1. Is your 3TB drive off-site? Offsite backup is the problem to be solved, IMHO. 2. I imagine that the probability that your 3TB drive will be alive and functional in a year is less than 99.999999999% (not that I fully believe Amazon's claims, but they do monitor their disks and move the data when the error rate hits a certain threshold). 3. If my data is off-site, I want it encrypted. I'm not sure how to do that with rsync. We do use rsync nightly, however, to update our CTAN mirror.
--Barry On Apr 8, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Douglas Roberts <d...@parrot-farm.net> wrote: > Just curious why you Mac guys are buying backup systems, when there is a > perfectly good way to use rsync. Here's my nightly backup script, which > currently sends my nightly incrementals to a cheap 3TB USB3 external drive: > > #!/bin/bash > > # Just in case they are not mounted > /bin/mount /mnt/3TB >&/dev/null > /bin/mount /mnt/Movies >&/dev/null > /bin/mount /mnt/Video >&/dev/null > > > # > #/home/roberts > # > echo "Starting /home/roberts backup" >>/home/roberts/backup2.log > date >>/home/roberts/backup2.log > > /usr/bin/rsync -vurltD --exclude-from=/home/roberts/.rsync/exclude > /home/roberts /mnt/3TB >>/home/roberts/backup2.log 2>&1 > > > echo "Completed /home/roberts backup" >>/home/roberts/backup2.log > date >>/home/roberts/backup2.log > > > > > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > My $.02 on Time Machine. > > I bought a 2TB time machine about 4? years ago and set up two MB Pro's with > it. Other than a little irritation from accidental reboots on the device > (connected to the same power strip as my flakey motorola internet service, > yielding a reboot via powerstrip toggle sometimes), I've had nothing but good > look. > > I've only had one occasion to do a full restore in an emergency and it worked > like a charm.. I *have* used it to migrate between MB Pros and an iMac about > 5 or 6 times in the same period. That has worked flawlessly as well. > > It might be prudent to back that up somewhere offsite, but I'm just not that > prudent and now am spoiled to my regular "backup" and potential "restores" > being almost entirely invisible to me. I can't tell from the discussion on > the list how "transparent" the true cloud services are, unfortunately I'm > pretty sure my totally lame internet would make *restore* a long and painful > experience. > > > - Steve >> I have one data point. One of our Macs near Seattle had a drive fail, so I >> had an employee take it to an Apple store. The 'genius' was very happy when >> he saw the Time Machine, and, I think, nothing was lost. >> >> About the depth of cloud backups: I now use Arq on the Mac. The backups are >> in Amazon's S3, and the frequency is settable: I have one done every hour. >> You set a limit on how much space you want to use -- just as a Time Machine >> has a fixed size -- and once you hit that limit, it will overwrite the >> oldest versions as necessary. Also the paid version of DropBox keeps at >> least some history. For saving a Time Machine offsite, Amazons Glacier >> storage is one cent a gigabyte per month, so your 150 gigabytes would be $18 >> per year. They really hit you with transfer charges if you try to read a >> large amount in a short time, but since that presumably happens only when >> your Mac and your time machine have both been roasted in a fire, you >> probably will be happy to pay them. Unfortunately 150 gigs is not enough for >> most time machines. >> >> --Barry >> >> >> On Apr 6, 2013, at 8:42 AM, "Robert J. Cordingley" <rob...@cirrillian.com> >> wrote: >> >>> So has anyone successfully restored an entire system from the Cloud (or a >>> Time Machine come to think of it)? How easy was it? Any statistics on >>> success rate? >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > > -- > Doug Roberts > d...@parrot-farm.net > http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins > > 505-455-7333 - Office > 505-672-8213 - Mobile > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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