Another Time Machine query

[Anastasius]

@Dave

Unless the person you are aiming this at is going to take a copy of the backup offsite every night then IMO you are over-complicating things/over-egging the pudding/take your pick.

Rotating TM...yes of course it will but what does that get you over and above three rotating backups of SuperDuper ? One of which MUST be taken offsite each night. There are a zillion backup strategies online if you Google them but all - without fail (well, at least the proper ones) will factor in offline storage of the physical backup.


FF - just make sure that whatever cloud storage you use will handle the various arcane file conventions and inherent 'databases' built into many of Apple's programs. iCloud is probably OK...but I've not looked at it in depth. But things like Dropbox for backing up your iPhoto library are a no-no, for example.

[Dave2002]

Why not simply go out and buy the best RAID external drive that you can ? One with hot-swappable drives. Problem solved.

A couple of reasons. One is cost - I think it would cost about £500 to get "the best" - though cheaper versions are available. Another is format/software compatibility. Love it or hate it, TM does backup some features of Mac OS X which the Apple machines understand. I don't know if running from a RAID would necessarily provide a system which would look to the Apple machines as if they are in fact Apple drives, so some software might not work. Lastly, do most RAID systems work off ethernet LANs? If so, they would perhaps not operate to the same level of performance as (say) USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt.

If privacy and confidentiality were of low importance, then using iCloud could be as cheap an option as any, and might provide a degree of resilience, though I have heard of failures even here, in some of Apple's earlier attempts to provide cloud storage.

I have been considering RAID systems (e.g Drobo, Synology, ...), but I don't think they are quite as simple as you perhaps think they are. For some applications they should be fine, but perhaps not all. I am still trying to figure whether the particular system and use I am investigating falls into such a simple category, or whether RAIDs would not, in fact, overcome all the problems.

[french frank]

FF - just make sure that whatever cloud storage you use will handle the various arcane file conventions and inherent 'databases' built into many of Apple's programs. iCloud is probably OK...but I've not looked at it in depth. But things like Dropbox for backing up your iPhoto library are a no-no, for example.

I don't bother to back up my photies anyway except via my ordinary computer back-ups.

I cull most things (CDs, clothes &c - not books) if I haven't used them for a while My stuff isn't that valuable to me! So I shouldn't even be commenting