External Hard Drive & Backup

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Dannyeo

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Hi there,

After some advice from more experienced users.

I have a mid 2011 iMac (with 1x Thunderbolt port but not unfortunately USB 3.0 support).

I'm running out of space on the hard drive that came with the machine.

I'm after some advice on how I should setup my iMac and the external drive and a suitable backup solution.

I was thinking of purchasing 2 external hard drives (preferably Thunderbolt & at least 3TB). The first drive would be the main external drive for everday use, and the second drive would somehow backup the first drive.

There may well be a better solution to achieve this. But any thoughts on how to go about it would be appreciated. ;)

Budget is around £400-£600

Thanks
 
OK, Quick update. I think one solution maybe to purchase 2 external hard drives.

Drive A would be for everyday use and contain all my images/video and Drive B would be a backup of Drive A.

Drive A (would be a Thunderport device) and Drive B a normal USB 2.0 device.

I'd then configure Time Machine to do periodic backups of Drive A to Drive B.

(The logic with Drive A being a Thunderport device is that it would give me better speeds than USB 2.0)

Not sure if this would work?
 
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There's no reason that couldn't work, assuming you can make time machine back up one external drive to another. You might also want to look at using a NAS for longer term storage instead of a USB 2 drive, with 2 drives set to mirror each other. Data rates aren't necessarily impressive, but it is secure.
 
Thanks Toni. Just got off the phone to Apple support and the chap there was saying you couldn't use Time Machine to back up an external hard drive to another drive, so it looks like that option is out.

Yes, I'd go with a mirroring solution. Would be interested to hear of some NAS options available.

I've seen this option but aren't entirely happy that you only really get 1TB of storage. Then again I could always archive data off to one of the external drives.

Link to the one I was looking at is here: G Dock EV
 
That's quite a neat external drive system. If that was what you really wanted then I'd buy + 2 X 3TB drives and flog the 1TB drives. Depending on what they are they're probably worth £40 each.

On the NAS front, I have one of these, but it's slow: http://www.ebuyer.com/248760-d-link-dns-320-sharecenter-pulse-2-bay-no-disks-nas-enclosure-dns-320

This (a LOT more money) claims to have time machine support: http://www.ebuyer.com/505986-fujitsu-celvin-nas-server-q700-2-x-2tb-s26341-f103-l717

I'd be inclined to call or email the ebuyer to clarify whether it would do what you want. They've been good for me and I've been buying from them since about 2000.
 
Thanks ammo and Toni for your really helpful feedback. In the end I've gone with a 3 TB Lacie 2d External hard drive (with Thunderbolt). I'm going to buy a second disk in the near future and use third party software (Carbon Copy Cloner) to clone the first external disk.
 
Let me know how you get on with the Lacie. I was just about to post that TB external drives are rare and expensive.

These aren't cheap but would allow you to use cheaper and more available USB3 drives. http://www.macworld.com/article/116...bring_usb_3_0_to_the_mac_via_thunderbolt.html

BTW for what you describe, I'd favour Chronosync over Carbon Copy Cloner. I've used both and IMO Chronosync is more suited to this backup task.
 
Jonathan - so far happy with the Lacie. That's a great link to the Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 dock. Didn't realise they did these.

In terms of the Lacie the Tunderbolt port appears pretty quick, both in terms of getting images onto it and when working directly with with it in Lightroom. It's fairly quiet most of the time but does occasionally make a slight whirling sound when it springs into action after being asleep.

Will definitely look into Chronosync - thanks for the tip.
 
Thanks for the update, and glad you found something that worked.
 
Just had a look at the D2. Looks as pretty as any Lacies :)

It's a shame they didn't put 2 X TB ports so you can daisy chain but I believe there's a license fee to pay on each TB socket.

Would stop me buying one as I use both my TB ports for monitors.
 
I used two x 2TB drives.

One is a network drive connected to my router, the other is a USB one that slaves off a port on the Network drive.

I back up to the network drive and then overnight sync the network and the USB together so I have two independant back ups.

This worked out very cost effective.
 
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