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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2020-09-10, 22:03

I need some collective expertise here...

As we begin this episode, Drew is working from a lappy with an almost permanently attached external 4TB drive that has about 1TB left on it.

He backs it up religiously about every 8 months.

In truest loyalty and with much fealty to his lappy's hard drive, he does the same to it at the same time.

What Drew needs to do is stop talking in the third person...

I'm thinking about moving over to something like the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini set up to be mirrored.

It's a bigger doohicky than my little LaCie drive with a USB-C connection, but redundancy is good, right?

RIGHT?

But this makes me realize that I also have a couple of old Guardian Maximus drives somewhere, pretty sure they're Thunderbolt (or maybe that was Firewire 800....).

Would they be of any use to me now?

WHAT DO I NEED???




...

Steve Jobs ate my cat's watermelon.
Captain Drew on Twitter
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Ryan
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Promise Land of Trustafarians
 
2020-09-10, 22:06

I use Time Machine to back up to a NAS and Backblaze to back up to the cloud.

My NAS is also backed up to AWS Glacier (it contains more than just my Time Machine backup).

Four copies of every file on my laptop. Two local, two offsite. Runs <$15 a month.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2020-09-11, 08:07

I run a NAS and do my backups to it over the network. If you are operating of the NAS then you should be wired to the LAN. If you're just backing up with Time Machine then WiFi is fine.

The question is do you want/need to be able to move around while your connected to the drive? Seems like you don't need too, but if you could, would you? If so then go with a NAS instead. You can get ones with redundancy and simplicity built in. The initial setup is a little more costly, but still gives single disk failure protection (minimum) and then allows you to keep your data in your hands.

I will not send anything to Amazon, Google or others given I can't control their managing of my data. Personally, I'd rather (and did) buy two NASes and have one sync to the other. I might lose it all if my place burns down, but at least my data is protected.

If you look at a Synology NAS they have "Synology Drive" that is a direct competitor to Dropbox but to your own NAS. This allows you to sync on multiple devices as well as access those files from iOS/Android.

The DS418 is my most recent NAS (that replaced a physically damaged DS413j). It is well priced for it's specs and allows you to add up to four drives to it. Buy desktop external drives and shuck them for the NAS to save on the cost of NAS drives. Yes it voids the warranty on the external drive, but it is worth the gamble IMO.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2020-09-11, 12:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan View Post
I use Time Machine to back up to a NAS and Backblaze to back up to the cloud.

My NAS is also backed up to AWS Glacier (it contains more than just my Time Machine backup).

Four copies of every file on my laptop. Two local, two offsite. Runs <$15 a month.
This sounds like a dream come true for me. I preach the "3-2-1 strategy" but I don't actually have an offsite backup of anything in my setup yet. I've been meaning for the longest time to get my process working with Backblaze or B2 or Google Drive or Glacier or… and this is where I fall into analysis paralysis about the various cloud providers and make no progress.

If you don't mind my asking, how much content are you putting into Glacier and Backblaze?

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2020-09-11, 12:24

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle View Post
I will not send anything to Amazon, Google or others given I can't control their managing of my data.
If/when I get around to syncing my backups to a cloud provider, it'll be using something like borg. I've been experimenting with borg locally for a while, and I think I like it. It's conceptually a bit like Time Machine in that you have point-in-time backups that are de-duplicated across each other so subsequent backups are small. You can also mount your backups (I think internally it uses FUSE) and navigate in the Finder or anywhere else like a normal attached disk. It's all command-line and cross-platform, which makes it much more powerful than Time Machine, but it comes with a fairly steep learning curve.

Oh, and the reason I mentioned it here following your quote is that borg backups are all encrypted by default (though I think you can opt out). So, you can sync anything and everything in your backup repos to the big cloud storage providers with reasonably high confidence that they can't snoop your contents.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
  quote
turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2020-09-11, 13:01

Ok, that can be tempting to me there. I'll have to take a look at that.

For my day job I spend time using Veeam and Zerto so the concepts of borg are right up my alley. Veeam has a free community version, but it is geared for one-off copies/backups, not incremental.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
Ryan
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Promise Land of Trustafarians
 
2020-09-11, 17:46

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad View Post
This sounds like a dream come true for me. I preach the "3-2-1 strategy" but I don't actually have an offsite backup of anything in my setup yet. I've been meaning for the longest time to get my process working with Backblaze or B2 or Google Drive or Glacier or… and this is where I fall into analysis paralysis about the various cloud providers and make no progress.

If you don't mind my asking, how much content are you putting into Glacier and Backblaze?
I've got ~300GB in Backblaze and 1.5TB in Glacier. $55/year for Backblaze and ~$9/month for Glacier. Backblaze charges by the computer but doesn't have a data limit.

My NAS is from Synology and it has a built-in Glacier integration. I spun up a Glacier bucket and a new set of IAM creds specific to my NAS, whole thing was up and running in just a couple minutes. It's a two-bay NAS plus it has an eSATA port so it's got plenty of room for expansion.

For the longest time I only had Backblaze. I got the NAS because I needed to offload a lot of my photo library and I figured Glacier was an easy way to keep the NAS backed up.
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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2020-09-12, 01:36

This has been super helpful input, thanks y'all.

To answer T's question, I move around a bit at home, and in regular times would travel to an office during the day.

The service I currently use is antiquated and proprietary, so to properly use Time Machine with wi-fi I would need to have a better in-home network system (which will require me to learn the state of wireless systems these days, all of my prior knowledge is at least 10 years old now!).

Until fiber reaches me I'm likely to be living in the past, in regard to back-ups.


...

Steve Jobs ate my cat's watermelon.
Captain Drew on Twitter
  quote
turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2020-09-12, 12:59

Before we can really give you any direction we should know the money you are willing to spend. I would say it sounds like you might want a new router, but only if yours isn't 802.11ac at a minimum. Then I would buy a NAS. Synology seems to be a great option and you don't have to get a 4 or 5 disk model unless you think you will use it.

Connect the NAS wired to the router and you will be able to set up Time Machine and even be able to access those files remotely if you configure it that way. With Synology NAS, I think all of them support VPN Server too. This means when you are away you can access those files securely.

You don't need fiber either. I'm stuck down at 50/10Mbps now where I live. Fiber isn't even a dream for us here.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
Ebby
Subdued and Medicated
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Over Yander
Send a message via AIM to Ebby  
2020-09-12, 16:09

Big plus on the Synology NAS. I use 2 of them. One at home, and one at my parents place. Mac and PS's backup at home, and I sync between NASs occasionally. Been working great. Parents laptop just died and it was super easy to restore using Migration assistant.

Also, Plex because its awesome.

^^ One more quality post from the desk of Ebby. ^^
SSBA | SmockBogger | SporkNET
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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2020-09-12, 16:11

I'm on an old ATT u-verse box, which has built-in Wi-Fi, and I haven't tried adding anything to the mix in a decade. I'm sure it's possible? This cable service is just waiting to get replaced by something newer. They have a new box which is far less proprietary, at which point we discuss cable options etc. The bottom line right now is that my actual connection is super pokey.


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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2020-09-13, 01:09

Then you have DSL likely and won't be able to "replace" their router though you could add one behind it. I have DSL with them too so I have to put my AT&T router into passthrough mode for my router to get the external IP.

Anyway, check to see what connection you have with that router. Click on your  in the upper right, then About This Mac. Then click System Report. Now scroll to the Network section on the left and find Wi-Fi under there and click on it. Look for your wireless SSID/Network name and look for the PHY Mode. It will look like this: PHY Mode: 802.11ac

What are the letters after your 802.11?

You can still get a NAS without having to change the router or get a new one. Even if you are (and I'll be shocked) at 802.11g, you would still be able to access the files on the NAS and even use Time Machine with it.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2021-01-08, 17:22

Finally came to terms that I am a road warrior and that I will be working with external drives and am not yet ready for an NAS setup.

I toyed with the idea of the LaCie Rugged Raid Shuttle, which is a portable dual drive unit with LaCie's orange bumpers around it, but the need for specific RAID software gives me the heebie jeebies.

So it will be a single external drive that gets an occasional backup - a 5TB LaCie with those stupid orange bumpers. Runs Thunderbolt and USB C.

Here's the report.

It's always weird when your equipment gets long in the tooth and procedures are broken and weird because all of my old and new stuff don't play nice together.



...

Steve Jobs ate my cat's watermelon.
Captain Drew on Twitter
  quote
drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2022-10-27, 00:48

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle View Post
Anyway, check to see what connection you have with that router. Click on your  in the upper right, then About This Mac. Then click System Report. Now scroll to the Network section on the left and find Wi-Fi under there and click on it. Look for your wireless SSID/Network name and look for the PHY Mode. It will look like this: PHY Mode: 802.11ac

What are the letters after your 802.11?
I have 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax

So, like, that's okay isn't it?



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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2022-10-27, 07:57

Yup. Very okay.
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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2022-12-03, 13:17

I bought an OWC Gemini dual disk drive to use with Time Machine for my laptop.

I was thinking about starting it up last night, but I'm glad I didn't because somebody drove into a power pole a quarter mile from the house and power was out to the house for about 9 hours.

This backup business is scary stuff, y'all.


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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2024-01-26, 01:18

That Gemini has not been used yet :/

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle View Post
Yup. Very okay.
T, I came back to this thread tonight because my mind is on Synology boxes.

Turns out that I misread the network.

My machine is capable of all of those types, but my actual network is type 'n'.

So whatever lesson you were about to impart to me probably still needs to be imparted.

As if you can remember NOW!!

I understand that Synology boxes can run a variety of apps on them... that's where my reading is right now.


...

Steve Jobs ate my cat's watermelon.
Captain Drew on Twitter
  quote
turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2024-01-26, 09:49

The short version of that for you is if you have the "n" type wireless network that transferring files on it will be slow. Not horrible, just don't expect to copy files to or from the NAS at any real breakneck speeds. Will it work, yes.

For the Synology thing, I would certainly still recommend that route. Don't worry too much about all the apps you can get on it, though they are really versatile. The biggest thing is you getting the network storage and TM backups location. Once you have the set up, then you can go about delving into the cool apps and options integrated into the NAS.

If you go too far down the rabbit whole of options you might get a little overwhelmed by the options. The biggest thing to know is, how much storage do you really think you need and how big do you think it might need to get?

I would not recommend a "j" type of NAS. Stick with the ones with no suffix on the name or a "+" on the end. The "j" series are very limited with the hardware capabilities and can be outgrown REALLY fast. If you are certain you won't outgrow it, then you could consider it, but I would pay the little extra up front for

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2024-01-28, 21:45

I made progress this weekend, but not NAS progress.

With a slow network, a dependency on external drives (due to my road warrior situation), and not enough time to understand the workflow of a NAS with these conditions, I just had to do SOMETHING to move the ball down the field.

So, I made an inventory of the contents of my primary drive and will be offloading the seldom-used and secure items onto additional external drives (things like Final Cut Pro projects).

I will eventually understand how to back up multiple drives to a NAS under the constraints of my network, but until then I'm just getting additional drives to use as redundant backups.

Big Dumb Rockets.

...
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2024-01-29, 11:33

The fact that you did something is great.

When you have the budgets for it, get the NAS and ease into it. It is much simpler when you can phase yourself into something new like that.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2024-01-30, 08:30

Exactly.
I still don't understand how to marry the portable, multi-disk lifestyle with a NAS. However, I surprised myself this past weekend with a clear sign that this is something I've struggled with in the past: a years-old diagram I made showing multiple backup drives - it was a "study" that I'd made, trying to visualize a methodology.

You have probably noticed how people have certain obsessions - certain topics they circle back to in a conversation over the years. This is apparently one of mine


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