Help with home office backup strategy
July 21, 2016 12:54 PM   Subscribe

I want to create a backup system for my home office, and I'm not sure how to go about it. Questions within.

Overall, I want to have redundant, easily accessible copies of important work files. I also want a backup image of my primary work machine so if it craps out, I could be good to go on a new machine without having to rebuild my entire OS and app environment.

Here's what I've got:
MacBook Air (250G)—Main work machine
MacBook Pro (250G)—Secondary work machine
Vortexbox (1T)—Music server and file backup
ioSafe SK3TB SOLO G3 (3T)—External hard drive
ChronoSync and ChronoAgent—Backup software

Here's what (I think) I want to do:
Back up a complete disk image of the MacBook Air to the Vortexbox
Back up data files from the MacBook Pro to the Vortexbox
Back up the entire Vortexbox to the IoSafe
Once a week, back up changed files from the Air and Pro to the Vortexbox
Once a month, back up the entire Vortexbox to the IoSafe

Here is my problem:
I realized after I bought it that the the IoSafe isn't designed to connect to the network. The Amazon reviews say that if you have a USB port on your router, you can connect the IoSafe to it. IoSafe says says that this is not supported. I tried it but am not sure if it worked or how to access the drive if it did. Another suggestion from the Amazon questions is to buy a diskless NAS and connect that to the router. Or could I connect the IoSafe directly to the Vortexbox?

My questions:
Can I make the IoSafe work for this scenario, and if so how to do so in the easiest and most cost-effective way?
Or should I sell the IoSafe and just back the Vortexbox directly to the cloud? If so, which service do you recommend?
Finally, Chronosync seems pretty complex to set up. What backup software do you recommend as simple to set up and hard to screw up?
posted by ottereroticist to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
To answer the first question: Yes, you can hook up the IoSafe (really, any USB drive) to a router with a usb port. Depending upon the router, it would be accessed in different ways. For instance, if you had an Apple router, you could use the built-in Time Machine to do incremental backups (you might just have to attach it locally to format it to HFS+ first).

Heck, since Time Machine mounts the drive, you could probably ALSO use SuperDuper or similar to do a full disk image backup on a schedule, as well. I guess the above answers the 'what foolproof/simple software/setup do you recommend?' question as well.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:32 PM on July 21, 2016


I think you have the right goals, but it seems like you might be making this harder than it has to be. I don't know anything about ioSafe or Chronosync or Vortextbox, but maybe my own setup will be helpful.

Here's what I do.

1. USE TIME MACHINE. It's always running. Don't skip this. I have USB hub I plug into at my desk that connects several things, including the TM drive. TM can save your butt not just from a catastrophic loss, but also from an OH SHIT I DIDN'T MEAN TO DELETE THAT situation.

2. Choose a cloud provider to cover critical data offsite -- your Documents, your Desktop, your Pictures, etc. I use CrashPlan, but I hear nice things about Mozy, Carbonite, and Backblaze, too.

3. I use SuperDuper periodically to create a complete, fully-bootable image of my primary machine. If I'm leaving town, I make sure this image is up to date, and I store it somewhere other than my home -- my wife's office, or a friend's house -- just to be extra safe.

4. All my current work is in my Dropbox account, which has lots of benefits. Chief among them is availability from my phone and iPad, but I also have that Dropbox account syncing to a backup computer. I have, in the past, had rando failures on machines, and been able to just switch laptops with effectively zero loss of productivity as a result. You could use Dropbox the same way, with your two machines, to keep work in sync between the two.

A watchword for me has always been redundancy: I want my data in lots of places. Right now, as I type this, the Word doc I'm supposed to be writing is saved locally, in my TimeMachine backup, in my Dropbox account online, and on my backup laptop -- all more or less automatically. If data is older, it gets covered even more -- for example, CrashPlan doesn't fire as often, so this file isn't saved there yet. It's also not on any of my SuperDuper images, because I haven't done one in a week or two. But you get the idea.

When I was robbed several years ago, they got my laptop but nothing else off my desk. I bought a new MBP and plugged it into my Time Machine drive, and in an hour or so I was right back where I'd started. Even my app windows were in the same place. It was amazing.
posted by uberchet at 3:05 PM on July 21, 2016


The "3-2-1" rule says you should also have a copy offsite (in the cloud). Have you chosen a provider for that yet? It may affect your other options.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:43 AM on July 25, 2016


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