Last year I bought my wife a MacBook, which she loves. One of the cool tools provided with OS X is Time Machine, which will automatically back up any changes to an external hard drive. She has an external USB hard drive for this which she connects about once a week, but you're only as safe as your most recent backup.

Apple also makes the Time Capsule, which is a WiFi router with a built in 1TB hard drive. With one of these, Time Machine would automatically back up her MacBook any time she's connected to the network. However, it has three problems: #1 it's a single drive so there's no protection from a hard disk failure; #2 I already have a WiFi router; #3 it's pricey - C$330.

What I really want is a NAS - Network Attached Storage, which I could use for backing up all of my PCs, sharing folders, and maybe as a media server. And although Apple doesn't officially support using Time Machine with a NAS other than Time Capsule, three NAS vendors officially support Time Machine for their RAID models. (Using an unofficial hack for backups doesn't seem smart to me.) Of the three vendors (Buffalo - 2 models, LaCie - 1 model & Netgear - most models), the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo was my preferred choice because the hard drives could be upgraded.

Unfortunately, the ReadyNAS ain't cheap (and neither are the others) - C$400 for the base NAS and C$300 for two 1.5TB drives. OUCH! Maybe Apple will create a RAID1 version of the Time Capsule. But, until then, it looks like I'll stick with the external drives.

Note: One thing which I have learned is RAID1 can protect you against a disk failure, it won't protect you from theft, destruction, or failure of the NAS. So you really should back up the NAS too - preferably offsite.