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Everyone who has gone through the pain of losing a computer (eg Stolen), deleting a file by a mistake or harddrive crash always vows to change their ways and do regular backups. WIth Mac's release of Leopard they introduced the Time Machine . Time Machine is a great piece of software included for free with the operating system that allows you to backup your machine. Keep reading...
I looked at 3 options for using Time Machine (there may be more) and decided on purchasing an Airport Extreme (option 2 below) and so far it's been great:
| Options | Pros | Cons | | 1) USB Drive | - Cheap - you do not have to purchase anything else, just plug a USB drive.
- Fast - the direct connection between your Mac and the USB drive is pretty fast.
| - Have to physically/manually connect your USB drive for a computer
- You become lazy and do not connect the drive
- Difficult if you have a laptop you need to carry a portable USB drive and connect it to it.
- If you have multiple machines you can back them up to the same USB drive. This assume you can move you Mac or the USB drive so that they can be easily connected.
| 2) Airport Extreme
| - Works wirelessly - so if you're on your network your Mac just goes on its merry way backing itself up. Note Time Machine it does differential backups - so just backs up the changes every 20 mins or so
- Can connect your existing USB drives to an Airport extreme. This becomes a shared drive that you can then use for Time Machine on each of your Macs
- Can connect multiple USB drives to the Airport Extreme
- New Macs will backup using Wireless 802.11.n (draft) - basically it much faster than a traditional wireless 802.11.g network
- If backup hard drive crashes it can easily replaced
| - Wireless connection will be slower than a wired connection
- Was a bit tricky to setup (see below for some tips)
- If you deal with a lot of large files (eg Video) this may be too slow for your network
- Initial backup may be very slow - it's worth connecting via ethernet cable directly to your Airport Extreme
- Only works with Aiport Extrem or Time Capsule, so you need to think about replacing your exisiting router.
| 3) Time Capsule
| - A fairly similar option to the "Airport Extreme" option above. Time Capsule bundles in a hard drive.
- Should be greener (I think) as less external devices energy consumption - ie if your USB drives is self-powered it will require one extra socket than a timecapsule
- May be cheaper than purchasing a Airport Extreme and separate USB drive
- More compact
| - Do not like the bundled in harddrive. Ie cannot be easily upgraded or easily replaced. Prefer flexibility of Option #2
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The setup was a bit tricky. I did my initial backup via USB (I e I was in Option 1 mode until I bought the Airport Extreme) I guess I could have just set it to do it overnight. When I connected the USB drive to the Airport Extreme the backups seemed to work but I could not view them. I eventually worked out if I said stop backing up and set my backup disk to "None" and the re-added the disk hanging off my Airport Extreme, it all worked... and has been eversice. I am extremely happy with this solution. I have not actually done a restore but have checked my files are being backed up and can "preview" them on the Time Machine... so all should be OK (I hope) :-) At the end of the day, I forked out the extra cash, decided to replace my exisitng Airport Express (main wireless router) with an Aiport Extreme. In a nutshell, it works for two of us, it get's around our laziness. I would recommend it BTW, if you just have a single Mac (non Laptop) - Option 1 should be fine for you. |
