Best solution for backing up 3 Mac's with one drive

I know there are several options for backing up one computer, but I would like to be able to backup 3 computers on a single 1TB external drive. Is this possible and would it be possible to use Time Machine on all 3 pc's. I know I will have to move the drive between them. I would prefer a NAS, but cost is an issue.
Any help would be appreciated and I hope this is the correct forum for it.

TM will also work. I would give each machine it'sown partition, assign one partition to each machine as its TM backup volume.
I know that a Time Capsule at $299-1TB and $499-2TB is much more then just a USB2 or even firewire hard drive, but remember that with a Time Capsule you are also upgrading to a 802.11n wireless router with true dual band support (simultaneous 802.11g and 802.11n connections, each running at their native speeds). Just a thought, if your wifi network is getting old too and you are thinking of an update there at the same time.

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What is the best app for backing up my mac. I do publication work and need to save my work?

what is the best app for backing up my mac. I do publication work and need to save my work?

My answer does not have the black Apple logo but the hardearned black belt of (bad) experience.
There is one problem with TimeMachine. It can get corrupted out of the blue with no warning and it will not want to restore correctly (as an added "bonus" you get to find this out the "hard" way, when you need it most). Plus it takes ages for the data to be copied back, sometimes days. Haven't tried my 600gb backup on Mavericks but Mountain Lion had this knack of breaking Timemachine after a couple of months.
To back up my entire server is use SuperDuper. It mirrors the drive to an external one (usb for example) The cool thing is you can use that usb drive and start the OS X from it (by holding Alt when you hear the boot chime).
This way you have a working copy of your entire machine. You can even go to another mac and boot it from there. I literally ran the OS X Server in my company from a usb drive on an old MacBook Pro until i got around to fix the problems with the actual server machine.
This has saved me twice already as the Hitachi drives Apple uses, tend to die like clockwork after 4000-5000 hours of use with no warning.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
PS. As a sidenote... SSDs are more reliable than a normal HDD (not to mention faster) I can't stress this enough, my Server is on two SSDs now. I can't tell you how stress free the setup is, it doesn't feel like a computer but more like a router, it just works... forever. After two years with SSDs my server has had two days of downtime and their health is at 97%, they will literally last 100 years with normal use. I'd go so far as to recommend you buy an SSD and move your old HDD to an external enclosure and use that as a usb backup. (for SSDs i use Plextor / Lite-On M3s (older) or the M6s (newer))

ADVANCED: Is manually editing a SparseBundle partition the best approach for backing up 2 Macs to 1 Time Capsule?

Problem/Question: I want to back up 2 macs to 1 Time Capsule, AND provide each of them with an equal amount of space.
Issues:
— to ensure one doesnt "out backup the other" - AND since it isnt possible (practically) to Partition the HDD within the Time Capsule
or in other words: to prevent 1 computer from taking more space for itself by providing an equal amount of backup space to each computer)
*Without manually removing the HDD inside the Time Capsule, docking it and partitioning it in DiskUtility and then remounting it into the Time Capsule...
I understand that it is possible to restrict the size of the SparseBundles, so in theory, one could make at 2TB Time Capsule have a 1TB a sparsebundle for EACH computer, and thus would leave each computer with a maxium 1TB each of backup space.
Following Pondini's instuctions for SparseBundle editing here:
http://pondini.org/TM/A8.html
Is this reccomendable? Any issues I would encounter? or other suggestions for how to proceed?
Thanks
—James
PS - Manditory complaining moment: Why can't Apple just enable a Partioning option in AirPort Utility so we dont have to worry about this?!

The disk space is not adequate for the operation.. archive off the existing backup if you need it.. then start a new backup from each computer.. once you have a new clean backup then set one to 1TB (remember a 2TB only formats to 1.8TB though, so you really should set one sparsebundle to 800GB.. and leave the other one to fill the remaining space.. the disk must have 10-25% free space remaining for backups to work.
Note what Pondini says..
It may not "stick" on Snow Leopard 10.6.3 and 10.6.4, and on some occasions, Mountain Lion.
This is not a 100% solution.. Even on ML it did not work reliably.. and if that is the case you can almost predict Mavericks will be worse... before it gets better.
James died before Mavericks came out so unfortunately we have no more information.. but Mavericks and how it handles sparsebundles could well be different.

Best way to back up a Mac system's hard drive?

I am fine with backing up my documents and important user files with Toast, but is there something similar to Symantec GHOST, which I am used to from my PC days, for the Mac? Specifically the new Intel iMac.
I find it more frustrating to have to reinstall all my applications and figure out all my settings again in the event of a hard drive failure. I'd love to be able to ghost my entire drive to a USB disk like I would do periodically with my PC.

Probably the best two programs you'll find in this regard are SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner. Personally, I use (and much prefer) SuperDuper. Unfortunately, neither is yet compatible with the iMac Core Duo.
You can find out more about SuperDuper here:
SuperDuper
iMac Intel Core Duo 20", 1.5 GB RAM, OWC 300 GB FW HD Mac OS X (10.4.5) eMac 1.42GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, SD; iPod w/ video 30 GB

I just moved from a G5 PowerMac to a Mac Pro with one drive running Yosemite and one running Snow Leopard, Do I need Lion to be able to upgrade iPhotos

How can I see my iPhotos from a G5 PowerMac on a MacPro running Yosemite and Snow Leopard? Is Lion a more advance system that Snow Leopard?

The last iPhoto version you can run with Snow Leopard is iPhoto 9.2.4, and Yosemite needs iPhoto 9.6.
Move your photos to your Yosemite partition, if you want to use iPhoto with Photo Streams and other iCloud features.
As you are asking about Lion, you can run iPhoto iPhoto 9.2.3 or iPhoto 9.2.4 both with Lion and SnowLeopard, but there is no iPhoto version, that runs both on Yosemite and Snow Leopard, or Lion and Yosemite.

What is best solution for backup ?

Our environment consisted of RAC (2 nodes). we are trying to back up our database using RMAN with NetBackup.
we also have other different databases need to be backed up.
In RAC case, what is best solution for backing up the database ?
As I mentioned above, we are using RMAN for backup our RAC with NetBackup.
Actually, the RMAN is not simple utility for me.
Is there any other way to back up the database in our situation without rman.
I need some advice from all of you.
Thanks in advance.

Hi Justin
There are many possible ways to backup your database. You must decide the one that suits your environment.
Following is the list of options that you have.
1. Take Online Backups
Issue this command to freeze tablespaces
SQL> ALTER TABLESPACE tblspcname BEGIN BACKUP;
Copy all the files belonging to this tablespace to your backup location using OS commands.
Release the tablespace by using this command.
SQL> ALTER TABLESPACE tblspcname END BACKUP;
To find the data files belonging to a particular tablespace you can issue this statement
SQL>SELECT file_name, tablespace_name FROM dba_data_files ORDER BY tablespace_name;
2. If your db size is not BIG then you can take logical backups. Logical Backups can be FULL or incremental. In 10g you can have filesets to spilit your logical backups in more than one file with specified sizes. (By Logical Backups I mean EXPORT).
To take export for example issue this command.
ORACLE_HOME\bin\exp file=fullpath+filename.dmp log=fullpath+logfilename.log FULL=Y userid=system/pwd@dbconnectstring
To get full list of export parameters type
ORACLE_HOME\bin\exp help=y
3. RMAN (Strongly recommended) but you ruled out its possibility so I won't elaborate on that.
4. COLD BACKUP
To perform this type of backup you will need to shutdown your database by issuing this command.
SQL>SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;
(On RAC you will need to shutdown all the instances before copying files to the backup location).
Use OS copy command to copy files to backup location.
(This method is not recommended as it will flush your SGA and your client will complain about performance for the first few hours).
Let me know if you need more details.
Hopefully this helps.
Rgds
Adnan

The BEST solution for gmail on the iPhone

OK, so after much poking around, I finally figured out the best solution for using gmail on the iPhone: IMAP support.
While I think Google is still rolling this out to all users, once you get it, USE IT! It basically keeps your mail app synced with gmail, and even supports the use of folders/labels.
To see if your gmail account is ready for IMAP, go to the settings option in gmail and see if one of the tabs says "Forwarding and POP/IMAP." If you don't have IMAP available on your account yet, it won't say IMAP.
Here's some links to get you started:
setting up IMAP for gmail on your iPhone:
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77702
how actions in your mail app sync to gmail:
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77657
I hope this helps out everyone as much as it's helped me. I was a little frustrated before using POP, but gotta love IMAP! I'm not too sure the impact that this has on your battery life, but so far it's working well for me. Enjoy!

Gmail and IMAP have totally change my tune about the iPhone's email abilities. I was getting frustrated with the inability to reliably get mail (Message has not been downloaded...), sync (have to delete mail from both iPhone and desktop Mac), etc., but now I have all my POP email accounts automatically forward to my Gmail account, and I only check Gmail with the iPhone and MacPro. So far, it's a whole new iPhone experience! No more errors - ALL mail comes through perfectly - and no need to manually sync!
Note that, when setting up the Gmail/IMAP accounts, do NOT simply update your old POP Gmail settings on your Mac or iPhone! Start with a FRESH new account. I couldn't get either the iPhone or Mac to work until I started with a fresh account.
Also, I was unable to send mail from the iPhone using the smtp.gmail address, so I had changed the outgoing mail setting to use my regular ISP's smtp address. But, at some point (a few minutes later or a few hours, I don't know) when I checked the Gmail settings on the iPhone, it had magically changed itself to smtp.gmail, with the port number, and it has been working perfectly ever since! Maybe IMAP can atomatically correct this info? Not sure.
One more thing. Once you have Gmail IMAP working, then you MUST go here:
http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862
Follow these directions exactly. This is a necessary set of steps in order to make your iPhone and Mac sync correctly, so that trashed mail on the iPhone will go in the trash on your desktop Mac, etc. It's pretty freaky to check email on the iPhone, and then go to your Mac Mail a few minutes later, and see all the newly trashed (or saved/read) emails perfectly synched up!
A final note. Once this is all working and synching, remember that if you delete an email on your iPhone, it gets deleted on the desktop Mac Mail as well (and vice-versa)... which is exactly what you want to happen, but I find that I have to remember to keep the mail that I want to save on the iPhone's inbox until I get back to my desktop Mac. Otherwise, I have to manually remove it from the trash to save it!

Use external drive for both Time Machine and storage for Back to My Mac

Hi all,
I have been "a Mac" now for over a year and just keep finding cool new things that make me happy I switched. The latest thing is Back to My Mac offered with my Mobile Me account. With a rather convoluted mix of PC/Mac/iOS devices to manage - best $99 I ever spent btw...
I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that I have been using with Time Machine to back up all four of my Mac computers at home. Needless to say, the 1TB is really struggling to handle the amount of data being backed up and certainly leaves no room for anything else.
What I wanted to do was to attach a larger external hard drive via a powered hub to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use it for Time Machine backups while using the internal 1TB drive with Back to My Mac so that I can have remote access to all my data from anywhere without having to leave my computer running at home all the time in order for my laptop to "see" it when I'm away. And, yes, the amount of that data far exceeds what any level of Mobile Me subscription can offer! I should also mention that the hard drive is the only USB device connected through the hub to the Time Capsule at the moment. There are no other devices that might be "getting in the way".
I'm thinking maybe all this is asking too much without the addition of a dedicated file server (Mac Mini, perhaps - not a purchase my budget wants to make).
I understand that the Time Capsule doesn't support partitions, so I bought a Western Digital 2TB Elements drive, connected it to my Macbook Pro and used Disk Utility to reformat the drive from the incompatible NTFS it shipped in to a single, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. I then made two folders on the drive, one for Time Machine backups and one for Back to My Mac remote storage/access. Great.
However, when I connected the 2TB drive to my Time Capsule I could not see it at all. Time Capsule was reporting problems in the way of a disk error. From within my Airport Utility, I could see the trouble was the external drive. The utility suggested connecting the drive to a Mac and using it's Disk Utility to troubleshoot.
I followed through, checking the disk, etc. and ended up reformatted the drive on my Macbook Pro yet again with the same specifications as before but without the folders and reconnected it to the Time Capsule. Same deal. But now, I can't even remotely connect to the Time Capsule at all. I can see the Time Capsule in the shared area of my Macbook's Finder but can not connect. The connection tries and fails even before it gets to asking me for username and password credentials.
Long story short, first of all, I suppose I would like to know if I'm asking for the impossible?
Second, if what I want to do *is* possible, what steps do I need to take to make it so?
Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions you might have.

Well, I have now reformatted/partitioned my poor WD Elements 2TB drive about a dozen times as well as restarted my 1TB Time Capsule so many times it's no wonder it's as confused as I am! <G>
Last night, at your suggestion, William, and in respect for your continued support, I tried creating two 1TB Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions on the WD external USB drive, both with GUID partition tables. Both volumes mounted to my laptop's desktop flawlessly and without issue.
Once the external drive was connected to the Time Capsule, however, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not the drive was recognized at all, reporting a problem with the disk, or, even at one point, mounting one of the two volumes but not both. <sigh>
I read somewhere on the Internet that you need to restart the Time Capsule for volumes on an external USB drive to be recognized.
So I tried that. I connected the freshly partitioned/formatted disk to the Time Capsule and restarted it. This succeed in removing the issue of reporting a nameless drive with a capacity of 0MB. It then reported the drive with its correct name but would not recognize whatever volumes in whatever partitions that particular crack at it contained with the exception of the once, as I mentioned above, when only one of two volumes mounted correctly and was listed with the right name and capacity on the Time Capusule's Setup's Disk tab.
At this point I have given up on my goal to use the external drive with Time Machine to back up my Macs or to hope I will ever be able to see its contents remotely via Back to My Mac. All I would like to do now is simply find a reason why I can't get it successfully connected and playing nice with my Time Capsule in the first place!
Any further suggestions or advice as to what steps I might take next would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.

Best solution for media storage

Hi Everyone,
I am looking for suggestions/how-to on the best setup for media storage. We have two editors (and two computers - Mac Pro PowerPC and iMac Intel). We are currently using an internal 500 GB slot on the Mac Pro along with 1 additional external 1.5 TB drive. Then, on our iMac we use a 1.5 TB external drive. We use, for external drives, LaCie.
Here's our problem. We are running out of space. So, what is the best solution for media storage? Should we get a small rack for our external drives from LaCie and daisy chain them? Or, should we get a server? The only problem I have with a server is connection speed...we, most of the time, have a slow connection at our college.
p.s. here is a link to LaCie's website listing a rack...and we have the d2 drives. So, do you daisy chain them or plug each one in individually?
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10172
Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated!!
Thanks in advance.
zanm
Message was edited by: zanfardinom

Hi Everyone!
Thank you all for your suggestions. I agree...Drobo looks great, but I am finding more and more bad news when it comes to editing. It looks like a great solution for archiving. I received another solution with great reviews from one of my colleagues contacts. They work for a big company.
Hope this helps...something else to add to the mix.
*Our edit suite storage solution is a Facilis Terrablock 24EX unit. (http://www.facilis2.com/24ex.html) It has 18TB of space and is connected on 4GB Fibre channel to both suites. On top of that we have an Apple X-Serve running Final Cut Server that sorts and catalogs all the video we put in so network users (Mac and PC) can search and look at media from their workstations. We just put this in a few months ago. Before that we had a Rorke Data Galaxy HDX with 6TB of space on a 2GB Fibre Channel connection. ( http://www.rorke.com/av/galaxy-hdx.cfm ) It’s now a backup storage unit. Both systems have excellent performance though, we upgraded mostly for space and the server software.*
Again, thank you all for your help. I will research all suggestions.

Best Solution for Archiving Table data

Hi All,
I have a table with huge data. It is not partitioned table.
On an average per day 10000 records will be inserted into this table. Now I want to archive(backup)
every one years data manually and keep in safe location and hence delete those archived rows
from the table. Whenever required it should be easily imported back to this table. All this happens through
Application.
One appraoch in my mind right now, is transferring the data from table to flat file with comma separted,
and whenever required again importing back to the table from Flat file using external tables concept.
Can any body suggest what is best solution for this.
Thanks

The best solution would be partitioning.
Any other solution requires DML - running DELETE and INSERT transactions to remove a data set and to add a data set (if need be) again.
With partitioning this is achieved (in sub-seconds) using DDL by exchanging a partition's contents with that of a table. Which means that after the archived data has been loaded (SQL*Loaded, Import, etc) into a table (and indexes created), that table (with indexes) is "swapped" into the partition table as a partition.

Best solution for showing photos on a HD TV?

I recently got a Sony HD TV with full 1080. I would like to be able to display my photos at the best resolution possible on it. What is the best way to do that? My computer is nowhere near the TV so I can't plug it in directly. I also am not interested in buying an Apple TV so I guess I'm looking at DVD. How do you get the best resolution using DVD's?
Thanks.
John

DVD's give you, at best, a resolution of something like 852x400. Given that 1080i resolution is 1920x1080, you can see that you are loosing a huge amount of detail. It will look OK but not nearly as impressive as it might.
Honestly the best solution is to hook your Mac up to the TV. You can look for DVI cables online that are very long (I think as long as 50ft). You'll also probably need a DVI to HDMI adaptor, depending on what your TV accepts. The only question is if a cable run that long will be able to hold the signal OK.
The AppleTV would be a good alternative, but be aware that it limits resolution to 720p - 1280x720, which is much better than a DVD but not quite as good as a full 1080i connection. You probably wouldn't notice the difference between that and 1080i as much as between DVD and 1080i. Another alternative is an older non-Intel Mac MINI, still able to display a picture at 1080i just fine.
In the future, the answer to this question will be to buy a Blu-Ray burner and produce a 1080i slideshow to disc just as you can do with DVD today. But burners are still rather expensive as are players, so a second Mac or Apple TV would probably be cheaper at this point...

What is the best solution for migrating from Maverick to Yosemite?

What is the best solution for migrating from Maverick to Yosemite? Anyone have suggestions?

Back up all data. Update all third-party software to the latest version and remove any you don't need. Download the Yosemite installer from the App Store. Run it.

What is the best solution for running windows based programs

I have one program that I need windows for. What is the best solution for doing this without painfully slowing down my mac.

Depends on your needs.
BootCamp requires reboot and uses all physical resources of the system. Only OSX *or* Windows can run. Better for gaming or memory intensive tasks. BootCampAssistant must set up the boot sector to make it work. Also BCA required to remove it.
VM (virtual machine) like Parallels which "hosts" Windows while still running OSX. You split RAM between the two environments. VM is just another program so no special boot sector changes needed, but not good for graphics or RAM intensive programs.
Other recommended alternates to Parallels (paid) are VM Fusion (paid) and VirtualBox (free download from Oracle.com).

TA24002 My 500 GB can't verify nor repair. I have photoshop work that I need to recover. I would like to know which erase option would be the best solution for this problem.

My 500 GB can't verify nor repair. I have photoshop work that I need to recover. I would like to know what option would be the best solution for this problem?

You appear to have two issues: 1) a hard drive that is not working properly and 2) files you wish to recover.
Re 1) you need to answer Kappy's questions.
Re 2) does the drive load and can you see your photo files? If so can you copy them to another drive?
Do you not have a backup of the photo files?

I have problems in the initiation of the Encore process when opening presents the following error message : "Encore CS6 Cannot Run in Non-Royalty Serialized".... What is the best solution for this problem ?

Help Me.
What is the best solution for this problem ?

Encore is activated when you activate Premiere Pro... so, as Stan asked, how did you install P-Pro?
Ask for serial number http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1234635 has a FAQ link
-and a fix for Encore http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1421765?tstart=0 in reply #7
-plus more Encore http://helpx.adobe.com/encore/kb/cant-write-image-fie-larger1.html

Best solution for backing up 3 Mac's with one drive

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