Using Time Capsule or Other Drive

[Chris_Mac_Pro]

Dear all,

I am the happy owner of a new macbook pro. I have transferred a lot of data onto it that I don’t want to lose. My laptop has the 320GB drive. I am therefore in the market for a back-up solution.

I am considering either Segate 320GB pocket drive with Firewire 800 connection or the Time Capsule
500GB.

Some questions spring to mind that I have not been able to find a direct answer to by searching

Using Time Capsule

Do you connect it by Ethernet the first time to get the master back-up otherwise will it take ages over Wi-Fi.

How long will it take to back-up say 20GB of changes through Time Machine over Wi-Fi?

A question for both options

How much larger should a Hard Disk used for Time Machine be than the data it’s backing up, I have some experience of ‘journal’ back-ups that used a great deal of space.

Time Capsule looks like a neat one box solution but I have seen some negative posts. It is a bit expensive when you look at the hard drives that you can get for the same money, although it provides the extra benefits of the Airport Extreme Base Station. At some point in the future I will need more disk space than the internal hard drive of my laptop, and then I will need to have another external drive as well as my Time Machine one.

In the UK costs break down like this:

Time Capsule 500GB £195
Time Capsule 1TB £322
Segate 320GB £130
Airport Extreme £116

Thanks

 

[bobtomay]

Yes, it would be to your advantage to use ethernet the first back up to a TC. I didn't, just ran the first one when I went to bed.

Have never timed it. TM backs up once an hour. Highly unlikely that you would have 20GB change in an hour period of time. Particularly if you exclude your downloads folder from the backups. Six months into using the TC, have never noticed any decrease in speed of my internet connection or of the machine due to it's backups. It seems to work quite well in the background.

The typical recommendation for a TM backup is twice the size of your internal drive. However, it really is an individual thing. My MBP is currently using 140GB and my TM backup is 285GB in size. My wife's MB is currently using 30GB and her TM backup is 33GB in size. Both after 6 months. As you can see I put a lot of stuff on my computer that does not remain there. The first 4 months I had it backing up my downloads folder also.

I have no complaints with the TC at this point. I also have another external backup where I keep a bootable backup using SuperDuper!. The TC does back up all your stuff. However, it won't keep you working if/when your internal drive fails until you get it replaced.

(And you're not going to find any piece of electronics without some negative posts.)