The news that Apple is discontinuing the AirPort line, although expected, is a bitter pill to swallow for many Mac enthusiasts that love the no-nonsense, easy to administer backup and recovery features on the Time Capsule series. Even though the Time Capsule will be no more, you can still use Time Machine for your backup and recovery purposes in your post-AirPort world.
I imagine this is a question a lot of people have since Apple announced it would discontinue the AirPort product line. The good news is, the Time Machine technology will work, without a Time Capsule.
Hopefully this will also get people to consider their backup strategy. If someone is only backing up to a local destination, they’re risking losing their data in the event of a disaster. This is a good time to think, even briefly, about whether your backups are adequate to your needs.
I already have a Mini attached to a Drobo as a media server.
It’ll be trivial to point Time Machine at it when my Time Capsule gets replaced/fails/whatever.
(And I’ll second Mr. Gregory’s post – if it ain’t offsite it ain’t really backed up.
And a backup you haven’t tested isn’t really a backup either.)
I hate to sound like a techie, but are there a significant number of people who believe Time Machine only works with an Airport Time Capsule?
Or you use an online backup solution. The ‘NAS at parents” is fine if you can stream to that in near-real time, too but it’s more complex than needed and puts the user in the role of a sysadmin to some degree. For the vast majority of people it’s easiest and best to do this:
1) synced local backup either to a connected drive or a network drive. For Macs, Time Machine does this.
2) Ideally, a bootable clone so if the internal drive on your Mac fails and you need to work before it can be replaced you can boot off the cloned version.
3) synced online, offsite backup. For most people spending the $5/month/machine for Backblaze or similar is the way to go. If you’re concerned about data security, use a service (like Backblaze) that lets you encrypt data with your own key – but be aware of what that means (lose/forget the key and your data is permanently inaccessible).
I use OSX Server on my Mac Mini with the TimeMachine service to manage a central repository for all family’s household Macs onto an external drive. As Apple has scaled back the Server functionality, it’s one of the few bits that I continue to use (also server’s VPN and File Sharing support).
After losing 10 years of personnal data due to hard drive failure and backup disk failure. This is the best solution i found that doesn’t involve Online Backup.
Off site backup is necessary due to cryptomalware and home fire risk.
Off site backup should never be connected to compromised computer for recovery without format and OS reinstall.
The remaning risk is related to Off site backup being stolen !
I can’t imagine. I would even think it was the reverse, that not many non technical people even new of the Time Capsule. Instead, when they plugged in a fresh new HD, they were surprised to be greeted with the option to use it as a backup. That’s a more likely daily scenario IMHO.
That’s what I would’ve thought, given how TM was presented to new users.
Tme Capsule and home-built router/HDD Time Capsule clones can suffer from file corruption issues. Time Machine makes one kind of archive when doing over the air backups vs something else with directly connected storage. I used a home-built Time Capsule for years only to have it tell me that my entire backup archive was unusable and I had to start over. The second time this happened I ditched over the air and went with direct connect and it’s been fine ever since. No doubt this happened because of an interruption in my home network but the fact that the software couldn’t rebuild an archive always struck me as a terrible liability.
Still, for many who never experienced this, the Time Capsule is/was a great solution.
I’ve always made two mirror/clones of my entire setup and kept one off site, rotated daily. But, the few times I’ve needed Time Machine to dig back further its been extremely useful and I continue to make a local Time Machine backup on a big spinning disk so it’ll go back a long way.