Windows Home Server + Mac Backup

Finally I want to show the world a projects that I was working on in my spare time for two years now. Due to the fact that the number of computers at home increased in the past few years, a backup-solution is obsolete.

I have chosen Windows Home Server to backup two already running Windows-machines and three Macs. While the integrated backup-routine for connected Windows-machines works very well, I had to think of a solution for the Macs. Apple’s Time Machine only accepts local hard disks but no remote connections, so they have sales arguments for their Time Capsule-product.

I set up encrypted Mac-Sparse Disk Images with the same size of the source-volume, eg. the inbuilt-hard disk. A rsync-script on the client side syncs the two disks weekly, even over the Internet. I use this technique to have a secure offshore-backup next to my Time Machine-disk.

rsync -avrzP --delete /Users/youruser/Documents/ /Volumes/youruser-Backup/Documents/

 

Firstly you have to mount the youruser-Backup disk image. After that, this rsyn-command will compare the local /Users/youruser/Documents-folder with the Documents-folder in the disk-image. Locally deleted files will be also deleted so that you have a 1:1: hierarchy of your local Documents-folder.

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