Airport Extreme with Hard Drive = Time Machine?

jtwrace · « **on:** 16 Aug 2012, 12:36 am »

Can I connect a HD to my Airport Extreme and have it backup my iTunes Library which is connected to my Mini and also my Mac Mini HD backed up?

If so, any good tutorials? I currently have a small jump drive (16GB) in the back of the Extreme that I use for file sharing but don't see anyway to make it automatic if I were to put a 3TB drive there.

Crimson · « **Reply #1 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 12:48 am »

Hook up a formatted drive to the Extreme, then configure it as your backup drive in Preferences > Time Machine. It's quite straight-forward, although I'd recommend connecting the HD to your machine directly if you have no plan on sharing it (the HD).

jtwrace · « **Reply #2 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 12:51 am »

Quote from: Crimson on 16 Aug 2012, 12:48 am

Hook up a formatted drive to the Extreme, then configure it as your backup drive in Preferences > Time Machine. It's quite straight-forward, although I'd recommend connecting the HD to your machine directly if you have no plan on sharing it (the HD).

Thanks.

I already have a backup at the Mini but I thought this could also be a nice way to backup as it goes. I use SuperDuper! for the other drives.

JohnR · « **Reply #3 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 06:38 am »

No personal experience with that but it may not be a great idea:

http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html

jtwrace · « **Reply #4 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 02:44 pm »

Quote from: JohnR on 16 Aug 2012, 06:38 am

No personal experience with that but it may not be a great idea:

http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html

Thanks. Suddenly a NAS might make more sense.

Crimson · « **Reply #5 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 03:04 pm »

Quote from: jtwrace on 16 Aug 2012, 02:44 pm

Thanks. Suddenly a NAS might make more sense.

Unless you want to spend a decent amount of money, consumer grade NAS isn't that great an option (been there, done that). What, exactly, are you trying to do? I use local drives for backup, which are then backed up to Crashplan+ (the family plan), which allows me to do incremental offsite (cloud) backups. The free version allows you to backup to your local machine (including external drives) as well as to other machines on your network. It's very easy to use and is quite robust.

WC · « **Reply #6 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 03:13 pm »

I run my iTunes library off a NAS. Just back up the NAS drive on a regular basis. Don't back up the music server computer since it only has applications, no data.

jtwrace · « **Reply #7 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 03:21 pm »

Quote from: Crimson on 16 Aug 2012, 03:04 pm

Unless you want to spend a decent amount of money, consumer grade NAS isn't that great an option (been there, done that). What, exactly, are you trying to do? I use local drives for backup, which are then backed up to Crashplan+ (the family plan), which allows me to do incremental offsite (cloud) backups. The free version allows you to backup to your local machine (including external drives) as well as to other machines on your network. It's very easy to use and is quite robust.

I keep local backups too using SuperDuper!. I'd like to have what you have.

I've never seen Crashplan+ before. I need to read about the initial backup as 2TB of music will take a long time to backup over online.

Anymore info you can provide woud be great. I'd agree, for $6 per month for the family plan it's a no brainer. The Synology NAS will be worn out by the time I reach the same cost with the online backup service.

jtwrace · « **Reply #8 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 03:27 pm »

They do have it!

http://support.crashplan.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/recipe/crashplan-seed-service-instructions.pdf

I just need to find the cost.

jtwrace · « **Reply #9 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 03:43 pm »

Crimson might be my hero.

If this works as well as I hope this is probably a no brainer. No dealing with networks and HD's that will break at some point.

https://www.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl

mgalusha · « **Reply #10 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 04:24 pm »

Crashplan works pretty well. We use CrashPlan Pro on our employee desktops and laptops, it has saved at least three users data when local drives fail, at they always will. They have had a few hiccups but overall we're happy with them.

jtwrace · « **Reply #11 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 04:27 pm »

Mike

Can it backup the whole drive or just certain parts?

JohnR · « **Reply #12 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 04:45 pm »

Odd that they give AUD prices for the drive. Looks like their currency convertor is broken anyway...

Quote from: jtwrace on 16 Aug 2012, 03:21 pm

I need to read about the initial backup as 2TB of music will take a long time to backup over online.

You may be not quite in luck there.

Quote

What should I do, if I have more than a TB to backup?
Fill up your 1TB drive full, then ship the drive back to us. We'll upload your backup to CrashPlan Central really super fast. Your backup will automatically continue, so that everything else selected for backup will be added to your archive. Still saving you a lot of time.

Crimson · « **Reply #13 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 04:58 pm »

Quote from: jtwrace on 16 Aug 2012, 04:27 pm

Mike

Can it backup the whole drive or just certain parts?

Yes.

It took about 4 weeks for the initial backup (around 2.5 TB with a 100 Mbps pipe), but since then it's gracefully unobtrusive. A cool feature I use is backing up my laptops both to the cloud AND to an attached backup drive on one of my desktop machines. It does it all.

jtwrace · « **Reply #14 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 05:06 pm »

Quote from: Crimson on 16 Aug 2012, 04:58 pm

Yes.

I'm sure it's not a bootable copy though. Right?

Crimson · « **Reply #15 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 05:14 pm »

Right. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable drives.

jtwrace · « **Reply #16 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 05:16 pm »

Quote from: Crimson on 16 Aug 2012, 05:14 pm

Right. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable drives.

OK. So I'd use CP+ for all my files (AIFF, photos, docs....) and the stil use my SuperDuper! for my bootable backups that I store.

I think this is worth it just for the music alone.

saeyedoc · « **Reply #17 on:** 16 Aug 2012, 05:46 pm »

I've been using a 2TB HD hooked up to an Airport Extreme to do Time Machine backups of 3 or 4 computers. Saved my butt the other day. I was deleting some music one of my kids put in my itunes library to make room for my music when itunes crashed. On restart most of my music was gone, although the files were still on my hard drive, I guess the list got corrupted. I just went into time machine and restored my itunes folder from prior to the crash, took a while, but all is well now. It's cool the way you can go to a time or date in the past and pull up whatever you want on finder and restore just those files you need.

jtwrace · « **Reply #18 on:** 17 Aug 2012, 06:42 pm »

Does anyone know if there is a way to actually stop CrashPlan from running in the background? I've never thought there was a difference sonically wtih some stuff running but I don't want to do something that makes me

Rocket_Ronny · « **Reply #19 on:** 17 Aug 2012, 07:00 pm »

Quote

No personal experience with that but

John: I am interested in your backup plan of attack. I see you use an 11" Mac Air and a portable HD. Is that it? Still happy with it, or do you get 13' lust?

I am looking at the Mac Airs, but I need a big HD. By the time you go for a 500 gig SSD you add another $800.00 to the air. Are you running a smaller SSD and using your portable in unison for extra room, or just as a backup.

What I do is have a big drive in my laptop - 1 terabite, then use time machine to backup onto another large drive that only gets plugged in to the mac and power when I do a backup. I also take the most important files and drag and drop them onto another backup drive.

Rocket_Ronny