Time Capsule...aka iNAS

2

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  • Reply 21 of 59
    krispiekrispie Posts: 260member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Frank777 View Post


    ..But the paranoid part of me says attaching a hard drive by a cable once a day is not a huge imposition.





    No it's not, but in my case I want to back up two or three Macs, so I need either Leopard Server, or something like the Time Capsule.



    The 'wired' alternative is to plug it into each machine in turn, which isn't practical.
  • Reply 22 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ksec View Post


    Does it support itunes Server?



    What the h3ll? Is this real or a wish item?



    I would love iTunes to become a server-based thing. Is this likely to happen any time soon?
  • Reply 23 of 59
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    What the h3ll? Is this real or a wish item?



    I would love iTunes to become a server-based thing. Is this likely to happen any time soon?



    There's not an official Apple iTunes server but many NAS systems run daapd which is a UNIX/Linux daemon for Apple's streaming iTunes DAAP protocol and also Apple's Bonjour protocol. Once you've got the two of those on your NAS, it just appears on the network like any Mac/PC running iTunes with Sharing switched on in iTunes.



    It'd be lovely if Apple did add dappd to the Time Capsule but I suspect they won't.





    http://deleet.de/projekte/daap/daapd/

    http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/
  • Reply 24 of 59
    tony1tony1 Posts: 259member
    I'm wondering if it would make more sense to purchase an Extreme n ($172) then a 1TB Seagate SATA ($270) and an Enclosure ($40) than to go with the 1TB TC. At about the same price my drive would now be replaceable and be able to connect directly to a machine if need be among other advantages. My only hesitation is that I just had a heck of a time with an Extreme n that I happen to be returning today as a result of dropping my connections at any given time or action (Apple says bad unit). I don't want to go through this again. The other downer was that I had a 500 GB drive (PATA) connected to this, running at 7200 and was very very slow transferring files to when it was running correctly. Will the new TC be any faster? Other advantages over an external drive?
  • Reply 25 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aegisdesign View Post


    There's not an official Apple iTunes server but many NAS systems run daapd which is a UNIX/Linux daemon for Apple's streaming iTunes DAAP protocol and also Apple's Bonjour protocol. Once you've got the two of those on your NAS, it just appears on the network like any Mac/PC running iTunes with Sharing switched on in iTunes.



    Interesting... But how do you edit your tune names and playlists etc if you can only connect as a shared user?



    What I'd really love is a server with all my iTunes on... Then to login *with* password to the iTunes Server, and once logged in I could then do everything I do normally with iTunes (add and remove music, rip, rename, catalogue/playlist etc). Any way of doing that?



    Quote:

    It'd be lovely if Apple did add dappd to the Time Capsule but I suspect they won't.



    Don't you think someone may hack it though?



    I'm a little annoyed they've monopolised the whole Time Machine thing by making it an all-in-one unit. I've heard loads of friends' mopes and groans about the Airport Extreme. I'd rather use my own router personally.
  • Reply 26 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tony1 View Post


    Will the new TC be any faster? Other advantages over an external drive?



    From what I assumed Time Machine won't work on an Airport Extreme with an external drive attached. That's the thing I'm a little annoyed about. It appears they have deliberately removed the feature in order to plug their all-in-one unit.



    However I have found it is possible to access an internal drive of another Mac over the network. So since Leopard was out, I have been successfully backing up my MacBook to an internal drive on my G4 successfully.
  • Reply 27 of 59
    tony1tony1 Posts: 259member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    From what I assumed Time Machine won't work on an Airport Extreme with an external drive attached. That's the thing I'm a little annoyed about. It appears they have deliberately removed the feature in order to plug their all-in-one unit.



    However I have found it is possible to access an internal drive of another Mac over the network. So since Leopard was out, I have been successfully backing up my MacBook to an internal drive on my G4 successfully.



    I'm not too concerned about backing up, I too do that internally on one of my machines and externally on another.



    My concern was that although I successfully put all my iTunes music on the one HDD connected to my Extreme and played great on all my machines sharing to it, but dragging things over to it were dreadful. MP3's went ok, but when it came to movies, tv shows, etc and such was horrible.



    See I wanted it to be a media center for the whole household and have all our machines have access to anything there. I even had it set up so that all my finished downloads would land there and be ready to watch/listen. Like I said ran great except for the speed.
  • Reply 28 of 59
    Backing up data -- from multiple computers, no less -- to a device that is not itself redundant or fault-tolerant in any way, is asking for trouble.



    A single hard drive failure now means that all archived data from all your household's machines is gone in one fell swoop.



    [Anyone know what "server-class" hard drive is supposed to mean? It really doesn't matter, of course; as the adage goes, there are only two types of disks: those that have failed, and those that are about to do so.]



    Can data on a Time Capsule be further backed up, to something more redundant? Can a Drobo, for instance, be attached to the USB port? Can it push data to Windows Home Server over the network? Can a network-attached file server of some other type attach via NFS or SMB to archive the data? Can we create a simple drive mirror by attaching a USB drive?



    Until we get some sort of positive answer to one or more of those questions, I would not personally trust anything important to Time Capsule.
  • Reply 29 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zarafa View Post


    A single hard drive failure now means that all archived data from all your household's machines is gone in one fell swoop.



    But it is a backup - that means it's an extra copy of what you have on your household machines. It's still better than no backup at all. Having said that, I am in agreement. If you're going to do it you might as well do it properly.



    Quote:

    [Anyone know what "server-class" hard drive is supposed to mean? It really doesn't matter, of course; as the adage goes, there are only two types of disks: those that have failed, and those that are about to do so.]



    Yes that's a bit of a crock isn't it! When I heard "Server-class" I was expecting RAID-1 or some suchlike. No such luck. Two 500GB drives on RAID-1 would have done it for me.
  • Reply 30 of 59
    tony1tony1 Posts: 259member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zarafa View Post


    Backing up data -- from multiple computers, no less -- to a device that is not itself redundant or fault-tolerant in any way, is asking for trouble.



    So an inexpensive RAID would be a better bet, correct?
  • Reply 31 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    absolutely. But since Time Machine won't connect to external drives, we don't have that option. Annoyingly.
  • Reply 32 of 59
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tony1 View Post


    So an inexpensive RAID would be a better bet, correct?



    Certainly from a reliability standpoint, yes. Having a Time Capsule be a valid target for Time Machine backups (from multiple computers, over a network), is very convenient, though ultimately not especially reliable; kind of defeats the point of backing up, in some ways.



    It would be best to combine the two technologies, for convenience plus fault-tolerance.



    Of course, you can have the best RAID system in the world and a fire, theft, or other disaster can wipe it out in a second, so it's all about managing levels of risk. That's why it's best to have multiple levels of backup, with really important stuff being sent offsite via physical or network means (to parents, friends, a safe-deposit box, Google, etc.) on a relatively regular basis.



    All the more reason to have a Time Capsule that can perform some type of storage and archiving other than to just its own single internal drive.
  • Reply 33 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    As you can see from this thread, now turning to chat about RAID and off-site backups, Apple most certainly created a new problem for themselves with Time Machine! Now everyone is expecting a decent solution for it.
  • Reply 34 of 59
    tony1tony1 Posts: 259member
    Thank-you gentlemen for saving me the additional dollars I was about to spend today on a TC from my Extreme trade-in. About $300. I'll just stick with another Extreme for getting online and printer sharing, and have a drive (external or internal) at each machine for TM. I'll also go back to the old way as far as our iTunes library's. Bummer though.



    Can I run a RAID, for all our music and work files only, on Ethernet and then to get online (web) via APEn at the same time?
  • Reply 35 of 59
    vineavinea Posts: 5,585member
    I mentioned in another thread that Google found a failure rate of 1 in 12 in the drives they had in their data center in their first 2 year period for a drive.



    That said, a backup to a single drive TC isn't too horrible given it IS just a backup. Effectively you can suffer a one disk failure without losing current data.



    But I wouldn't really use it as a general use NAS except for data I didn't mind losing or I had some backup strategy for it.



    For me, I back up to a spare drive and the most important stuff gets pushed to Amazon S3. This is pretty much just my iPhoto library and it costs me...hmmm...I think like $5 a month. This gives me offsite backup for my most important, and irreplaceable, data.



    If I have to, I can rebuy most things. Baby pictures not so much.
  • Reply 36 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    From what people are saying, do you think Apple should be providing us with two products:



    1. Time Capsule - as is currently, but two-drive RAID-1 and tied to use as backup only



    2. iNAS - think of good name here - basically NAS but including DAAP/bonjour etc and other software which allows it to be used as a proper iTunes/iPhoto/whatever media server.



    Even better would be to rename Time Capsule to a more neutral NAS-style name, give it two internal drives that can then be configured to run AS Time Capsule (RAID-1) or NAS (RAID-0). This way customers could buy two of them and configure one for each.
  • Reply 37 of 59
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jowie74 View Post


    From what people are saying, do you think Apple should be providing us with two products:



    1. Time Capsule - as is currently, but two-drive RAID-1 and tied to use as backup only



    2. iNAS - think of good name here - basically NAS but including DAAP/bonjour etc and other software which allows it to be used as a proper iTunes/iPhoto/whatever media server.



    Even better would be to rename Time Capsule to a more neutral NAS-style name, give it two internal drives that can then be configured to run AS Time Capsule (RAID-1) or NAS (RAID-0). This way customers could buy two of them and configure one for each.



    3. Re-enable Time Machine backups to Airport drives. It really bothers me when companies intentionally cripple a product in order to up-sell to another product (i.e. the many flavours of Vista), especially when they announced the feature would be available and then pulled it because of 'bugs'. Bugs, my ass. It was obviously pulled to try and generate some extra revenue from TimeCapsule sales.



    Time Capsule and Airport drives are just network shares via Airport Express. This is no technical reason to not do Time Machine to Airport drives.



    This option would also allow you to buy whatever drives you want and set up whatever RAID the drive itself supports and not have to rely on Apple to determine what you need.
  • Reply 38 of 59
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    Yep - I think #3 works best for me too!
  • Reply 39 of 59
    jupiteronejupiterone Posts: 1,564member
    #3 was the real reason I bought Leopard.....to work with my current wireless NAS. Backup.app seems to have no problem backing up to it.



  • Reply 40 of 59
    Hasn't anybody enquired about backing up to networked drives / drives attached to an Aiport base station while at Macworld?
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