While most of my work doesn't require backups as I use Git for all my development, I do have the odd file that I wouldn't want to lose - and in the case of a catastrophic failure or during a full restore case this becomes quite important.
Time Machine
Time machine is a lovely backup solution I must admit, more because it mostly follows the 'just works' principles I would expect from a Mac. Getting the Time Machine backups setup with my Time Capsule took very little effort and I've only had a couple of problems with it.
After setup for the initial backup, I did this over Ethernet so it would occur in reasonable time. Ongoing backups I do over wireless.
The Time Machine interface is not so bad, the idea is that on the right of the interface you get a timeline that you can roll back to. You are presented primarily with a Finder GUI so you can analyse files on a particular time line easily and restore them if necessary.
Wireless Support
The unit also acts as an Airport wireless access point. I thought this would be useful due to its 802.11n support, plus when I'm travelling I can hook it into hotel room Ethernet connections and it would provide wireless when its not available - or even better wireless when the hotel wireless has a lot of contention.
From a range perspective, the range for my phone is actually worse compared to when I use my Thompson Router V2 (the thing that O2 gives you in the UK) although this could be an Android problem as I haven't had another phone to compare it with. For my laptop the range is reasonably acceptable. It supports WPAv2 Personal which is enough for my requirements and can act as a wireless extender, but only with supported routers or other Airport compatible access points.
Problem 1 - Sitting in Preparing backup ...
So I had an issue with the backups sitting in "Preparing backup ..." forever (well for a few days anyway). I cleared this issue first by switching off backups in Time Machine preferences:
Then clearing the time machine settings:
rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
Opening up the Time Machine settings again I chose my disk and re-enabled backups again. This seemed to clear the issue without backup loss.
I've only had to do this once, but its fairly repeatable without a major problem (well at least none that I've identified yet).
Problem 2 - Ethernet Port not working
I plugged in another laptop to the Ethernet port of the Time Capsule and the port wouldn't work. I fixed this by rebooting the unit. Such a fundamental problem is pretty disappointing I must admit but it wasn't a complete blocker.
Things I'd like to see improved
The unit is fairly mac-centric. A web interface for configuration would be awesome, but this doesn't affect me much as I have a Mac to manage the unit.
There is no quota support for managing how much of the in-built disk you want to use for backups versus general storage. The work-around is to dedicate an external USB disk for your own storage requirements but this comes at an extra cost.
Also - there is no in-built encryption for the internal disk for the purpose of backups. Two work-arounds I have seen for this:
- Use an external storage unit that is encrypted
- Find a different encryption solution that serves itself up as a file, and back that up. Store your important data using this solution.
There are lots of discussions about this on the net, and people saying that this 'isn't an important feature' but I think this is from people who haven't had to live with strict corporate policies and higher encryption requirements for storage.
Summary
I think the solution isn't a bad one if you can afford it. It certainly was an easy solution without any major hiccups so totally recommend it for non-power users. I think an alternative would be to use just an Airport unit with external HDD via USB which would save some costs (and probably be more flexible) but as a complete solution its not that bad.
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