12-07-2010, 07:13 AM

I'm having a lot trouble sorting this out on Google, so thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

I'm a photographer trying to get my backups in order. I just bought two Seagate Barracuda 2tb drives to go with a Thermaltake Black Duet to hold them.
I was planning to run Time Machine (because I won't have to think about it - my goal is to get my backups going in the background so I don't have to worry about them until the drives get full..) onto a RAID mirror using those two 2tb drives. But in my Googling I keep seeing threads titled "Time Machine vs. RAID", as though they are competing ideas.

What am I missing? I understand that Time Machine is a backup for USER error and RAID 1 is a backup for HARDWARE error, but why can't they be used simultaneously? (and I'm not particularly worried about user error, I just liked that T.M. automatically updates - the previous WD MyBook RAID I had I always dragged-and-dropped when I wanted to backup.)

Thank you to anybody who can help me get this backup plan off the ground!

12-07-2010, 09:50 AM

Time Machine and RAID are not competing ideas.
RAID in itself is not a backup solution and RAID can be used on top of your backup strategy.

There is no reason why you can't create a RAID 1 set of 2 TB and have Time Machine back up to that disk. Doing it that way, you will have that extra bit of resilience against a single backup disk hardware failure.

It won't protect you against data corruption though if your disk controller starts acting funny, but that is another story.

Cheers ... McBie

12-07-2010, 10:04 AM

You are on the right track with your USER ERROR and HARDWARE ERROR idea.
An all encompassing Backup Strategy will have "multiple" approaches/solutions to protecting data.
So a Time Machine Solution does help with user errors and you should have that solution as part of your backup strategy.
A Raid Solution does address the hardware errors and you should also have that solution as part of your backup strategy.
The concept that you maybe missing is that fact that they should be setup and operated as two separate solutions which are accomplishing two different parts of your backup strategy.
I would leave your Barracuda Drives in your Thermaltake as your RAID Solution and you are covered in the case of Hardware Failure.
Next I would buy a "separate" single drive for Time Machine operation and leave it on all the time and it will automatically backup your computers hard drive and help with accidental deletions and access to older versions of documents.
Lastly you should have an "off-site" solution in case of burglary, fire or flood. All your efforts to backup will be lost if a disaster strikes at your home.

I hope I have given you some food for thought,
DavidH

12-08-2010, 06:42 AM

Thank you both for your advice.
I think you've helped me narrow down my questions.

My dream is to have two backups of everything (mostly just photos & text docs) on my MacBook Pro HD. I don't want to have to drag-and-drop these things every week to remain updated.

Why is solely using Time Machine to do this not a good idea?

Assuming I do start with a RAID (0 or 1?) with my two Barracuda drives, can I set this up to automatically update or am I going to have to manually drag-and-drop? I Googled 'set up RAID on mac' and the links thoroughly confused me.

I'm sorry for being so dense on this - backup storage has plagued me for a long time and I'd really like to get it sorted. Thank you for your help.

12-08-2010, 07:41 AM

Forget RAID 0 .... It does not give you any resilience what so ever !
There is a sticky in the " switchers " forum about backups.... That should answer most of our questions I guess.

Cheers ... McBie