4th gen tc and wd book live work to gather?

Question

i have a 4th gen tc and was going to use it specificlay for backing up my macbook pro, i also have multiple pc running windows and wanted to back those up also but not on the tc because i dont want to mix them all on one back up. i saw that wd has a live book that will back up both mac and pc and will file share over the nas network. that is great for file sharing and using out of the office. i also have a netgear wireless router that i stopped using since i installed my tc. am i buying too much equipment or is the configureration going to be able to work ?

Answer 1

If the strategy is network backup then there are boxes that are more capable than the TC.. that is for sure.. particularly windows does not easily work with the TC.
How many computers are you talking about? I presume this is just a peer to peer network and you have no server??
A NAS like the WD Livebook although very much the low end, can work..
How much data would you be backing up on all the windows computers?
Would using USB hard disk directly plugged into the computer be better?
It has advantages.. no network traffic.. rather faster backup.. and being local has no issues with network problems or getting lost or strange disk formats. USB drives are cheap.. using several of them you can rotate them around the computers and have one or two offsite.
You can also create a disk image on the TC since it has 3TB and backup each computer so you have an image even if you don't use it as regular backup location.
If you run a business.. and computers and data are vital to it..
1. You should be paying somebody to do this.
2. If you don't have a specialist on staff or contractor.. be as paranoid as you can be.. Your data is your business.. lose it and lose your business. If a computer out means a staff member sits and fiddles their thumbs.. or sweeps the floor.. have redundancy for everything. It is cheaper than staff doing nothing.