os x + ext drives + mirroring (?)
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- kerus0
tkmeister: that sounds like my scenario too, word
- tkmeister0
i also use ChronoSync. easy to use and pretty cheap. i only keep the current working holders on my internal drive and archive everything to 500gb ext drive. this way, my laptop is lean and mean. then i have another 500gb ext hd backup for that ext hd.
- kerus0
ok while we're at it....
firewire vs usb, ready? FIGHT!i cant handle super slow xfer speeds
does this mean i need to get some sort of "NAC" (???) thang?
- kerus0
i dont really need incremental backups honestly, i save versions as i go. this is more or less just in case of drive failure.
i have 1 dupe of my 500 gb "server" drive
and a dupe of my 160gb internal main driveand burning dvds as needed
i dont know what app i have at home, but it only backs up changed files. meaning you have crap you deleted as well, until you do a full clone blahh
i just dont want to have 329482348234 drives making all sorts of headache-inducing noise and a clusterfuck of cables
- stupidresponse0
or just use the backup software already on your machine with the rsync command!
- ribit0
Also in most backup software you'll see choices to Duplicate a folder or drive (which can also be setup on a schedule, and will scan just for the files that weren't previously added to the duplicate set), but you want to choose Backup, because Backup also keeps files that have been deleted from the main drive, whereas Duplicate will delete them from your mirror as well..
- ribit0
It sounds like you want to do incremental, scheduled backup, not mirroring/cloning. You need to use software like Retrospect (and there's a few good free ones too), and set it up to run a backup say every day at 3am. The software will backup every version of every file that is created or is changed, so you can jump back to any previous backed up version of any file or folder. (Mirroring doesn't give you this, it only protects against hardware failure, and if you accidently delete a file, it gets deleted from the mirror as well...)
I usually have say a 500GB drive setup to backup a 160GB laptop drive, because over years the backup set gets bigger than the original drive size (since it is storing every saved version of every file, and also the files that you deleted from the original drive). Drive space is cheap enough these days that it makes sense to just keep letting the backup set expand, and if you ever need that file from 3 years ago that you deleted 1 year ago... you've still got it...
- kerus0
rbit: do tell.. i was thinking of going along the lines of just having 2 identical external drives and setting one to clone the other every night
those would just be working backups anyways, most work would be on my laptop which i'll clone twice a day
- ribit0
just be careful not to confuse mirroring with backup
- ribit0
or setup RAID in Disk Utility for real time byte-level mirroring of the drive...
Depends what you want to do though.. You might want to use RAID to protect against hardware failure, or you might be better to use the second drive with backup software, to do incremental backups, so you then have a versioning system and can jump back to previous states of files (something RAID doesn't give you).
- kerus0
sick! thank you very much! im going to have an imac idling as my "file server" so this is perfect
- horton0
use a sync'ing application to mirror the drive contents.. you can automate on a schedule and if setup correct it will only update files that change.
i use ChronoSync:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.ph…
- kerus
i found a good deal for external drives locally.
2 x 500 gig for just under $200 totalis there an easy way to have 2 external drives hooked up but make one mirror the other?
thanks QBN tech support