HI,
I’m posting this here as this question is open to Mac and PC users. be aware that I really need a solution which works for Macs, but opinions from others are welcome too.

At the moment, I am doing backups on my main Mac using Time Machine. Time Machine is a very simple backup app that Apple supplies with Mac OSX Leopard (10.5). It’s very effective, and I like it. However, my Mac pro is the only machine backed up in the house (it being the main work machine means it gets priority). However, there are a other Macs in the house which aren’t being backed up. One answer is to get a Time Machine drive for each, but that could get costly. Perceived wisdom states that you need 2x the storage on each machine for the drive, so we are looking at high capacity drives.

Doing Time Machine things is OK for desk tops, but for the portables, we would ideally need a wireless system.

So at the moment, I am pondering the notion of a backup device like a Drobo. However, what I would want is for the backup device to be mountable and visible to TimeMachine (Time Machine being the most easily understood back up system to 50% of the population here).

So, what would the x404 gang suggest I look at? Networkable, shareable, possibly self-standing (though I have a MacMini which could act as a controller if necessary). Something which would let me add capacity without mucking about with re-partitioning/formatting.

This is a long-term project - I’m not leaping out to get something tomorrow. My MacPro capacity is theoretically greater (it has 1.5TB of internal storage, but I am only backing up the 1TB portion at present, plus an external drive) than the current TimeMachine drive, so I may be able to hand me down the current drive to the iMac, and get a bigger capacity desk top drive for that. I am estimating 3TB to use a backup for the MacPro.

Thoughts, ideas (hell, I’d build one if it could be simple to maintain and would talk to the Macs)? What do others do?

Thanks.

I can't remember where I was reading it now, but I read somewhere that there have been corruption issues over NFS and SMB/CIFS when mounting a remote file systems for Time Machine.

Just something to keep in mind if you were planning on building somehting that would use time Machines....

I want to use some scripts which use rsync to sync my Mac with my server, but my server won't do some of the rsync options I want.

Drobos are very cute but I've heard mixed stories about them. If you're looking for an expandable NAS drive to use purely for backup, you're probably better looking at say

this - NetGear ReadyNAS
or
this - Lacie 5Big
or even
this - Buffalo Terastation III

You can spend rather a lot of money on this sort of stuff.

Jon

There was an issue with drive corruption on Macs but that was cured in Mac OS 10.5.6. There may also be an issue on PC's but I've never been able to get the bloody thing to even mount when I've had my Mac running windows under bootcamp. Mind you, there are a few things that don't work on that - when windows 7 comes out I think I'm going to scrub it & start again.

Jon

if you have any reasonably old computers lying around you can use them as backup stores, with a simple hard drive upgrade. 1TB SATA hard drives are painfully cheap these days (bout 70 quid for a samsung from scan). LAN it to the router, and map the public folder to a local drive on the PC. point the backup program at that folder, and it should work peachy.

or some progs allow you to back up directly to a network drive, i guess that would be tidier than network drive mapping

Don't get the Drobo, they're terribly slow and clunky.

The best option in my opinion is proper off site backup. You'd be looking at about £30 a month