May 09, 2006
Space update
After searching for a bit, I decided to get a NAS to supply extra storage for my home network. I bought a Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB drive from amazon. So far, it's been excellent.
Setup was a snap. Literally, unpacked the thing, plugged it into the wall and into my router. Installed some software (both Windows and Mac install works), and it was up and running. Piece a cake.
I haven't solved the backup issue yet. I just manually copied some files over for now. But, I am looking into some real backup software. Some folks I know use Norton Ghost, which looks pretty cool. I would prefer something that works for both Windows and Mac, since I need to backup both. Rsync and cron (or @at for windows) would work, but I'm not sure I have the patience to set it up right now. Any suggestions?
Also, I noticed an interesting trait in my purchasing pattern. On amazon, I read lots of pages about different product options. There were a few options which I finally decided between, all of which seemed fairly identical. In the end, I choose Buffalo because they had posted a product manual. Because I could read the manual before buying, I was very confident that I understood the product and what it would require to manage. If I were a retailer, I would always insure that Amazon had copies of the manuals of my products.
Posted by dave at May 9, 2006 09:30 PM | TrackBack"If I were a retailer, I would always insure that Amazon had copies of the manuals of my products."
...unless your manuals were so crappy that they might cause people to not buy your product.
I think you are on to something here. I will remember this one and try it. It seems like a really good tactic for finding a company that is paying attention to the details.
Posted by: crankykhayman at May 10, 2006 02:10 PMI'm doing backups from both Mac and PC using Retrospect from EMC (formerly Dantz). It requires a Retrospect server running on one machine and clients on all the others.
The nice thing about Retrospect is that it does a 'pull' from the server so you don't need to do any configuration on the clients other than not shutting them down.
Backup to a NAS works like a charm. I use an Infrant ReadyNAS/NV with four hotswappable disks, then rotate two spare disks weekly offsite. Haven't had any problems so far.
Good luck.
Posted by: Ramin at May 15, 2006 11:29 PM