Where do I put my bits?
January 1, 2015 8:42 AM Subscribe
Help me come up with an external storage solution. I want to move a large amount of data off my computer, but also start performing regular backups of the computer, as well as the migrated data, if possible.
I recently upgraded to a new MacbookPro with a hard drive smaller than what was in my last machine. I have ~400 GB of data (video and audio) that I would like to migrate to an external drive. Additionally, I do not back up my data. I realize that I have been very lucky not to have suffered data loss. I want to start backing up on a regular basis.
So, I really have two goals:
1) Migrate large amount of data to external drive.
2) Start using OS X's Time Machine feature or similar to implement regular backups. Ideally, the data from #1 would be backed up too.
I know I'm not the first person to have had this problem. I would love to get recommendations on what I should do. Specific product recommendations would be appreciated too.
I recently upgraded to a new MacbookPro with a hard drive smaller than what was in my last machine. I have ~400 GB of data (video and audio) that I would like to migrate to an external drive. Additionally, I do not back up my data. I realize that I have been very lucky not to have suffered data loss. I want to start backing up on a regular basis.
So, I really have two goals:
1) Migrate large amount of data to external drive.
2) Start using OS X's Time Machine feature or similar to implement regular backups. Ideally, the data from #1 would be backed up too.
I know I'm not the first person to have had this problem. I would love to get recommendations on what I should do. Specific product recommendations would be appreciated too.
Simplest and easiest solution would be to look at one of Western Digital's 1TB or 2TB portable disk drives. They have built-in hardware encryption and support OSX Time Machine. One nice thing about the "portable" drive is that there's just one USB 3.0 cable - no separate power cable to deal with. I haven't checked prices recently but 1TB was about $80US last month. I think 2TB is maybe $110US? It pays to shop around. Note that you may need to reformat the drive for OSX - it's easy to do and there are many web pages that will talk you through it.
posted by doctor tough love at 9:03 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by doctor tough love at 9:03 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
You want an external 2.5" USB3 drive. I like the Seagate 2TB ones right now because they are super thin. 2.5" is important; they don't require power like bigger 3.5" drives. USB3 is also important, USB2 is too slow (although if your Mac is older and only has USB2 it is acceptable. Don't mess around with Firewire or Thunderbolt.)
When you get the disk, reformat it with MacOS Extended (Journaled), case insensitive. (Ignore any software bundled with the hard drive.) Use Time Machine to back up to this drive. You can also move your 400 GB of data to the external drive.
If you want to be clever, make two partitions on the external drive. One roughly 2-3x the storage on your laptop, for Time Machine backups. The other for your external files. Partitioning is the only way to limit the size of Time Machine backups; otherwise it grows to fill the whole disk and is a PITA. Two partitions is not essential.
Your Time Machine backups are your rescue plan if you lose your laptop or the drive in it fails. You should also consider what you'd do if your house burns down and you lose both the laptop and the external drive at the same time. For that risk you want offsite backup. CrashPlan is my favorite offsite service.
You mentioned wanting to back up the 400 GB on the external drive. Time Machine can backup from two disks with just a bit of fiddling. You will want a second external drive. The other option is offsite backup, but 400GB is a lot.
posted by Nelson at 9:21 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
When you get the disk, reformat it with MacOS Extended (Journaled), case insensitive. (Ignore any software bundled with the hard drive.) Use Time Machine to back up to this drive. You can also move your 400 GB of data to the external drive.
If you want to be clever, make two partitions on the external drive. One roughly 2-3x the storage on your laptop, for Time Machine backups. The other for your external files. Partitioning is the only way to limit the size of Time Machine backups; otherwise it grows to fill the whole disk and is a PITA. Two partitions is not essential.
Your Time Machine backups are your rescue plan if you lose your laptop or the drive in it fails. You should also consider what you'd do if your house burns down and you lose both the laptop and the external drive at the same time. For that risk you want offsite backup. CrashPlan is my favorite offsite service.
You mentioned wanting to back up the 400 GB on the external drive. Time Machine can backup from two disks with just a bit of fiddling. You will want a second external drive. The other option is offsite backup, but 400GB is a lot.
posted by Nelson at 9:21 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
In addition to the above advice you can use SuperDuper! to periodically create a bootable clone of your internal hard drive. You will need a dedicated external drive to do this. The backups are incremental so they are relatively quick after the first one. This is a good complement to Time Machine.
posted by alms at 9:28 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by alms at 9:28 AM on January 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what Nelson recommended, but I would be hesitant to partition the outboard drive with one partition for your external files and one for Time Machine. If the drive fails you've lost both your external files and their backup. Go with two different drives, one for external files and one for Time Machine. If you get an additional drive for Time Machine you can keep one offsite and rotate them every now and then.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 9:38 AM on January 1, 2015
posted by BillMcMurdo at 9:38 AM on January 1, 2015
Response by poster: I won't need the data for editing. Just occasional access for the most part. I am also curious in NAS solutions. Any suggestions in that area?
posted by prunes at 10:16 AM on January 1, 2015
posted by prunes at 10:16 AM on January 1, 2015
A two-bay Synology NAS might work for you: one drive for your media (which the NAS can make available over the network in a variety of ways) and one for your Time Machine backups, with everything pushed up to Crashplan as your house-burns down backup of last resort.
Not the cheapest, doesn't give you ideal redundancy, and Time Machine over a network can be a bit flaky, but I'm not a massive fan of backup options for portable computers that rely upon external drives, because it's very easy to forget to plug them in, not be in a situation where it's convenient to do so, or have them knocked about. If your laptop is permanently stationed at a desk, then that's less of a problem. If your video/audio is mostly commercial, then the lack of redundancy is also less of a problem than, say, dealing with a large personal photo collection where there are no other copies in the whole world.
posted by holgate at 10:48 AM on January 1, 2015
Not the cheapest, doesn't give you ideal redundancy, and Time Machine over a network can be a bit flaky, but I'm not a massive fan of backup options for portable computers that rely upon external drives, because it's very easy to forget to plug them in, not be in a situation where it's convenient to do so, or have them knocked about. If your laptop is permanently stationed at a desk, then that's less of a problem. If your video/audio is mostly commercial, then the lack of redundancy is also less of a problem than, say, dealing with a large personal photo collection where there are no other copies in the whole world.
posted by holgate at 10:48 AM on January 1, 2015
A backup plan that doesn't include some sort of offsite copy of your data isn't a great backup plan. A fire or a burglary is all it takes to ruin things. So definitely go with CrashPlan or Backblaze or one of the other 'cloud' backup solutions in addition to your external drive or NAS.
I have a basic 2-drive Buffalo NAS on my local network. It's very reliable and uses relatively little power (much less than a repurposed PC, which is what a lot of people use).
Also, I really recommend keeping a copy of all your logins, passwords, banking details, bookmarks, email settings and other critical stuff on a thumb drive attached to your keyring, protected with KeePass or one of the other password databases. SanDisk make some nice little metal-encased drives that are ideal for the purpose.
posted by pipeski at 10:49 AM on January 1, 2015
I have a basic 2-drive Buffalo NAS on my local network. It's very reliable and uses relatively little power (much less than a repurposed PC, which is what a lot of people use).
Also, I really recommend keeping a copy of all your logins, passwords, banking details, bookmarks, email settings and other critical stuff on a thumb drive attached to your keyring, protected with KeePass or one of the other password databases. SanDisk make some nice little metal-encased drives that are ideal for the purpose.
posted by pipeski at 10:49 AM on January 1, 2015
I'm very happy with my own solution. I have a Macbook Pro with two 1 TB USB harddrives. Harddrive one is my working disk, because the MBP internal drive would quickly become too full. The second harddrive is solely for the purpose of making backups. There are things on both the first external drive and the internal drive that I simply want to still have if things go wrong. So I have a cron script running at all times that backs things up to the second external drive. It has entries like these:
# Backup all my own little experiments.
26 6,12 * * * rsync -arutxq /Volumes/440Hz/Own /Volumes/Backups/Backups/ &> /dev/null
This means twice a day a directory "Own" on the drive with the label "440Hz" is backed up to the second drive, and only the new stuff is copied. To create such a script, you enter:
crontab -e
...in the OSX terminal.
Apart from that, I also vote for Crashplan. I tried a lot of services, read about them, etc. Crashplan stands out as the most comfortable and easy to use solution. Their app runs in the background, and it backs up stuff via the internet. You make a list of things you want to see stored on their servers. They even retain versions. If a directory you once backed up no longer exists, the backup is still on their servers. The app is very non intrusive. You can have a free app on your mobile device. Sure it is slow as hell to backup larger files to the internet, but Crashplan takes care of it in the background and files are copied in parts if needed. You can even get a nice report when everything is backed up again. Anyways, I know I sleep better knowing the movies I made for my child are safe and sound somewhere, even in case our house burns to the ground.
posted by hz37 at 11:43 AM on January 1, 2015
# Backup all my own little experiments.
26 6,12 * * * rsync -arutxq /Volumes/440Hz/Own /Volumes/Backups/Backups/ &> /dev/null
This means twice a day a directory "Own" on the drive with the label "440Hz" is backed up to the second drive, and only the new stuff is copied. To create such a script, you enter:
crontab -e
...in the OSX terminal.
Apart from that, I also vote for Crashplan. I tried a lot of services, read about them, etc. Crashplan stands out as the most comfortable and easy to use solution. Their app runs in the background, and it backs up stuff via the internet. You make a list of things you want to see stored on their servers. They even retain versions. If a directory you once backed up no longer exists, the backup is still on their servers. The app is very non intrusive. You can have a free app on your mobile device. Sure it is slow as hell to backup larger files to the internet, but Crashplan takes care of it in the background and files are copied in parts if needed. You can even get a nice report when everything is backed up again. Anyways, I know I sleep better knowing the movies I made for my child are safe and sound somewhere, even in case our house burns to the ground.
posted by hz37 at 11:43 AM on January 1, 2015
Response by poster: @hz37:
How do you access the external drives? Do you leave them both plugged in all the time so that the Cron script can run? Or are they accessed via the network / other?
posted by prunes at 11:47 AM on January 1, 2015
How do you access the external drives? Do you leave them both plugged in all the time so that the Cron script can run? Or are they accessed via the network / other?
posted by prunes at 11:47 AM on January 1, 2015
Response by poster: Also, I see that Crashplan bills itself as unlimited storage. Would this include the 400 some GB that I'd be storing on an external drive too?
posted by prunes at 12:25 PM on January 1, 2015
posted by prunes at 12:25 PM on January 1, 2015
I've got 50 GB on CrashPlan and it's no big deal. The big question is how long it will take to upload all that, which depends on your network speed. If those 400 GB aren't changing, your ISP doesn't cap monthly bandwidth, and you are patient it should work. This CrashPlan FAQ is helpful including estimating backup time.
BTW, the reason CrashPlan isn't your only backup time is it takes a long time to download the files from them again. If your laptop dies you want your files right away, not in weeks. With a TimeMachine backup you can just plug it in to another computer and be up and running.
posted by Nelson at 2:00 PM on January 1, 2015
BTW, the reason CrashPlan isn't your only backup time is it takes a long time to download the files from them again. If your laptop dies you want your files right away, not in weeks. With a TimeMachine backup you can just plug it in to another computer and be up and running.
posted by Nelson at 2:00 PM on January 1, 2015
I'm not a massive fan of backup options for portable computers that rely upon external drives, because it's very easy to forget to plug them in, not be in a situation where it's convenient to do so, or have them knocked about.
I agree - that's a big reason i mentioned getting a "portable" external disk that uses only a single USB 3.0 cable - dealing with a second cable for power tends to push things just past the "threshold of convenience".
Also, sometimes I'll attach the drive to the computer (or desk) with Velcro. I've done this on quite a few occasions and (knock on wood) I've never had a drive fail on me.
A NAS solution would be nice (and in fact that's what I use at home) but I think it would be cost-prohibitive for what sounds like maybe 1-1.5TB.
posted by doctor tough love at 2:12 PM on January 1, 2015
I agree - that's a big reason i mentioned getting a "portable" external disk that uses only a single USB 3.0 cable - dealing with a second cable for power tends to push things just past the "threshold of convenience".
Also, sometimes I'll attach the drive to the computer (or desk) with Velcro. I've done this on quite a few occasions and (knock on wood) I've never had a drive fail on me.
A NAS solution would be nice (and in fact that's what I use at home) but I think it would be cost-prohibitive for what sounds like maybe 1-1.5TB.
posted by doctor tough love at 2:12 PM on January 1, 2015
@prunes, I leave them plugged in. But sometimes I take the MBP with me; no big deal: rsync just silently fails and tries it again next time. Crashplan too; it does only what it can do. As for the speed to upload/download: think about the alternatives. I can't see many that are better. Or any for that matter.
posted by hz37 at 2:13 PM on January 1, 2015
posted by hz37 at 2:13 PM on January 1, 2015
depending how you use the laptop there's another option for offsite backup. I have a MacBook Air that commutes with me to and from work, and I use both network time machine at home and a 2.5" external USB3 drive on my desk in the office (time machine is happy to do backups to both of these, whichever one it can find at the time).
as holgate said, network time machine is a bit flaky, so every month or so it freaks out and has to rebuild the backup from scratch. this isn't a problem for me, since I only care if the laptop dies at the same time, and worst case I've got a day or so old backup at work.
this doesn't cover your 400GB external storage requirement, but it's worth keeping in mind that your offsite backup can just be another time machine device if there's somewhere else you often have the laptop.
posted by russm at 12:38 AM on January 2, 2015
as holgate said, network time machine is a bit flaky, so every month or so it freaks out and has to rebuild the backup from scratch. this isn't a problem for me, since I only care if the laptop dies at the same time, and worst case I've got a day or so old backup at work.
this doesn't cover your 400GB external storage requirement, but it's worth keeping in mind that your offsite backup can just be another time machine device if there's somewhere else you often have the laptop.
posted by russm at 12:38 AM on January 2, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by holgate at 9:01 AM on January 1, 2015