Time machine

[Nigel Jones]

I'm using the latest merlin 380 on a rt-ac3200. Thinking of picking up a 4 or 8Gb external had for use for time machine etc.


I don't expect the router to be fast but does it generally work ok?


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[AimDev]

I'm using the latest merlin 380 on a rt-ac3200. Thinking of picking up a 4 or 8Gb external had for use for time machine etc.


I don't expect the router to be fast but does it generally work ok?


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couple of questions...

1. Does your mac have usb ports?
2. Time machine does an initial backup. considerably more than 8gb, then performs incremental backups hourly

Timemachine can be a bit pertinacity with some devices.

Typically setup in my office is for the laptops, a nas access via the router., with 3Tb disks, and for the server a 3Tb attached via usb3. I note that the ac3200 has TM support, but at the end of the day it is a router, not a nas or an attached disk drive.

 

[JDB]

I’ve tried it and it’s no different to my Apple Time-capsule. So long as you have a USB3 drive you’ll be Ok.

And I assume you mean 4 or 8 Tb not Gb!

As suggested the initial backup will take some time - recommend having the Mac plugged in via Ethernet and letting it go over night, maybe even a weekend. But after that the incremental backups take just a few minutes and you don’t even notice it happening aside from the icon on the menu bar.


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[Nigel Jones]

Oops. Yes TB!

My mac is a 2016 15" touchbar so no native USB or Ethernet. I just use wireless though get decent speeds. Not a big deal for initial backup.

Sounds like it's worth a shot. A TB or so should be enough for the mac, another TB mac for windows machines, and another for more photod backed up (already on mirrored disks and cloud backup - paranoid!), so a 4 most likely, though 6 or 8 if amazon prime deals pop up!

 

[sfx2000]

Large External Drives can be problematic as the filesystem table can run out of memory...

TimeMachine - I wouldn't recommend it outside of OSX server or an Apple TimeCapsule - things will work for a while, but when TimeMachine client starts thinning the weekly backups, it can go very badly..

 

[jazzmonger]

I don't expect the router to be fast but does it generally work ok?
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Im using it w a 4TB drive and seems to work ok. Took 20hrs to backup my Mac Pro 750gb but seems ok. Nice that it’s away from my pc and hidden in a closet.

 

[jrmwvu04]

Large External Drives can be problematic as the filesystem table can run out of memory...

TimeMachine - I wouldn't recommend it outside of OSX server or an Apple TimeCapsule - things will work for a while, but when TimeMachine client starts thinning the weekly backups, it can go very badly..

I echo this thought with this addendum - when your main machine craps out, that’s not an ideal time to discover that your backup is no good.