I'm looking for advice for how to backup our household's computers. We have four or five computers in the house, and if we do full backups of everything, it adds up to a bit over 1 TB. The machines happen to be macs, in case that matters. Right now we use an (old) Apple Time Capsule, but it just started flashing a yellow light saying that its hard drive was failing, so I am looking for a replacement. Here are some options I'm considering:
(Regarding Apple, are they discontinuing support for the Time Capsule? I thought I had heard that. Anyway, no RAID-like system is concerning. Regarding Drobo vs. ioSafe, it looks to me like a balance between data redundancy vs. being fireproof. I am also a little wary of CrashPlan and other subscription services: how much do I trust my data to a third party? Are they going to stay in business? Are they going to raise their rates?)
We are already using DropBox, Google Drive, etc. for some files, by the way, but I would also like full backups of everything.
- a new Apple Time Capsule ($400 for 3 TB)
- something like the Drobo 5N2: RAID-like, able to be set up with lots of redundancy (around $900-1000)
- something like the ioSafe 216nas: fireproof, RAID (around $900-1000)
- an online system like CrashPlan ($150 per year for a family plan)
(Regarding Apple, are they discontinuing support for the Time Capsule? I thought I had heard that. Anyway, no RAID-like system is concerning. Regarding Drobo vs. ioSafe, it looks to me like a balance between data redundancy vs. being fireproof. I am also a little wary of CrashPlan and other subscription services: how much do I trust my data to a third party? Are they going to stay in business? Are they going to raise their rates?)
We are already using DropBox, Google Drive, etc. for some files, by the way, but I would also like full backups of everything.