I think these questions are general enough that I can answer on-list. Hope it’s not too overwhelming. Details below:
On 27 Nov 2015, at 21:36, Andrew Lamanche <ioani...@me.com> wrote: > On 27 Nov 2015, at 08:21, Sabahattin Gucukoglu <listse...@me.com> wrote: >> Time Machine should work with a suitably configured NAS with a recent >> version of netatalk running. It is not my preferred route—I’d much rather >> access the NAS directly over the network and have the NAS performing >> snapshots either to a RAID or an external cloud storage service—but it >> should work just fine. > > How can such snapshots be achieved? Can you point me to a source of > knowledge on this one? Can your mac be restored from such snapshots? I > already take copies of entire system with Superduper: is this what you mean? > Can a restoration after a possible disaster be achieved from Superduper image? I’m afraid that’s entirely dependent on your NAS. Time Capsule has an archive function that writes its internal drive to another, USB-connected one. My NAS is built by hand with software commonly in NAS devices; that uses a combination of tarsnap online backup and local rsync differential local backups. What your NAS will do is something you need to learn from your NAS manufacturer, but either online or offline NAS backup features are now fairly common, in addition to various RAID levels that provide natural redundancy on the disks themselves. If your NAS doesn’t have these features, then you simply have to provide them manually from your computer instead: multiple drives, an online cloud service, and snapshots with Time Machine or Arq. But putting them on the NAS makes this centralised and relieves local clients of the job, for a very small sacrifice in convenience and with much better portability across platforms which simply need to support a network drive mapping. Just make sure you end up with at least three copies of your data, including the one on your Mac. The one missing feature with centralising around a NAS is bootability of complete system backups. SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner will create single images that you can certainly use to boot, either directly from a disk or network backup image that is later restored, but there is no past history of files. These tools are often used together with Time Machine, which creates complete and snapshotted backups, but the backup disks that Time Machine generates, whether local or network, may not themselves be booted, only restored to the main boot drive, so SuperDuper still provides a superior solution if you need fast emergency recovery. I prefer to nuke a broken system from orbit, and report hardware failures immediately, and I have the patience for Time Machine restorations, so that, while using Time Machine, I have had no real use for these tools. I have a Time Capsule which I still always back up to before doing anything that I think is likely to result in a possible disaster, but I generally won’t be making use of Time Machine unless I have no other choice. I will seriously be looking into either CCC or SuperDuper again once all my data is on my NAS and I no longer have any further need of Time Machine's snapshots for actually backing up critical data that is on my Macs’ boot drives. Both CCC and SD support scheduled backups, and can write backup images to a network drive, so it would be possible to boot a minimal system to restore a full backup. In this way, I hope to avoid Time Machine’s ever-growing non-portable sparse disk images, while maintaining only the smallest images necessary to bring my system back in the event that I feel there is a need that is not better met by simply erasing the boot drive and starting again (typically an OS upgrade). >> My advice is to keep with a wired network if you wish to use Time Machine. > > You mention a NAS drive. I have such a NAS device, WDMycloud by Western > Digital to which I bakcup using Time Machine but it's intersting that I often > get asked to perform a full backup to improve reliability, which would > confirm what you have explained about the interrupted wireless signal. Would > you also suggest backing up to a thunderbolt drive? Would it be more > reliable? > If you can think off hand without wishing to waste your time, where I could > learn more about this subject, I'd appreciate some pointers. It’s probably sufficient just to Google the error message, actually. I have in the past when I’ve seen it. The problem is clearly that the sparse disk image, which holds an HFS+ file system, is constantly being corrupted whenever the network connection is lost, and journaling can only do so much to correct for that. It would be like yanking the power on your computer every now and again and expecting that the filesystem could guarantee recovery in every case. Of course the correct solution is to use a network protocol that transfers file data directly, hence my recommendation to use something like Arq. This is actually not an uncommon situation. Yes, Thunderbolt is clearly a better option. Can you not get that NAS device (which looks, from a bit of Googling, to be simply a network-enabled drive) connected to Ethernet? That would also solve your issues. As would purchasing one of Apple’s Time Capsules, assuming that the real issue is that the wireless signal isn’t sufficiently strong between NAS and router, and router and Mac. Time Capsule is also a router and Wireless Access Point. I can highly recommend them, even as just wireless access points. They are expensive though, and their disks are really only ideally suited to backups, so unless your Internet connection is something like cable from Virgin Media, they aren’t good value for money just for the integrated disk. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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