Offsite backup options

[Narked Diver]

Hi there,

Currently my Mac mini and it's external HDs are backed up to a time machine on my time capsule

I would like to make an incremental back up of my time machine once a week to an external HD that is stored in a remote location

As I normally spend my weekends away from where my Mac mini is located I was thinking of installing maverick server on my Mac mini and setting up a VPN and then logging in from my laptop in my remote location and using something like CCC or super duper to update the back up on the remote HD

My questions are:

Would this work?
Would I be able to use the copied time machine back-up to recover to a new mac in an emergency?
Is installing the server software a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?
Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[Cubytus]

Well for me it isn't too clear what is "remote" and what is local. Assuming the Mini is considered remote, you could always use a simple rsync script to backup to the Mini from the laptop. Described here in simple terms (Google Translate may help you).

Recovering remotely may be more difficult: during installation of a new copy of Mac OS X, you aren't provided with any option to connect a VPN, and won't be able to reach the server as if it were on the LAN.

You can never be too safe when it comes to backups, and boils down to what you're ready to lose in a worst case scenario. What would happen when you come back home, and all Macs and drive get stolen? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of remote backup? Considering you're away two days out of seven, wouldn't it be simpler to rotate Time Machine backups, one when you're away, one when you're home?

 

[Narked Diver]

Thank you for your reply

Sorry for not being clear with what is remote and what is local

I consider my Mac mini as my local machine - it stores all my photos, music, etc and is backed up via time machine to a time capsule so at the moment switching time machine backup disks would be a little tricky

I am in my remote location with my laptop 2 days a week

The scenario you describe is exactly the one I am trying to prevent so I want to keep a copy of my time machine back up in my remote location

I would prefer to keep the copy in my remote location permenantly for a couple of reasons

Firstly because I am using the time capsule as my time machine rather than a USB hard drive

Secondly I'm not sure that I can rely on myself to keep switching over the hard drives containing the time machine backup every weekend

This is why I thought about connecting to my Mac mini from remote location and doing an incremental back up of the contents of the time capsule disk to an external hard drive connected to my laptop

I hope this makes it clearer as to what I am trying to achieve

 

[noremacyug]

Offsite backup options

I've thought about doing this as well. I'm currently running my mini as a htpc and a server of which offers time machine backup to my MBA. I want to simply have the time machine backups pushed to a online backup service. I've used a few backup services in the past, carbonite, mozy, backblaze, spideroak, a service from Microsoft, Dropbox and crash plan are the ones that I can think of. If you go that route I'd definitely go for one that offers unlimited capacity such as crash plan or backblaze. If you need to recover something, use your time machine backup. If that fails you have your online service to get that sparse bundle or whatever back from. I see no reason this won't work. You can either download them yourself, or they will send you media (for a fee) with your data on it.

Crashplan also offers the ability to backup to a friends computer. So, if you have a trustworthy buddy with good bandwidth and preferably an always on computer you could drop off a external drive there, setup crashplan and backup to your drive. You could return the favor and do the same for them if you desire. This option is free with crashplan, no service required.

 

[Narked Diver]

Crashplan also offers the ability to backup to a friends computer. So, if you have a trustworthy buddy with good bandwidth and preferably an always on computer you could drop off a external drive there, setup crashplan and backup to your drive. You could return the favor and do the same for them if you desire. This option is free with crashplan, no service required.

Thanks - for the suggestions - this one in particular sounds like an option - I have several friends who could be interested in a mutual backup solution like this - I will have to investigate further

 

[sevoneone]

Thanks - for the suggestions - this one in particular sounds like an option - I have several friends who could be interested in a mutual backup solution like this - I will have to investigate further

CrashPlan's home service also has a service where you can send a clone of your current backup in on an external and they will use it to seed your first backup so it doesn't take a week to complete.

 

[Cubytus]

Well I didn't imply that you had to switch drives every weekend. Merely keeping the hard drives / Time Capsule in their fixed place, and connecting them as you move the MacBook?

Would a network-connected HDD such as a MyBook Live do the job of remote backup? Since it's a Linux inside, surely you could set up a simple rsync script on the MacBook and have it backup to the MBL wherever it is. I am not sure how it would interact with Time Machine, though.