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What do you use for time machine?

R

Ravich

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 20, 2009
773
0
Portland, OR
My time machine drive is currently internal, but I need more internal space for SSDs, and I figure having the backup inside my mac pro kind of defeats the purpose of it being a backup.


Any recommendations in particular other than whatever baseline USB2 external WD drive is on sale? Is it recommended to set it up with an external enclosure and a caviar green?
 
Ravich said:
My time machine drive is currently internal, but I need more internal space for SSDs, and I figure having the backup inside my mac pro kind of defeats the purpose of it being a backup.


Any recommendations in particular other than whatever baseline USB2 external WD drive is on sale? Is it recommended to set it up with an external enclosure and a caviar green?
Click to expand...

What kind of ports do you have available on your Mac?
 
Just about anything works.

My Mac Pro time machine is a couple gen old 2TB Time Capsule. My mini uses a 2TB Caviar Black stuck in a NewerTech Voyager. My MBP uses a Mercury Elite Pro dual drive box with two 1TB Caviar Blacks. One is for time machine while the other is for the occasional boot drive clone (in case the MBP SSD blows up).

Other than the Time Capsule the time capsule drives are connected by FW800. USB2 really sucks. As fate would have it the USB3 capable Voyager is plugged into a USB2-only mini and the Elite Pro for the USB3 MBP only has USB2, FW800 and eSATA. Such is life!
 
Ravich said:
My time machine drive is currently internal, but I need more internal space for SSDs, and I figure having the backup inside my mac pro kind of defeats the purpose of it being a backup.

Any recommendations in particular other than whatever baseline USB2 external WD drive is on sale? Is it recommended to set it up with an external enclosure and a caviar green?
Click to expand...

The only companies making hard drives any more are WD, Seagate, and to a lesser extent Toshiba. My thought is it makes some sense to get an external drive from the same company that makes the drive itself since they know what's in the firmware. So that narrows it down to just pick whatever size external WD or Seagate desktop drive you want.

Either this Seagate or this WD model.
 
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Ravich said:
...
Any recommendations in particular other than whatever baseline USB2 external WD drive is on sale? Is it recommended to set it up with an external enclosure and a caviar green?
Click to expand...
If you prefer Western Digital drives, get the drive and a separate external enclosure. Seagate's external hard drives are fine. Also, you want USB 3 for future compatibility.

Have you thought about maybe getting a USB 3 card for your Mac Pro?
 
I am a fan of Western Digital drives. If you want an internal Time Machine, that's a recommendation from me. As far as external goes, I use a G-DRIVE, made by G-Technology. It's a 2TB, has great features on the enclosure. I have an older model, but newer ones come with Thunderbolt, etc. Mine has FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and eSATA 3GB/s. It's been running strong for almost five years, and is very well built, full aluminum enclosure. They're pricey for the storage you're getting, but it's worth every penny imho.
 
Looks like I'll be getting a WD drive with an external enclosure then. Any external enclosure recommendations in that case? Features to keep an eye out for, things to avoid, etc?

Thanks for the advice.
 
Ravich said:
My time machine drive is currently internal, but I need more internal space for SSDs, and I figure having the backup inside my mac pro kind of defeats the purpose of it being a backup.


Any recommendations in particular other than whatever baseline USB2 external WD drive is on sale? Is it recommended to set it up with an external enclosure and a caviar green?
Click to expand...

Since no one has mentioned it get pci-e card for them SSDs you plan to add if you have the expansions slots available. This will allow you to get the full speed using them as opposed to putting them on the slower SATA2 bus that the internal connections have.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Since no one has mentioned it get pci-e card for them SSDs you plan to add if you have the expansions slots available. This will allow you to get the full speed using them as opposed to putting them on the slower SATA2 bus that the internal connections have.
Click to expand...
I actually was wondering about that, since I do have PCIe real estate available since I only have a graphics card at the moment, but I havent made a thread asking for help yet. What specifically will I need in terms of purchases. Just a PCIe card and a SATA3 cable?

Any brand type stuff to be aware of? Also, since I only have the default graphics card that my (2009) mac pro came with, what sort of bottle neck am I looking at?
 
Ravich said:
I actually was wondering about that, since I do have PCIe real estate available since I only have a graphics card at the moment, but I havent made a thread asking for help yet. What specifically will I need in terms of purchases. Just a PCIe card and a SATA3 cable?

Any brand type stuff to be aware of? Also, since I only have the default graphics card that my (2009) mac pro came with, what sort of bottle neck am I looking at?
Click to expand...

Other than making sure it is a bootable card no real catch to it. The SSD mounts directly onto the pci-e card no cables are necessary. Don't know if you can still find them but I went with this below I only have the one SSD in it right now but can put another in some time in the future, takes up two slots though. There are single card slot ones out there that people use like the X2 no clue on the spelling for the manufacturer. Some like mine can take a few extra seconds at boot time to get recognized but that is more than made up by the reduced time it takes get to the desktop vs a mechanical drive. Oh one more idea for extra hd room is the dvd bay you can put two drives in there if you use 5.25 to 3.5 drive adapters in the case of a mechanical drive. With my SSD I had in there I just put down anti-static bag and let it lie there as it was all enclosed no circuit board exposed to get a short from.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/261280942962?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
 
If you go external, buy two and rotate on and off site. With identical external drives, you won't have to unplug the power supply from the wall, and will have a spare if the power supply dies (as seems common with externals). Make rotating easy and provides peace of mind if catastrophe strikes. I use two Seagate bare-bones externals.
 
DPUser said:
If you go external, buy two and rotate on and off site. With identical external drives, you won't have to unplug the power supply from the wall, and will have a spare if the power supply dies (as seems common with externals). Make rotating easy and provides peace of mind if catastrophe strikes. I use two Seagate bare-bones externals.
Click to expand...

Great advice. I do the same.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Other than making sure it is a bootable card no real catch to it. The SSD mounts directly onto the pci-e card no cables are necessary. Don't know if you can still find them but I went with this below I only have the one SSD in it right now but can put another in some time in the future, takes up two slots though. There are single card slot ones out there that people use like the X2 no clue on the spelling for the manufacturer. Some like mine can take a few extra seconds at boot time to get recognized but that is more than made up by the reduced time it takes get to the desktop vs a mechanical drive. Oh one more idea for extra hd room is the dvd bay you can put two drives in there if you use 5.25 to 3.5 drive adapters in the case of a mechanical drive. With my SSD I had in there I just put down anti-static bag and let it lie there as it was all enclosed no circuit board exposed to get a short from.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/261280942962?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
Click to expand...
can I get the card through newegg? What are the specific parameters I'm looking for so that I dont have to sift through video cards and whatnot?
 
Unless someone has a recommendation for a particularly great external enclosure, I might just alternate 2 seagate external HDDs as someone recommended. The only thing is that perhaps I can have some influence over how much noise the external drive makes if I get to pick the enclosure.

Still curious about what specific verbiage I use to find the kind of PCIe card that will hook directly up to 1 or 2 SSDs.
 
I use a Drobo served on the network. It's not the fastest, but I care about the redundancy and flexibility more.
 
Are you using both ODD bays? If not, you could move your SSDs into an optical bay and connect them to a cheap SATA III PCIe card so you have all the 3.5" bays open for HDDs.

Everyone has their way of backup, but fwiw I use Time Machine as more of a history of file change undos than as a backup. Thus I have one WD Green drive dedicated to Time Machine, and an external USB 3.0 Dual 3TB RAID 1 enclosure for backups (located in another room on another circuit). I also have a mess of WD Passports for archiving older stuff - I got a killer deal on them, otherwise there are cheaper options.

The RAID enclosure is a Cavalry I got off eBay for $25. I swapped out the stock fan for a Noctua fan so it's dead quiet now, but stock it's rather loud. It's been rock solid running two Toshiba/Hitachi 3TB 7200 RPM HDDs. RAID enclosure manufacturers generally recommend non-green drives due to their aggresive sleep and head parking.
 
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Ideally, you want off-site backup in addition to local backup, but I understand that's not realistic for everybody. I always recommend your Time Machine HD being external, if for no other reasons, if something should happen to your computer or home, heaven forbid, you can at least grab the drive and go.
 
Just an idea for offsite backup that I use: you can get the CrashPlan software for free, and can use it (also for free) to back up to "a friend's" computer. It's designed just to back up data folders, not system stuff nor can it make a bootable volume, but to get your most important data into another location for safety it's tops.

If you're not familiar with it, it encrypts and streams your data in a proprietary format to the cloud (paid option) or to another system. The software is, I guess, "peer to peer" and each installation has a unique code that you send to others and they can use to back up to you.

A colleague and I started with 3TB external drives and seeded them locally, then swapped them out and now overnight we sync up our most important data to each other's server. If disaster strikes those files are just a quick drive and then a restore away.

You can use the paid cloud option, sure, if you're willing to pay for it and to endure the rather lengthy initial seed time. They do offer higher-cost options involving shipping a physical drive back and forth for those who need the short turnaround.

Just a thought.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Only place I ever seen it was on Ebay searching on "pci-e ssd card mac" which I just did again and here it is live on sale at the moment 3 left.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Apple-Mac-Pr...LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2584ed455f&_uhb=1
Click to expand...
I see. That seems like a reasonable price, but I'd like to educate myself and understand what exactly it is that I'm buying and why it wouldnt be available on newegg? Is it just that mac pro compatible models arent made by most manufacturers, or is there something else I'm missing?
 
3rd gen time capsule for OSX and windows home server 2011 for my bootcamps soon to be Server 2012 essentials. Both hooked up together to a UPS.

On a TC tangent if anyone knows through experience what's the largest HDD you can retrofit to a third gen model cos upgrading to a larger hard disk is in my plans next year..
 
Ravich said:
I see. That seems like a reasonable price, but I'd like to educate myself and understand what exactly it is that I'm buying and why it wouldnt be available on newegg? Is it just that mac pro compatible models arent made by most manufacturers, or is there something else I'm missing?
Click to expand...

Well places like Newegg mostly only stock major brand names their sales agents push to get stocked. Been that way for years most times if you want third party no brand name recognition merchandise it is not available at retailers.
 
I dont understand why the item I'm looking for isnt manufactured by those brand names. Is what I'm buying only compatible with Mac Pros?
 
Ravich said:
I dont understand why the item I'm looking for isnt manufactured by those brand names. Is what I'm buying only compatible with Mac Pros?
Click to expand...

They are but by what would be called minor manufacturers that can be hit and miss for a retailer to stock some will some won't. OS compatibility is determined by the chipset controlling the hardware and the operating systems support for that chipset. Since OS X support is even lower on a manufacturers support list than even Linux it seems, most times you can pretty much be confident in that if it works on a Mac it will work in them unless it is an OS specific device. Like the Griffen FireWave that I use for my surround sound not a hope in hell of it working in Linux or Windows.

Edit: Left out yes it should work in Windows as that was stated in the ad where I bought it.
 
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