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Pros and Cons of Hardware Time Machine vs Server Time Machine

My Time Machine is the old model and appears to be getting a bit unstable. I have to restart it at least once a week now as it often appears offline when the light is green. I also have two computers with ac wifi.


I have installed Yosemite Server on my primary iMac 5K retina with a 3 TB hard drive, which I use two external drives for Time Machine backups and clone the internal drive to an external Thunderbolt 2 drive. The other Macs are now backed up to the Time Machine hardware and the Server Time Machine facility. This gives me at least a minimum of two backups for each machine.


I plan to buy either a new Airport or Time Machine. I would like to know the pros and cons of replacing my Time Machine router with a new Airport and using Server on my iMac for all of my backups. As an aside, I have found the backups to the Mac Server to be very fast compared to the Time Machine router.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 5, 2015 8:23 AM

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Posted on May 6, 2015 9:33 AM

There are no real downsides to an upgrade of your hardware.

Replacing an older timemachine will give you stronger signal and a 5GHz option as well.


A new Timecapsule airport will improve on backup speed as well, so both (Airport Extreme or TimeCapsule) will be a good investment regardless of your choice, only a higher price could be a deal breaker for a new timecapsule.


You are already familiar with Airports and setting them up so there is no big learning curve as well, and I can't really think of a con at this time.


Only downside to this plan/setup is that all data is only onsite on one location, so in case of a fire or flood for instance everything is lost. You might want to consider investing in an online backup solution like crashplan, carbonite or backblaze.

Goodluck


Jeffrey

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May 6, 2015 9:33 AM in response to Russell Vaught

There are no real downsides to an upgrade of your hardware.

Replacing an older timemachine will give you stronger signal and a 5GHz option as well.


A new Timecapsule airport will improve on backup speed as well, so both (Airport Extreme or TimeCapsule) will be a good investment regardless of your choice, only a higher price could be a deal breaker for a new timecapsule.


You are already familiar with Airports and setting them up so there is no big learning curve as well, and I can't really think of a con at this time.


Only downside to this plan/setup is that all data is only onsite on one location, so in case of a fire or flood for instance everything is lost. You might want to consider investing in an online backup solution like crashplan, carbonite or backblaze.

Goodluck


Jeffrey

May 6, 2015 6:27 AM in response to jepping

Have you tried using Yosemite Server as a Time Machine? I have now been doing that for several days and it seems to work fine. Since I use Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate the iMac drive the Time Machine (server) files are on, they are more backed up than most hardware based Time Machine files are unless you clone them, which most people do not. I do run Time Machine to a hard drive on the iMac, but have excluded the Time Machine (server) files from this backup because of space considerations.


The cost from the App Store is $20 for the server app versus a price differential between Airport and Time Machine hardware of $100 - $200 depending on the model. The main problem I see is loss of disk space on the iMac running the server. I have plenty of space so that is not an issue so far.


I am trying to find the snags in going with Airport and using the Yosemite Server as the Time Machine. Other than the one mentioned above, I have found none, which scares me. 😁

May 6, 2015 9:32 AM in response to Russell Vaught

Yosemite Server can be a challenge to setup, allthough just enabling timemachine is pretty straightforward.

Just choose a folder and share it with timemachine from the server.app. You can do a lot more with that software if setup properly.


Timecapsule is a lot easier to setup and to control, it might not be the fastest, but surely the easiest.


Sometimes there are no downsides, it is being developed by Apple...

But do look at an offsite backup!

Goodluck


Jeffrey

May 6, 2015 9:13 AM in response to jepping

Agree. I have File Sharing, Time Machine, Wiki, and DNS going already. Am still struggling a bit with VPN, which is the reason I installed Yosemite Server in the first place. Everything has a snag and I seem to have found this one for me, but I will solve it.


I do plan to do MacOS updates with it as well to avoid the large downloads required for each of my three working Macs. I use DYN DNS for my domain and have for some years. Not too sure I will use any other apps in server, but am already using more that I expected to when I purchased it. If all goes well, I may eventually purchase a Mac Mini just to run Server and Filemaker Pro Server, which I use to keep a recipe database. (I make bread and gelato.)


I am still working through a fairly good book on the subject, "Using OS X Yosemite Server at Home", which I found on the iBooks store. This is keeping this 75 year old. retired IT guy happy. 🙂

Pros and Cons of Hardware Time Machine vs Server Time Machine

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