Backup and Storage Advice Needed

over past few months have been making transition pc mac. "clean install", if will.

in addition iphones , ipads, have new mac mini serves htpc , general home computer, 2 laptops (air , pro), connected (some wirelessly , wired) through airport extreme , extended airport express.

1 missing piece of puzzle backup , storage. have no backup (which can't continue) , storage on hard drives in various devices themselves.

after spending days pouring through forum , others, thinking getting 2tb time capsule backup , 6tb g-raid storage.

g-raid, i'm assuming, have connected directly mini firewire. largely used storing our dvds , cds, don't think that's issue wonder if easy move files between , other devices?

there flaws in plan? there better way of doing it?

appreciate any comments.

 

the plan you're outlining sounds it'll work fine, i'll offer rather similar setup example:

have mbp, imac, , htpc mini using single aebs network hub (mini , imac wired, mbp wireless).

run setup mini acting backup , file server else. has 2 external drives; 1 contains "working" files (media, documents, etc) accessed directly other computers in house (and it, when it's playing music through or video directly stereo or tv). other backup drive contains 3 partitions--a relatively small partition used time machine on network other 2 macs, , third backups of main data drive.

setup has worked flawlessly me; network time machine disks work smoothly (although wireless backups mbp slow enough, , interfere wireless mouse, don't have running automatically, on-demand), , in event of severe disk corruption or catastrophic failure of case (rather drive) i've got separate hardware device full backup. it's possible keep online data drive on fw800; backup drive can budget usb2 disk, since speed doesn't matter.

now, because wife keeps me on shoestring budget, have single-drive cases both of those, if had more money throw @ it, i'd running larger raid5 on-line drive, , limit backups subset of files care about, leaving rest semi-protected raid5, vulnerable disk corruption or failed case.

advantage of setup on using time capsule can use cheap usb external in place of time capsule, , it's easy upgrade (or replace in case of drive failure); mini has plenty of cpu spare, runs @ least fast as, if not faster than, time capsule when using gigabit ethernet link. tried using disk sharing feature of aebs have usb external, repeatably corrupted backups after period of time (and slow on top of it), far can figure because there isn't enough cpu in thing handle number of disk transactions.

it's going little more power hungry using time capsule, mini pretty thrifty, , if regularly use background downloading or media serving (networked itunes) it's worthwhile tradeoff.


[full disclosure: due hardware constraints , limited budget, plus geekiness, setup technically using esata data drive , fw800 backup, because frankenmini'd mac externalize sata ports. data drive has small boot partition on it, since there's no internal drive (or optical drive) in mini. , have stack of 3 bare 2tb drives full of ripped dvd collection use toaster-style dock, keeps data needs on main drive pretty light, single 2tb plenty.]

 

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