Firstly, I thought of posting this in the Peripherals forum but as it is more around backup strategies, I thought it may be best here. Mods - please move if you think appropriate.
I have decided to kill off my RAID-5 array on my HTPC due to the fact I have bought another Mac Mini for the home theatre and that the pc was just huge, noisy and power hungry. Also, I am fully aware that redundancy does not equal backup.
I have taken out the four 250 GB drives from the RAID and spent some time doing some backups to these individually on the Quad G5. I have just been temporarily installing them in the second HD bay (all my drives are SATA).
This is my list of drives and what I am using there for;
- Drive A - Aperture Vault 1
- Drive B - Aperture Vault 2 (backing up my full library just the same as the 1st Vault) I am planning on updating the vaults after each major lot of new images.
- Drive C - iTunes folder (70 GB so far but quickly rising as I am re-encoding many of my CD's to loseless) (using Martian Lifeboat for auto backup). Refresh once a month.
- Drive D - OS Backup. I am using Lifeboat for this as well to backup my home folder (sans photos and music), System, Library and Applications folders. Firstly, is this going to be a decent way to backup the OS side? I know I probably won't be able to boot from this but that's fine. I would use CarbonCopyCloner if I wanted to do that. Am I going to miss and crucial (hidden?) files? My plan for "restoring" the OS if required is really just to reinstall the OS from the original discs and then move over the apps folder and things to the new OS install. Again, I would refresh the backup once a month.
In addition to these dedicated drives I also have:
- iDisk/.Mac - personal settings, bookmarks, Mail account settings, Address book, Calendar
- iPod - all my music (this will change as I get more lossless versions)
- External Lacie drive on HTPC - full music copy synced via Martian Slingshot. This is so that my HTPC mini and the mini hooked up to my normal LCD tv and main 2 channel system have access to all my music and playlists regardless whether the Quad is awake or not. Slingshot is great as it automatically keeps the iTunes library and playlists synced. I normally encode CDs on the Quad so this is important.
The reason I don't want to use CarbonCopyCloner is that I really like the automation that Lifeboat gives. All I have to do is insert the drive (we will come to that in a moment) and it will start to sync the info. Easy and it works.
I am happy that I now have my most important data backed up on two different drives along with the live versions on my Quad. I also keep one of the Aperture vaults at my mother-in-law's house.
My main issue is how to deal with connecting all these bare drives. The number of drives is going to grow and I would prefer not to buy more expensive external drives (I already have two Lacie D2 drives). Lacie D2 500GB drives are around 165 pounds over here whereas a bare 500GB drive is 110 pounds.
Secondly, I want to move to SATA connections due to the speed. I am surprised by the speed difference between SATA to SATA transfers and SATA to FW800.
I could buy external enclosures for each drive but that is going to cost me about £25-30 per drive. What I am looking at is an
IcyDock MB559 External removable drive enclosure.
I will initially hook this up by mating the second SATA HDD internal connection to an e-SATA PCI slot plate and then connecting with a shielded e-SATA cable to the enclosure. There are no in-expensive Mac compatible PCI-e SATA cards yet available here in the UK that I can see. There is the CalDigit 2 port adapter as listed on
Barefeats but that is not yet available over here.
I can get one for 45 quid over here but no one seems to sell additional drive trays at the moment. I am thinking that, looking at the manual, it will work fine just slotting the drive in the bare tray, hooking up the cables and there should be no need to screw it in as it will only be in there for a short amount of time (to do the backup).
Questions
- Does my backup solution sound alright?
- Is it risky to be handling the bare drives like this rather than having them in permanent enclosures?
- If I do go for this, what should I store the bare drives in when not in use (anti-static bags, boxes etc)?
- Should I not be so cheap and just buy proper external drives?
- Is it ok to use the existing additional SATA connection rather than a dedicated SATA card?
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