While waiting for all of my files to copy from the old iMac to the new Mac Studio (copying 1.5TB worth of files takes a LONG time… rsync --progress is your friend to get a sense of where you are in the process. 1.39 millions files…) I had time to think about backing up the new computer.
Since the iMac is my primary source of truth for things like important documents and photos I’ve followed the 3 2 1 rule of backups. At a high level the process involves
- Keep 3 copies of important file. Your primary copy and 2 backups
- Keep files on 2 different types of media to protect against different hazards
- Keep 1 copy offside to protect against damage to your main copy and your local backup See the data backup options document linked above for more details.
I’ve been very happy with Arq for a while now and have successfully restored lost files both locally and from the cloud—Remember, if you’ve never tested restoring files you don’t have a backup system…—and backup to local disk attached to the computer and to cloud storage. For the iMac this meant a 4TB disk for the 2TB drive. Moving to the Mac Studio I decided to make the leap to network attached storage (NAS) and purchased a Synology DS1621xs+ NAS and Western Digital 4TB hard drives. Setup is relatively easy - install the disks, plug in an Ethernet cable, plug in the power cord, and load a web interface for the NAS. Except loading the web interface timed out. Odd. And I noticed that the lights for the network on the NAS were not lit. OK, this will take a bit more effort that I expected. After opening a support ticket with Synology and a chat session with a support agent I got transferred to advanced support and ended up on the phone with an agent. In troubleshooting he asked if the network switch I was using worked for other devices.
Ah! My switch is dead. Luckily I had an older switch that I was able to check. Sure enough, plugging the older switch into my router and the NAS solved the problem (at least of getting the NAS online. The rest of my wired network was dead in the water since the older switch did not have enough ports for everything).
Thankfully, the Netgear GS116NA switch has a lifetime hardware warranty. After opening a support ticket with Netgear and some back and forth via email a new switch arrived yesterday.
Open the box… Take out the new switch… Unplug everything from the old switch… Take the old switch off the wall… Put the new switch on the wall… Plug everything back in…
Power light is on but none of the switches show they are working. I’ve got to be doing something obviously wrong here… After a couple minutes wracking my brain I realized that I had not replaced the power cord for the switch since it was threaded through and behind things and it was easier to simple leave it as is. Let’s plug in the new cord.
Success! The new switch is working as expected.
Now I can go back to focusing on setting up the NAS and my backup routines as a want. But that’s a post for another day.