M J Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 As you can see from my sig, I have two identical 500GB HDD. On the first drive, first partition (about 48GB) I have a fully working Leopard 10.5.6, while the second partition is dedicated to my home folder. Now what to do with the second drive? I could give it to Time Machine, or I could use a RAID1... Pros and cons of the two options? What would you do with it? What's your suggestion? I absolutely need a first-level backup for my files. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 3, 2009 Author Share Posted January 3, 2009 Any thought? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1025347 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mschilling Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 I have only tried TM and it's pretty good except for flaking out with some of the system updates. I guess it's only as good as your install. RAID1 I haven't tried, but sounds interesting. Have you actually tried it? Does it back up instantly, as changes are made to the main hdd? I have only heard of people using a RAiD setup for performance. TM is designed to work over usb2.0 and also be flexible for everybody. I have had two computers share a partition for their TM backups, but there is no guarantee that TM will work in all cases predictably. If you have your backup TM hdd mounted in your desktop, maybe there will not be any problem with TM recognizing the partition, as usb will not be a problem. It then may be as reliable as a RAID setup. Seems like Apple was making more of a versatile RAID-type system when it envisioned TM. For example, I sometimes take advantage of the extra space on my TM hdd for temporary file storage. I think that a RAID setup would not work for that. Give RAID a try and let us know if there is an advantage. BTW, have you thought of adding a SSD to your system? I've noticed falling prices on them. I would consider a 128gb one (at about $400) and run that as both your system and home folder, with the bigger hdd as offline storage and backup. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1025758 Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 4, 2009 Author Share Posted January 4, 2009 Seems like Apple was making more of a versatile RAID-type system when it envisioned TM. Yep. With RAID1 basically your data is mirrored between 2 or more HDD's, so that if one fails or if some file gets corrupted on one of them, the system is able to recover in real time. There is no "main" HDD, everything is written in the very same way on each of your HDD's. And for the OS you have only one HDD. RAID0 is different, here the data is split between your HDD's so that reading and writing can use the multiple bandwidth or whatever. The downside is that if on drive fails, all of your data is lost. TM has a lot more functionalities then basic data safety, but I wonder if it might end up filling up the space a lot sooner, since it takes track of all the past activity. Also, how many system resources (RAM, CPU etc) does it use? Would it slow down the system after some time? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1025778 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mschilling Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 I've been using TM for a year or more. It takes up very little room. For example, my system takes up 64gb today. I redid my backup on Dec. 28 when I upgraded to 10.5.6. Even though I have added some megabytes with photos and movies taken over Christmas, that TM backup sits at 61gb, less than the system. Somehow, it must compress the data maybe? The other obvious advantage is the whole Time Machine thing where you can go back in time to any date and recover a file that you trashed, and emptied the trash. RAID will not do that. I believe RAID backup is more suited to hdd failure and having to replace the hdd without powering down a system, like a server. Time Machine is pretty fn awesome app when you go to get a file. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1025786 Share on other sites More sharing options...
geiman Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 Raid is great, but so is Time Machine. I would do both if you have the money. If not, I'd stick with Time Machine, unless you are just worried about redundancy and nothing else. With Raid, yeah you have a mirror backup, but if you accidentally delete a file that you end up needing a week later, you're screwed with raid, but with Time Machine, you simply find what you want to restore and restore it. That is why I use Time Machine. I can't say how many times I've said my butt by using Time Machine; from making so many mistakes in my programming projects that I need an earlier version, to grabbing files that were accidentally deleted, or even getting old versions of the seatbelt.kext and system.kext for my desktop, since it can't run the 10.5.6 vanilla kernel. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1025851 Share on other sites More sharing options...
AiBear Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 Indeed, I agree on the most part with the people above. The pros and cons are something you have to weigh before you choose. What is the backup meant to do, and how failsafe are you with your system. A RAID1 setup has the advantage of immediate rescue of your data, and you're sure never to run out of space on your backup drive. The big con though, is that if you delete a file, it's gone. (okay, let's not take into account the many ways to retreive those files, you know what I mean.) But more importantly: if your system b0rks for some reason or other, it goes on both you main and your backup drive. Then you might have to split them again, reinstall your system on one of both, try to rescue your data from the one you didn't reset, etc etc etc... TM has the big pro of keeping your files over time. And remember it's an incremental backup, so you keep all versions of your files (as long as you save them ). The space it takes is indeed limited, which I can confirm as I've been using an 80G disk to backup my 60G, and it's been doing that since almost a year, and it's only now getting cramped - which is mostly because I have a lot of other data on there as well. I'm not sure whether TM really compresses the whole thing (which is possible, as it sometimes takes a bit of time to do), or just skips the system files (which would also give you a lot of spare room), but I assure you it works fast. Okay, so my little iBook (almost 4years old now) takes some time to analyse which files to backup; but keep in mind it's: a] 4 years old, and b] it's got enormous amounts of files to check and compare. And still, even on this old little baby, I can't really notice any slowdown, but take into account I rarely do any heavy work on this laptop anymore (and also, the amounts of data are mostly quite small). In any case: I certainly would go for the TM setup. On a sidenote, if you prefer 1to1 copies, there is another possibility: use a clone utility, and set it to clone your system once a day (during the night for example). This would give you certainty close to RAID1, without the risk of crashing both disks. The big minus of this of course that it takes a long time to achieve, and has to happen overnight or something of the like, because it will slow down your system a lot. Have fun with you Nehalem, I know I will Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1028405 Share on other sites More sharing options...
justvisiting Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 One major issue with TM is that it identifies a system via the ethernet MAC address. should you be forced to change the network card, you get a whole new set of backups. Apple needs to implement a "import backup" option to allow your system to "connect" to backups made with a different network card inside your system. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1028454 Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 6, 2009 Author Share Posted January 6, 2009 Actually I do have an external 500GB drive that I used to backup files from my old laptop, and i was wondering what to do with it... so I really think I'm going with a RAID1 + TM! As for the MAC address thing, the card is on the motherboard and I have no plans of changing it in the near future. But good to know. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1028532 Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 RAID doesn't work for an unknown reason, plus I have two partitions, one for the OS and on for data, and it looks like the integrated RAID feature can't manage more then one RAID partition, so I decided I don't need redundancy and can go with only TM. BUT, TM says he can't find the integrated ethernet interface. My network card is enabled and it shows on the System Preferences. I think the problem is that my wireless USB adapter shows as en0, while my network card only as en1. Does anybody know how to chenge this? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1032229 Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 It works now! I changed the device name but it didn't work. What did work was to add the ethernet device EFI string to the com.apple.boot.plist of the EFI partition. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1032355 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mschilling Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 Great it hear it worked for you. How did you do the EFI string? what tool? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1032563 Share on other sites More sharing options...
M J Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 I need EFi for both my graphic card and my ethernet card. I used gfxutil to get the xml information for the graphics, then EFIStudio to get the xml for the ethernet device. I combined the two into one xml file and got the hex string with EFIStudio again, then put that in the Boot.plist. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/144251-raid1-or-time-machine/#findComment-1032571 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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