the major companies make NAS of several TB.. that support Time Machine.
Thank you for your response. It validates where I was heading.
What NAS drives do you have experience with? Do you have preferences?
I have some experience with external Western Digital Drives. Mostly favorable.
I have to admit to being a DIYer..
So I use the Synology firmware on a Q1900 mini-atx board.. powered from DC.
There is a large community here using HP microservers.. N54L etc which are cheap, powerful and ideal for build your own.
However Synology or QNAP are definitely the top of this game.
WD makes slow but very well priced units.
Read the reviews here and take your pick.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/nas/view
If you think more broadly there is no need for a NAS if you have a desktop computer, and can setup decent amount of external storage plugged in by USB3 or even better thunderbolt.. (although NAS is cheaper once you go multi-disk thunderbolt units) you can simply do TM backups to share on the network.
http://code.stephenmorley.org/articles/time-machine-on-a-network-drive/
There is one issue with NAS based TM backups.. they do tend to be less reliable.. The dreaded Time Machine needs to delete and start again message comes up rather too often.
The why of this is very unclear.. and one reason why using alternative such as CCC is recommended if you go this route.
I have used a Western Digital usb drive, directly attached to my iMac, to maintain regular backups for the past 3+ years. It works fine, but I have used up 2/3 of the 2tb drive. I used another direct connect drive on my wife's iMac to back up hers (much smaller volume of storage) but that drive maxed out and finally quit running backups when there was nothing that could be removed. Additionally, I have a large photo library that I would like to be available to my wife's computer as well as to mine, and to my iPad, hence the search for a network storage device. I suppose I could treat the 3 goals separately but a NAS device sounds almost ideal.
For reference I use Yosemite on my Macs and IOS 8 on the iPad. My router is a Netgear N900 WNDR4500 Gigabit wireless device. My iMacs are directly attached to the router via gigabit ethernet. There are 2 unused ethernet ports that could be used for drives and/or nas.
While I worked for for 40+ years in computer technology, I'm by no means up to speed with the current state of things technically. I can configure things with help from tech support but don't think I want to get involved in DIY solutions with mix and max technologies. Also being retired for the past 7 years, budget is somewhat of a concern.
I was thinking that the Raid capability was a plus, but maybe not absolutely necessary. What are your thoughts about this?
I noticed that the comments about Time Machine problems on NAS are all dated 2012. A lot has changed since then. Have you seen any of these comments recently?
You lost me a bit when you talked about "you can simply do TM backups to share on the network".
Since I'm currently using a direct connect USB 2 drive so the "slower technology" of WD may be ok on gigabit ethernet.
Thank you so much for having this discussion with me and I would appreciate any additional thought you might have.
Steve
I can configure things with help from tech support but don't think I want to get involved in DIY solutions with mix and max technologies. Also being retired for the past 7 years, budget is somewhat of a concern.
Fully agree.. but some DIY is just fun.. keeps your hand in .. because if you stop for about 3weeks you will be out of it. Scary really.
I also find I am more ready to accept and pay for simple solutions that use a lot less power.. running something that needs your own personal generator for power source is no longer the fun it was.
I noticed that the comments about Time Machine problems on NAS are all dated 2012. A lot has changed since then. Have you seen any of these comments recently?
Yes, they do continue.. I will find a more recent thread. Yosemite has sadly been really bad on TM and networking both. Much buggier than what preceded it.. Apple is trying to do a big change.. and as any big change it doesn't work 100%.. to be kind.. Other not so nice terms come to mind.
here is the basic problem.
Yosemite has serious DNS bug in the networking application.. here is the lets say more arcane method of fixing it by doing a network transplant from mavericks.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-yo u-can-do-to-fix-it/
However just don't get too wrapped up in Time Machine .. there are alternatives.. and as mentioned Carbon Copy Cloner is just a lot better reliability.. I run both.. CCC and TM.. it makes for better results.
I was thinking that the Raid capability was a plus, but maybe not absolutely necessary. What are your thoughts about this?
Raid is wasteful.. and it is not a backup.. it is simply to work around drive failures. If you want to use raid.. you should go for a big system.. ie 4 disk.. so you use Raid 5 and one disk is used for CRC sums.. that means 3/4 of the disk capacity is available.. whereas on a 2 disk system you lose one disk... but you are looking at a big outlay.. $1000 .. because once you start using such a system as file server.. you MUST use USB drives plugged into it for backup.
Additionally, I have a large photo library that I would like to be available to my wife's computer as well as to mine, and to my iPad, hence the search for a network storage device. I suppose I could treat the 3 goals separately but a NAS device sounds almost ideal.
iphoto is a problem.
Apple says specifically the iphoto library should not be held on a network drive nor should it be non Mac formatted. Of course a NAS is both network and not HFS+.
Here are the references.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198
It doesn't mean you cannot share the iphoto library and even place a copy on the NAS.. but having it actively used as current library is not good idea.
A really good article on how to use iphoto in shared situation.. the comments also have some good suggestions.
http://macthing.co.uk/media-server/iphoto-9-5-sharing-and-maintaining-a-master-i photo-library/
Sync photos.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4236
You can see that Apple are stuck between the obvious need to run a server with iTunes and iPhoto and their attempt to avoid that complexity by keeping them as individual applications on computers. The cloud being the only alternative which is fine if you have gigabit internet but not much use for the majority of people. (none in our part of the world where average internet speed is 6Mbps).
Look at home sharing itunes.
Learn more about Home Sharing - Apple Support
Apple is moving to get rid of iphoto so we will need to see what comes of that.. but for sharing the iphoto library is caught up with itunes.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2047572/how-to-view-your-iphoto-images-on-an-app le-tv.html
Messy isn't it.
That is why dedicating one of your desktop computers to work as "server" is no bad idea.
You lost me a bit when you talked about "you can simply do TM backups to share on the network".
Since I'm currently using a direct connect USB 2 drive so the "slower technology" of WD may be ok on gigabit ethernet.
Backups over network even by gigabit are not faster than local disk.. even your USB2 disk is faster for backups to a network drive on gigabit.
Of course USB 3 is hugely superior.. it is rated at 5Gbps whereas the old USB2 was 480Mbps but inefficient and seldom achieves even half that.
If your iMac is older one.. 2011.. then buy a thunderbolt dock.. these are much cheaper than previously and good deals from OWC etc with a big range of ones that work (not belkin!!)
If earlier than that.. well it might be worth investing in a mac mini from 2012 up to the latest ones (soldered in RAM and no upgrading makes them poorer than 2012 models).. grab second hand 2012 -2014 mini which can be opened and upgraded easily.. and with USB3 and thunderbolt make excellent server plus media centre.. directly plug into the TV.. so replaces media players. (you can buy a server model but isn't needed).
TM can backup to any Mac on the network.. it is the same thing as backing up to Time Capsule.. so there is another way to solve the need for massive storage without buying a NAS.. you buy cheap USB 3 drives and plug them into the Mac. Share them to the network..
Ok.. there are some floaty ideas.. grab some reading and see which way lies nirvana.. as long as you realise the journey is more significant than the end point.
Wow that was some great flotilla of ideas.
It will take me a while to sort through this.
My wife's iMac is my old one (2009). Back up on that one is a minor issue. She mostly works with the grandkids on homework and access the web with it. I could buy a larger "cheap" drive and add to hers and be done with the backup issue.
My machine is a 2013 iMac, so it has 2 thunderbolt ports. I'm beginning to think that simpler is better so maybe I'll keep the backup issues separate.
As far as my photo library it is over 21000 photos and growing. They are stored on my internal hard drive and managed through an Aperture overlay file.
I currently load and manage all of the photos from my wife's camera and from mine. There are other family photo's that have been sent to us and a lot of old photos that have been scanned and stored. She probably doesn't have the inclination to take over that process for her pictures but she would like to be able to pull up individual pictures whether from mine or hers or someone in one of our extended families.
I'm hoping that Photos coming up as a replacement for Aperture and iPhoto (which neither of us use) will be a uniting factor. That said it is probably premature to try sharing the pictures, until that is out. I've toyed with creating a subset
You mentioned that you do TM and CCC backups.
Do you create a bootable disc with CCC with or without data files? How often do you create these?
Do you use separate drives for CCC and TM backup?
Do you create a bootable disc with CCC with or without data files? How often do you create these?
I have a USB drive I plug into the computer and do a bootable clone of the internal drive.
I update this say monthly. I do not run both CCC and TM continually although that is possible.. it is just that I find (running earlier OS, TM is quite reliable). TM makes a better backup for current files.. However if you have issues with TM then stop using it altogether and use just CCC doing daily backups (hourly is a bit much IMHO).
I can and have then used the same disk partitioned to do TM backups. USB drives are cheap and buy big ones.. I have a heap of Touro Deskpro 4TB drives.. but I also have a few shells that I exchange disks on.. CCC needs the primary partition of the drive to make it bootable.. so do the CCC backup first after you partition the drive.. It will need to make some changes to make the drive bootable.. then you can do TM to the second partition.. that is easier but it is also possible to create a sparsebundle and use TM to that.. I think that over complex though.
But I fix Time Capsules so I am surrounded by them..
TM backs up to at least one Time Capsule.. and I have a test DIY synology based NAS that I do a secondary TM to.. to check its reliability. So far both backups have worked fine.
So to answer your last question.. yes, I do separate backups to separate drives.. this is not a requirement..
You can do CCC backups to network drive like Time Capsule.. but it will not be bootable..
You can do TM backups to the same disk as CCC uses.. by creating a separate partition.. however. You just lost one key value of 2 backups.. if the disk is broken, stolen, lost in a fire etc.. I have then lost all my backups.
Using a Touro shell (OWC were selling them for about $5 and I bought 10) I also make another CCC backup to a disk and store that elsewhere..
If you are in a situation where anything could happen to your computers.. remember all your photos and data goes in a house fire.. or theft if they clear the place.. having a backup off site.. even if a bit out of date.. is well worth it.. I used to be even more paranoid but I am now retired.. so if the house burns down I will go with it and not need backups.. đ Unless they have a reboot for my shell..
I have been considering a LaCie Thunderbolt drive for my machine, thinking that it would provide a faster option when sharing files on my external drive with my wife from her computer.
Does file sharing eat significant cpu resources on my machine when my wife is accessing the shared volume?
Thunderbolt is super fast.. but standard mechanical disks are not..
USB3 can handle 5Gbps. Thunderbolt is 10Gbps (new v2 is 20Gbps).
Can you notice the difference on a 1Gbps ethernet connection.. clearly no.
Can you even notice it on a local drive.. no.. because mechanical drive top out at about 2Gbps (and that is very fast drive).
Thunderbolt may be worth it for SSD but for bulk storage you need massive mechanical disks unless you are a millionaire.
Does file sharing eat significant cpu resources on my machine when my wife is accessing the shared volume?
That is excellent question.. you know what.. I am going to have to measure this myself.
Off the top of my head I suspect the result will be insignificant. 10% Modern processors are multi-cored and running at idle for most of the time.
Even if you run one core at 50% to handle the data stream.. overall CPU usage is still less than 15%.
I will do a measurement and get back to you.
what happens when 3TB is not enough?
