Christopher, That's an excellent suggestion. Thank you.
I've had a RPi 2 for years now, not really knowing what to do with it. For now it's an experiment in remote linux access (I either share the desktop to the MBP or use ssh to the command line) but I've never actually used it for anything serious, which is a shame. Before we all move in, I'll probably ask my wife to bring it to me, along with an unused hard drive so that I can at last backup this MBP (it's been running without a backup for 90 days... asking for problems...) I'll definitely get back to you off list when I have all the hardware together. And TC over wifi, as I wrote, has been a life saver a number of times. So I'm not ready to get back to cable connections any time soon. Jean-Christophe > On Jan 9, 2020, at 9:22, Christopher Bort <[email protected]> wrote: > > In addition to all of the good advice already given in this thread, there's > another option that's slightly off the main stream. My home Time Machine > server for the past few years is a Raspberry Pi running netatalk under linux > with a 5TB USB drive hanging off it for storage. I realize that this doesn't > utilize your existing TC, but a Raspberry Pi can be had for about $25US, plus > a couple of bucks for a power supply. Since netatalk doesn't require a whole > lot of processor power, a Pi Zero should do the job quite nicely for about > $5. Either way, I believe the form factor is smaller than a TC. If your hard > disks are USB, you're good to go. There's a moderate amount of tinkering to > get everything running, but it's not difficult and once it is running there's > not much to do other than checking logs occasionally. One advantage of this > sort of set-up is that you can also use the Pi for other services on your > LAN. My 5TB drive has a 4TB partition for TM, and 1TB for a general purpose > file s erver volume, both served through netatalk, and I've got BIND running on the Pi as a caching name server for the LAN. > > The details of the set-up are off topic for this list, but I'd be happy to > share privately. > > On the subject of Time Machine over wifi, my two cents is that I haven't > experienced any major problems. As others have said, it can be slow. An > initial backup of a new machine can take overnight, but once that's done, > incrementals generally run smoothly in the background without drawing the > attention of users. The server has an ethernet connection to the network, but > our laptops and a mini connect with wifi. > > On 1/9/20 at 7:03 AM, [email protected] > (Jean-Christophe Helary) wrote: > >> I have an almost totally full but still working 2gb TC, and I have 2-3 >> old 1-2TB hard disks around. >> >> I'd like to organize all that into a solid backup system based (or >> not) on the TC, that also provides wifi Time Machine access to the 2-3 >> machines we use daily. >> >> Since Apple has discontinued TC and related accessories, I'm left with >> what I have and with the possibility to add a magic "glue" accessory >> that would replace/extend the existing TC. >> >> But I'm not sure in which direction to look for that thing. Any idea? > -- > Christopher Bort > <[email protected]> > > _______________________________________________ > MacOSX-talk mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk Jean-Christophe Helary ----------------------------------------------- http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] https://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
