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I currently have a TimeCapsule (old 1st gen upgraded to 2TB) backing up an iMac via WiFi and performing the duties of a wireless router. It also provides temporary space for exchanging files with an old MacBook, and its USB port shares a printer over WiFi. The iMac itself is getting a bit full, so I'd like to move my large photo library externally, while ensuring it (and everything else) is still backed up. I'm anxious to avoid spaghetti and having too many appliances to administer & maintain. Looking for a clean and simple solution. How about perhaps: - Replace old TimeCapsule with a modern Airport Extreme (simultaneous dual band wi-fi and guest networking is appealing) - Hook a Synology DS213/4 NAS to the Airport Extreme (2 disks mirrored) - Have a 3rd spare disk to rotate weekly with one of the two Synology disks. The idea is that the Synology will take over TimeMachine duties, and also provide space for the (external) photo library, while the spare 3rd disk will provide a cold backup. Is a Synology NAS robust enough to simply hot swap one of its two disks with a cold spare weekly? Will it update the out-of-date spare automatically as soon as I rotate them? Redundancy isn't that important to me, but an offline cold backup of everything is (e.g. in case I delete a photo accidentally), together with minimum 'set it and forget it' administration. Even this seems over-complicated - is there a simpler solution? (Perhaps if I wish hard enough a Synology DS214Air with 802.11ac/simultaneous dual-band/guest networking/hot swap will appear )

Thanks for the advice - and the pointer to the WD Scorpio. Though I don't really need the extra capacity, in terms of value... £51 WD Scorpio Black 500GB £135 Corsair Force 3 120GB ...or start saving: £1099 MacBook Air 13" £1199 MacBook Pro 13" with 128GB SSD

Just wondering if a Corsair Force 3 SSD would give a significant performance boost to an ageing MacBook? - Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD (SATA 6Gbps) - Mid-2007 MacBook, OSX Tiger (SATA 1.5Gbps) This would be to replace the MacBook's original 120GB Fujitsu HDD. Is it worth it? Will a SATA III SSD even work on an old SATA I connector? Given that SATA 1.5Gbps saturates at around 150MB/sec I'm not expecting the Corsair's 500MB/sec. I've also read that SSD performance tails off as the drive fills up, and I'd expect the drive to be 70% full much of the time, but hopefully still faster than a mechanical HDD (?) As I understand it, it's more about SSD's blistering access times, so I'd be hoping for much improved responsiveness, application load time. I'd go for an older SATA II drive, except they seem to be more expensive than current SATA III drives... and I guess a newer drive has future potential.

WD20EADS installed, up and running - and so far so good. The running temperature still seems excessive, so no change there - a lot of heat seems to be radiating off the Time Capsule internal power supply electronics. In a slightly unfortunate coincidence the following news story appeared on the very same day: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-to-replace-time-capsules-with-dodgy-power-supplies.ars (Yes, my serial number is within that range)

Thanks for the pointer to the comparison drives in the review Brian. Not really, though 2TB WDs specifically have positive reviews on both this site and elsewhere, and I'd like to source locally so I can re-assemble and put back into use quickly. The Samsung F3EG looks like a possible contender (I've seen the 500GB F2 recommended as very quiet, so I could maybe take a chance on a 2TB F3 being cool & quiet too). Here's my criteria thinking... 2TB+ capacity. Cool running, silent, with low vibration, and draw as little power as possible: The Time Capsule is used in a quiet working environment. It already runs very hot, has minimum cooling capability, and the 1st gen is reportedly susceptable to blowing power capacitors, thought to be heat related. So a green/eco drive sounds an ideal companion for it. Primary use is backups and data transfers over Wireless 'n', so sequential read/write performance is unimportant. Time Capsule auto-spins down the drive after 5 mins at idle. Fast spin up would be a bonus to avoid access delays, but not if it causes heavy power draw.

I've successfully extracted the old 500GB hard drive from a 1st generation Time Capsule. Now I just need to decide which 2TB drive to replace it with. I have a choice of: WD20EADS Western Digital SATAII 2TB 32MB Cache ...or... WD20EARS Western Digital SATA 2TB 64MB Cache I think the WD20EARS is a slightly newer model, and slightly cheaper (though the price difference is small), with double the Cache. However it seems to use Advanced Format (4096 bytes per sector, instead of 512), and I've no idea how a 1st gen Time Capsule will react to this. Apparently it is possible to put a jumper across pins 7-8 on the back of this drive for older OS such as Windows XP, so maybe that would apply to Time Capsule too? Can't figure out whether WD20EARS is SATA or SATAII, but given that it's newer I'd have thought the latter? I think WD20EADS uses 512 bytes per sector, and features 'head unloading when idle' common on laptop drives. Time Capsule spins its drive down automatically after 5 minutes of idle time, so this may not be relevent. On paper WD20EADS looks to draw less power when idle (2.8Watts instead of 5.4) Any sequential read/write performance differences are probably not important here - over Wireless 'n' Time Capsule shifts all of 6MBytes/sec. 20MB/sec when connected directly via USB2. Any pointers or advice on which drive to go out and pick up appreciated (or anything I've overlooked).

Thanks for the links!

...Sorry - all those "CD-R"s in the post above should read "DVD-R" !

I've a multi-session backup CD-R which over the past year I've added files to at regular intervals, so it contains several sessions. I figured using multi-session CD-R would be more reliable than packet-writing, and would allow me to roll-back to earlier versions of backup files if need be. I recently switched to Vista, and yesterday attempted to append a new session of backup files to the CD-R. Everything appeared to burn OK - but now when I insert the disc into any computer, only the first very oldest session appears. All the other sessions, including the data written by Vista yesterday appears to have vanished (it's a CD-R though, so the data must be on there still, but neither Windows 2000, Vista or OS X Tiger can see anything but the first oldest session). Here's a step by step of what I did in Vista: 1. Inserted the multi-session CD-R and opened it in Vista (Explorer). Explorer displayed all the files currently on the CD-R from previous sessions OK. 2. Dragged the additional files I wanted to backup onto the CD-R (the new files appeared on the CD-R in Explorer under the heading "Files to be written to CD"). 3. Clicked the 'Burn to CD' button on the Explorer toolbar. 4. The new files were written to the CD-R in about 1 minute, and the CD-R then ejected. 5. Re-inserted the CD-R, but now only the first oldest session appears. The new session just written in Vista, together with all other previous sessions are nowhere to be seen. Can anyone shed any light on what has happened? How do I recover a years worth of backups from the CD-R?

Can anyone recommend a wireless router that can share both internet access (cable, not ADSL) and share a bit of Network Attached Storage for quick backups of important files? There's a few around that advertise USB ports for printer sharing and attaching an external USB hard drive - but no mention of USB flash memory sticks. Is this because the manufacturers just assume you'll want to attach a big hard drive, and a USB memory stick would also work just fine, or are these NAS USB ports really not compatible with USB memory sticks? I'm anxious not to end up with multiple boxes, wires and adaptors everywhere (cable-modem + wireless-router + external-usb-harddrive = 3 mains-sockets occupied and very-untidy-mess). Ideal-world solution: - Combined cable-modem and wireless-router with: - Wireless 802.11 g (or draft-n) using WPA security. - Wired ethernet port(s) to connect a non-wireless PC. - 1 x USB port for printer sharing. - 1 x USB port to attach a memory stick for use as shared NAS (or a bit of built-in NAS would do). - Must play nice with Windows 2000, Vista and Mac OSX. I've yet to see a combined cable-modem+wireless-router so I'm guessing I'll have to settle for two boxes (ISP provides a basic cable-modem with ethernet socket). Is there anything out there you'd recommend that comes close to the above? Thanks, Adlib

Thanks for all the replies. >>...is "Launch folder windows in separate process" on or off? << According to the registry 'SeparateProcess' is disabled. >>Is the length of the target directory (much) longer than that of the source directory? Maybe you hit the path length limit.<< The destination is one folder deeper than the source path (e.g. copying folder D:\Folder to C:\One\Folder) - so I guess it's a possibility. I'll see what happens if I just copy to the root of C: - and maybe give Xcopy a try too...

Hi, I'm encountering a strange problem when trying to copy a folder from drive D: to drive C: in Windows 2000 (SP4). Everything starts off fine, but about half way through the copying process, a Windows dialog box pops up saying: "destination does not support long filenames" - with options to rename to 8.3 short filenames. Since it's been copying the files fine up to that point (with long filenames) something is not right. If I click the Skip button, the dialog pops up again almost immediately. If I click the Automatic button, it starts copying the files into the root of drive C: instead of the intended destination folder! Drives D: and C: are separate physical local hard drives, FAT 32 formatted. Windows 2000 is installed on the C: drive. The folder in question is fairly large (about 2GB) and contains lots of subfolders. There's several thousand files in total. Running Tools->Error Checking... on the drives turns up no problems. Anyone have any idea what might be happening?

Thanks for all the suggestions - looks like TrueImage is the way to go!

Hi, What's the best setup for recovering a (non-RAID) system as quickly as possible in the event of hard disk failure or virus/malware trashing the system? Basically I'd like something where in the event of a failure, the problem system drive could be replaced or reformatted, hit a button and the system is back to normal - without the painful process of reinstalling Windows and the applications I need. I'm just talking about the OS (Windows 2000) and installed applications - some sort of snapshot that could be kept in cold storage? All my data files are stored on a separate physical drive to the os/apps and backed up separately - so it doesn't necessarily need to be a daily backup system.

>>It's called a driver<< I stand corrected - don't remember having to install a special driver on computers based on Intel chipsets though. I guess that means a chipset driver must be obtained and installed for NForce based boards too?