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Off-Site Duplicate System?
Greetings,
I’ve got a workflow question that I couldn’t find a perfect answer for in previous posts:
I work from home and the office and I use both computers for everyday tasks (surfing, etc.) plus editing. At both locations, I’ve followed Jerry Hofmann’s separate startup system article with good success, (Drives: One FCP stable, One FCP test, One surfing, iTunes on each computer) but the systems are still different and I’ve had to transport files back and forth via external firewire drive. Works OK, but not optimal.
I’m trying to figure out a good way to create closely mirrored systems with an easier way to share data. I have a .Mac account and I plan to install Leopard on FCP test startup drives on both systems ( I’ve kept my old OS startup with stable FCP). In addition to system backups on external firewire drives, I was thinking about using the new Back to My Mac function to share data between the computers so I can have full, off-site archive in case of fire, theft, etc. I can transfer over my major media files via external drive, but after that, I was hoping to share more everyday files like FCP, Motion projects, Aperture photos, etc.
Does this sound like the best route to take? From the research I’ve done, it sounds like Back to My Mac is not working perfectly yet, but I assume they’ll get most of the kinks worked out at some point and might be very handy for pulling files back and forth.
I was hoping to get some second opinions before trying to reconfigure the systems.
Oh, one more thing: I’m also trying to figure out whether or not to use Time Machine for some archiving or normal backups. Considering I’m going to have multiple startup drives, I was wondering if that could get messy since it seems each system Time Machine will require a dedicated HD.
Computer specs are below.
Thanks!
John
HOME
Mac Pro 2X2.66 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon
5 GHz 66Mhz DDR2 FB-DIMM
OS X 10.4.9
FCP 5.1.4
QT 7.16WORK
Dual 2GHz Power PC G5
4 GB DDR SDRAM
OS 10.4.9.
FCP 5.1.4.
QT 7.16 -
5 Replies
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What’ wrong with a firewire drive? At some point you have to transfer media, and even the fastest of internet connections can’t handle this process.
And I don’t care what you say, you should never use a mac for surfing as the electronics just won’t hold up in salt water. Hobie might have the tools you need.
https://www.hobie.com/surfboards/boards.aspx?col=3
In all honesty, if you want offsite archiving look into an LTO or DLT system.
As far as getting files form one mac to another, a simple firewire or esata solution is just fine. You should have separate raids at each station (home and work) then name everything the same, the hard drive, the raid, everything. Then buy cheap, raw, SATA drives and hook them up to a fw800 converter like this:
https://www.wiebetech.com/products/satadock.php
…and then copy the information you need from your work raid to your home raid. Then take the SATA drive back and forth to work/home with you. It’s cheap, light and relatively inexpensive.
Jeremy
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Hey Jeremy,
Thanks so much for the reply. I appreciate it. So, if I can’t afford to get the whole setup you mentioned right at this moment, can I take a similar approach as you describled, but use separate internal drives, named and set up identically identically on both computers, then use the SATA drive to transport any new/changed files between the two? Right now, I’ve almost got similar internal hard drive situations on both computers, so buying one more drive to match the other computer would give me pretty identical systems storage-wise. I figure for the short term, having idential systems in both locations frequently updated would help alleviate any possible data-loss issues RAIDs can help with, and the portable files should be able connect with no problem since everything is named the same. That sound right?
But I would like to build up to the system you described, so I’ll hold onto your reccos as well.
Regards,
John
P.S. — I’ll do my best to stop my beach bum computer from hitting the surf in the future.
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[johnny5] “That sound right? “
Sure does. You don’t have to have identical drives in either computer (unless you need more storage than one of the drives allows), just make sure they are named the same.
Jeremy
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Sweet. Thanks for the input.
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No worries.
Good luck!
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