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From: Andy Hewitt on 12 Jun 2010 11:17
I've been messing about and reorganising my hard drive layout over the
last couple of days. I got an NAS box off eBay, but didn't realise that
it wouldn't work with Time Machine :-(. No problem, I've now broken down
my large two of drives into separate boxes, and had a spare SATA-UBB/FW
bridge. I cobbled up that box to work off my Airport Extreme box.

However, it's proven to be rather slow for an Aperture Vault, but seems
to work OK with Time Machine - with one caveat, it's not unmounting the
sparse image after backing up. This is OK, until 'Backup.app' runs (I
just store basic user info on iDisk), and thinks that TM is running, so
waits. Unmounting the image manually fixes this.

I also have to unmount the Vault volume otherwise Aperture won't quit.

Any suggestions for a better setup?

I currently have:

MacBook internal = 500GB drive, partitioned into System and Aperture
Library (works very well for Ap3 performance.

1. External USB2/FW800-SATA twin drive box = 1x Optiarc SATA DVD-RW, 1x
500GB drive (Separate copies of all my images, movies, and a current
Aperture Vault). Connected by USB as the DVD-RW drive doesn't get
recognised when using FW.

2. External NAS box - modified with a USB/FW400-SATA bridge adapter = 1x
500GB drive for Time Machine, 1x 320GB drive for my periodically updated
Aperture Vault. Connected to Airport Extreme by USB.

I could still connect the Vault drive to NAS, if it might prove faster
than using Airport Extreme. Note though that although my MacBook is
gigabit ethernet, and I can use 5Ghz wide on the Extreme, the rest of
the network is only 10/100 ethernet.

3. External USB enclosure = 1x 250GB 2.5" clone of my System disk.
Updated every week or two using Super Duper.

How would you lot configure this for optimum performance/safety,
preferably without any more expenditure?

If I was to buy more, would upgrading to gigabit networking be the way
to go?

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
From: Andy Hewitt on 13 Jun 2010 06:54
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:17:42 +0100, thewildrover(a)me.com (Andy Hewitt)
> wrote:
>
> >I've been messing about and reorganising my hard drive layout over the
> >last couple of days. I got an NAS box off eBay, but didn't realise that
> >it wouldn't work with Time Machine :-(.
>
> By "doesn't work" do you really mean "takes a few steps to set up"?
> Because my NAS didn't used to work, but one could get it to with a
> little effort (instructions on request, but a "use unsupported" on the
> Mac, plus creating a TM destination .sparesbundle by hand or elsewhere
> and moving it to the NAS).

Yes, I'm aware of the 'unsupported' option, but AIUI this could
potentially be a route to problems. From the information I've found,
there are some safety features included in afp that are missing from
other protocols, and also that TM may not be able to run the rolling
backup when the drive becomes filled up, leaving an unupdated backup.

If all of that is urban myth, then I'd be happy to try this out, but I'm
not willing to jeopardise my backup system for the sake of a bit of
speed.

I have a working sparsebundle, so moving that over could be an option.

> > No problem, I've now broken down
> >my large two of drives into separate boxes, and had a spare SATA-UBB/FW
> >bridge. I cobbled up that box to work off my Airport Extreme box.
> >
> >However, it's proven to be rather slow for an Aperture Vault, but seems
> >to work OK with Time Machine - with one caveat, it's not unmounting the
> >sparse image after backing up. This is OK, until 'Backup.app' runs (I
> >just store basic user info on iDisk), and thinks that TM is running, so
> >waits. Unmounting the image manually fixes this.
>
> That shouldn't happen. Anything in Console.app against 'backupd' when
> it fails to dismount?

No, it doesn't look like it's trying, the last line is 'Backup completed
successfully.'

> >Any suggestions for a better setup?
>
> Either of the ones you have already tried should work, or work better
> than they did. I've done:
>
> a) Local fw - worked perfectly.
> b) NAS, the twiddly way - worked perfectly after slightly twiddly
> setup.
> c) USB disk plugged into Aiport Extreme - worked perfectly after
> hand-mounting the drive
> d) NAS, the easy way after the firmware was updated to advertise
> itself as a TM destination over Bonjour

Hmm, the NAS I have does Bonjour, but it only seemed to work in Safari
to access the admin panel.

> For b/c/d, there were three or more Macs pointing at the same TM
> destination disk. I got a couple of archive corruptions, but I've had
> those on direct-attached disks too.

Mine has been pretty reliable since moving to OS 10.6. I did have to
restart my TM backups a couple of times in 10.5 though.

> >If I was to buy more, would upgrading to gigabit networking be the way
> >to go?
>
> Only costs �40 for a 5 port GigE switch, eg
>
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=6291&category_id=15
2&manufacturer_id=0&tid=dgs-1005d

I've found a few around �20 on eBay. Trouble is, I'd also need to
upgrade my Airport box, and the NAS too. I'd consider doing this over
the next few weeks, buy a bit sell a bit kind of thing, if it was going
to be significantly better.

> Be aware that'll only ~double/triple your throughput from 100Mbit,
> though that's likely to be worthwhile since it comes close to parity
> with the USB link to a disk.

If it could come to parity with USB I'd be really happy. However,
looking at my other post re: wireless/wired speeds, I'm not sure it'll
be any benefit to my setup at all.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.me.com/andrewhewitt1/>
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