[smax013]

Evildave said:

I started doing a little research on this.

I'll probably be buying the 500GB Mac 'Time Capsule' when I get the iMac. It's approximately the cheapest gigabit LAN network attached storage available (even without wireless N router, not that that matters to me right now), and has the USB port for a second USB drive (or printer). And the continuous backup would be nice, as long as the drive spins down when nothing's using it.

The 500 GB Time Capsule is a fairly good deal...you get a 802.11n router that can do both a main network (with seperate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios/networks) and a guest network, you get a Gigabit ethernet switch, you get a 500 GB NAS drive (which can also be used for Time Machine with a Mac running the Mac OS), and you can also attach printers and additional hard drives (you have some ability for multiple devices with a powered USB hub). You get all that for $300...basically about $120 more than just an Airport Extreme Basestation, which is a little more than the price of a 500 GB drive.

The 1 TB Time Capsule, OTOH, does not make sense to me. Basically, you are paying an extra $200 to go from a 500 GB to a 1 TB drive. Seems a bit excessive to me.

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My evil plan is to wait a year, and replace the drive with as big an SATA drive as I can find. The upgrade of this hard drive is pretty easy, but I'll leave it a 'virgin' until the warrany's out.

It is a good idea to wait...no sense killing the warranty before it is done on its own. That is essentially what I did with my MacBook Pro. Since that version did not have a user installable drive, I waited until the warranty was done before I upgraded the hard drive (for the first time).

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Then the formerly 'internal' 500GB drive will get transferred to an 'external' case, since it will still have over a hundred thousand hours of use left on it.

As for the cooling of external drives, it's not usually an issue. My 250GB USB drive is just a $10 enclosure kit around an IDE drive. It's been dropped, abused, cracked, left on for weeks, etc. It still has far fewer hours than my much newer notebook's drives. It's an offline backup. Something I HIGHLY recommend. If I'm not backing up (or occasionally restoring), it's unplugged, cords wrapped up, and put away. It is still getting old, but mainly physically old. I'll keep using it, but it's getting too old to trust as a primary form of backup.

My Maxtor drive is still going strong after several years. It is one of the "newer" style drives that does not have an exhaust/cooling fan. I also have a Firewire external enclosure that I put a drive it...use it for backups as well. Just passive cooling for it as well and it still going fine.

An alternative to consider for your backup drive:

http://eshop.macsale...ch/Voyager/HardDriveDock

Rather than mount the drive in a "permanent" enclosure, you can pop it in and out. This way you can leave the "base" connected to the computer and pop in a backup drive when you want to run a backup. When you are done, pop the drive out and store it where it will be safe. You could rotate several drives if you want for different backup sets on different days.

I will using mine with eSATA to make clones of my boot drives...and means I do not have to keep monkeying with SATA ports inside the computer. I have already used it to install Leopard on my new 500 GB drive and then use Migration Assistant to move my files and programs to it from my internal drive with Tiger on it prior to installing the new drive...and then used it to clone the new internal drive to a backup drive.

[smax013]

dabigkahuna said:

That seems simple enough.

I'm probably about two months from getting a new external hd so I'd like to go ahead and use that old drive of mine even though it had trouble on my PC (seemed always work on the Mac).

I figure if everything is still on my internal drive and the old external and I get the external set to backup to time machine, I ought to be well protected until I get a new one (actually, to be extra safe, I'll probably only work on the external library during this time so, if something does go wrong, I not only have the time machine back up of it, but also all the originals still on the the internal drive).

I assume when I enter Time Machine that it shows the backups for the internal and external separately?

I have yet to set Time Machine up so I am not too familiar with it. Thus, I really do not know how it handles backing up external drives.

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So, when I get the new drive, I can just copy that over and it will still show up as the second library? Or is it more complicated when I replace the drive?

I thought you were going to put the secondary iTunes library on the Time Capsule. ???

[dabigkahuna]

Well, it's been interesting.

I went ahead and plugged the old external drive to the hub (connected to the Time Capsule). It didn't show up. So, since I had a similar problem with a hub plugged into my laptop, I tried restarting the computer which solved that problem before. Still didn't work. So then I tried plugging it into the monitor. Didn't work. Restarting again didn't work.

Finally plugged into the computer and it came up.

Then I did this the hard way - I went into the drive and put everything in the trash (remember, this used to be my time machine drive). Then I tried to empty the trash. I was shocked to see it counting how many files to delete - nearly 500,000 and that took awhile. Then it started to delete, which took something over 40 minutes - periodically it would say it couldn't delete because something was locked and I had to press option while clicking continue. Good thing I didn't go away for awhile expecting it to finish on its own!

During this process, I realized using disk utility to erase the drive would have been much faster. When "done", the trash can was still full though Finder didn't show anything on the drive, of course. So I went to disk utility and erased it which cleared the trash too.

Followed your instructions as best I could, though I didn't understand the part about going to preferences/advanced/change in order to select the new library location. Since your instructions said to do that while already in the new library, it was already set.

Anyway, I just went on to Add to library. I do have a question about that. There is more than one folder called "itunes". I went to the one which actually holds my music. It seemed to be working. As it copied, I started seeing folders with the artwork appear and it continued to copy music for awhile, but then stopped with an apparent disk error on the external drive.

I found that, even though artwork showed in album view, when I opened the album, the artwork didn't show inside and when I went back to album view, the artwork was gone from whatever album I had opened.

I tried to erase it again, but got an report that it was in use and couldn't be unmounted (don't know why it would need to be unmounted!). For some reason the obvious reason it was in use was because of iTunes using the new library didn't occur to me. I couldn't eject it so I shut down the computer and unplugged it, then restarted.

Had to reset the library location back to the internal drive (all seems okay there).

I haven't tried to plug it back in to try again. Maybe that drive, which was working with time machine just fine as far as I know, but kept getting "dirty" on my PC finally bit the dust - in which case I got the Time Capsule just in time!

You asked about why I wasn't putting the library on Time Machine, as I originally planned. This is my logic:

If I put it on an external drive, I can figure out how to have time machine back that up too so I'll have some stuff on the internal drive, some on the external, and the backups for both on time capsule. Seemed like a reasonable approach.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that while Time Capsule will always be connected, it is possible that I could leave an external drive only connected sometimes. But, right now, I expect to leave it connected.

I need to find out a few things, since my external would only work when plugged into the computer. What if a new one won't work if plugged into the hub along with the two printers? I'm going to have to find out if time machine can still do a backup even if it is plugged into the monitor or the computer.

I am, of course, open to any ideas.

Something else I considered - are there hard drives that have ethernet connections? I was thinking about maybe connecting one that way since it would be the fastest connection. Of course, if they are really expensive, maybe not!

[Evildave]

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Something else I considered - are there hard drives that have ethernet connections? I was thinking about maybe connecting one that way since it would be the fastest connection. Of course, if they are really expensive, maybe not!

Yeah, the Apple Time Capsule we were just discussing has an ethernet connection, switch/router (and wireless N).

Network Attached Storage (NAS) gets real expensive, real fast. The 500GB Time Capsule gadget is a pretty good deal for what you get.

[dabigkahuna]

Well, I have the Time Capsule so I don't need another one. I was just thinking of a separate hard drive with the ethernet connection.

[Evildave]

Yeah, but I already have a 'universal' 2.5/3.5 IDE/SATA/etc. drive mounter kit for 'emergencies'.

The problem with the 'naked' drives like that is that I have cats. It's all I need to have one get 'interested' in the clicking noise and then start experimenting with it to 'get the critter out' when I'm not watching.

Besides, full on 3.5" enclosures with their own power supply (or USB powered 2.5" ones) are about $10, give or take, and firewire ones are around $20~$30, so I could get a whole pile of 'em for the cost of one toaster-lookin' thing that leaves the sensitive circuitry of the drive exposed to evil kitties, spills, static discharges and my natural-born klutziness. Static is the worst for me. I live in the desert with single-digit (lack of) humidity most of the time, and I literally reached to touch a mouse (a good one, too) and killed it with static discharge. If I can do that to a human interface device that's supposed to be designed to take the odd zap, just imagine how long routinely handled naked circuitry would last!

http://www.google.com/products?q=SATAUSB2driveenclosure3.5

http://www.google.com/products?q=SATAfirewiredriveenclosure3.5

[Evildave]

Can't you plug a USB2 drive into the time capsule? That would be LOTS cheaper.

[dabigkahuna]

Yeah. The usb port on the Time Capsule lets you plug in a printer, a hard drive, or a hub.

I'm using a powered hub and have both my laser and inkjet printer connected to that and both work.

I tried plugging my old Maxtor hd in too (has its own power supply), but it wouldn't work. i didn't try plugging it directly into the usb port instead of the hub. I was told at the Apple store that newer hard drives should work if plugged into the monitor even though this one doesn't (bought in 2004 or 2005.

But I don't know if the Time Capsule would be able to handle three items via a hub.

A usb connection is cheaper, but I do have room for connecting by ethernet and it would be faster. Might not be worth the cost, but I don't yet know what that price range would be.