I have an older iMac (like 2005ish) as well as a 2009 13"macbook pro. I am thinking it is time to buy an external hard drive to back them both up to.
Any suggestions what drive and size to get? Also is there a link to a tutorial on how to back up to an external dive.
I am getting in to photography more now so my primary concern is my photos and secondary is my itunes library.
Any input is greatly appreciated. everyone here has been very helpful to me in the past.
Drives are cheap - buy the biggest you can afford; you may as well. If both machines are running 10.5 or later (the '09 MBP definitely is), you can use Time Machine to backup to the external drive. Plug in the drive and select "Use Disk" when it automatically prompts you to use it for Time Machine. You can use the same drive for both machines via Time Machine, but it's a bit of a pain to do so - a Time Capsule might make more sense as both machines can backup wirelessly in that case so you don't need to plug/unplug the external, especially for the MacBook Pro.
Keep in mind that your data isn't backed up if your data isn't in two places at any given time - keep your photos on both the unit and external because an external drive is just as likely to fail as your computers are.
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I have an airport extreme base station. If I were to plug a usb external drive in to that do you think it would function similar to time capsule? Just checked a western digital 2tb drive is about $100 less than the time capsule.
And yes I am running lion on both.
Officially the extreme's USB port doesn't support Time Machine...but it can work. It is rather slow though so I wouldn't recommend going that route. What I do is plug the external drive into the iMac and then just share the drive. You can then connect to the drive on your laptop in Finder and once you do that Time Machine will see it as a viable drive to back up to. The only issue there is that the iMac needs to be running for backups to work.
Above and beyond Time Machine I'd also strongly recommend another drive that can be sent offsite for your critical data. I have a drive I take to work that has our iPhoto library and iTunes on it as most of the rest is already backed up via iCloud or DropBox.
So would you say the increased $ is worth the convenience? Does time capsule double as extra storage? For instance I am weighing getting parallels to run windows accounting software vs buying a less expensive laptop. I have held off on paralells because i didn't want to over burden my current system.
Any thoughts?
Time Cap's are fantastic routers with great range and a "set it forget it" mentality. Is that worth the money? To some yes to others no. If your extreme is an older model you would gain range and possibly speed with a new Time Capsule so there's that to consider as well.
The drive inside the TC should be for backups...ignore it and let it handle your backups and if you need more local storage add that locally.
How much room do you have in your machines hard drives now? It is very easy to upgrade the drive in your MacBook if you need more space.
Network attached storage & Time Machine are the way to go. Any time you connect to your network either wired or wirelessly, you get a fresh backup. Has made backups completely painless.
I have an airport extreme base station. If I were to plug a usb external drive in to that do you think it would function similar to time capsule? Just checked a western digital 2tb drive is about $100 less than the time capsule.
And yes I am running lion on both.
Thanks for your response Lars
About parallels, I'd say it depends on your RAM. If you want to run Windows in a virtual machine, the coolest way to do it, you'll want to use your MB pro probably because of the better video card. Unless you use bootcamp, you are splitting your computer's resources, i.e. if you have only 4GB ram, 2 are assigned to Windows and 2 to Mac OS, so you'll probably be an unhappy camper with sluggish performance on either side. I went the bootcamp way for a while but I got tired of rebooting. I don't like doing most things on windows and usually just want to use a single application so a virtual machine is the way to go in my opinion. Go ahead and use MS excel (on windows) while browsing the web on safari, using iCal, listening to iTunes and using all the good stuff on OSX.
If you are like me and want to go the cheapo way for backing up, I have a western digital mybook 1TB external HD. I use it with Time Machine. I strongly recommend you get a firewire device because it is considerably faster than USB. Of course a NAS like Time Capsule is the pinnacle of convenience because you can just set it and it will wirelessly track every minute change in your data and keep you protected.
I use Time Machine with a cable; I disable the auto back up feature and manually back up about twice a week. If you can afford it, I think the way to go is this:
-Get an NAS and run time machine +
-Get a cheap (but good quality) "wired" firewire hard drive that is at least equal capacity than your internal HD and use it to make a BOOTABLE clone of your HD. In my opinion, no Time Machine backup can replace the convenience and security of a fully functional bootable clone, especially when doing stuff like a major OS upgrade (OSX 10.6 to 10.7)
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