Sparse Bundle reliability?

Kemik

Kemik

Kemik

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Hey,

You might know that I've been looking at buying a NAS recently. The forums which support the NAS I'm looking at buying (QNap TS-209 II Pro) has a post stating how to use TimeMachine with it.

They recommend creating a Sparse Bundle and then transferring that to the NAS and TimeMachine should use that image. However, I have some doubts. How reliable is a Sparse Bundle? I don't want it to become corrupted and then I lose my whole TimeMachine backup.

I'm looking in to other options such as partitioning but I don't think it's possible with the NAS I'm looking at.
 
The point behind making a sparse bundle then transferring it is to avoid initially backing up your entire machine over wireless, which would take a very long time. Once the initial back up has been made, subsequent incremental back ups are much smaller.

My understanding is that TM always creates a sparse bundle during the initial back up. There's no reason this method should be any less reliable than any other method.

If incidentally you fancy an alternative to this and have some network cable lying around you could expedite a remote back up considerably. Something else which you may consider is having time machine back up over wireless every hour pretty much uses all of your wireless network throughput for the length of the back up.
 
likwid said:
If incidentally you fancy an alternative to this and have some network cable lying around you could expedite a remote back up considerably. Something else which you may consider is having time machine back up over wireless every hour pretty much uses all of your wireless network throughput for the length of the back up.
Click to expand...

The plan is to connect the NAS to the router via network cable. My MBP is connected to the router via network cable too so speed should only really be limited by the amount of data per second my BT Home Hub can take (apparently about 10MB/s).

I'll need to buy a new router actually, all two (:rolleyes:) of my ethernet ports are taken. Need one with four.

Seen as he backups are hourly the amount transferred should be only a few MB but on the odd occasion it's around 1GB then that should take about 2mins to transfer. I just wanted to make sure backing up on my NAS via network cable would be as reliable as backing up on to an external USB hard drive like I currently do.
 
Yeah, there shouldn't be any problems. I'd suggest that you don't back up your download folder, that way there'll be less traffic.

Also, you don't necessarily need to buy a new router. A switch would be much cheaper, as long as you're happy with your router otherwise.
 
So I could have the following setup and all devices, including the Lounge PS3, PC and iMac would be able to access the NAS?

network.jpg
 
Yeah, would be fine though the devices sharing a port on the router are going to share its bandwidth. Maybe the PS3 would be better off having its own port if you're likely to be gaming and backing up stuff at the same time. Similarly, having the mac and nas attached to the same port will share the bandwidth and halve (or more) the back up speed.

You might actually be better off to get another router (not necessarily modem/router) given the amount of devices you have, depending on how likely you are to be using them at the same time.
 
The problem is my Home Hub is limited to two Ethernet ports.

The NAS will be in most use by the MBP for backups. The lounge PS3 might use it now and then along with my PS3 but the PC and iMac will probably never need to access it.

How would you best network it with those details?

Thanks for all your help btw.
 
I'd suggest a router acting as a repeater bridge which will extend your network both wirelessly and wired. The advantage of this over simply buying a switch is that you wont experience the congestion found by multiple devices sharing the same router port. As what you're proposing will likely result in a fair bit of data transferring back and forth, this would be important.

I'd recommend buying a router which will allow you to install the third party firmware dd-wrt and following a guide such as these:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linking_Routers

Personally I've found this router to be very good. Notice the WRT54G>L< which means you can install third party firmware:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-052-LS
 
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Awesome. I don't even need to spend money. I have that cable router sitting two foot from me at my flat at University.

Thanks for your help mate :)
 
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