Time capsule and Time machine - two questions!

ben2579

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I was originally planning on adding a 2tb WD HD to my airport extreme to create a DIY time capsule. However I have now read that this is not supported by apple. IS this correct?

IN which case I was then considering a time capsule and wanted to know if Time capsule would back up External USB Hd drive plugged into the mac? There is so much written about this online - pages and pages - some saying yes and some No. Does anyone know the definitive answer or has anyone managed this themselves.

So far I have wasted hours trying to get to the bottom of this, the apple store employees were the least helpful and did not seem to have a clue!!!

Thanks Ben
 
Its officially an unsupported feature - the historical story is quite amusing - but essentially, yes you can hang a volume off the AE and use it as a TM backup volume.

Apple won't confirm or deny it because it would trash sales of their TC. Its how I've set up a neighbour's iMac recently and it works without a problem.
 
Ok and presumably it is quite simple to do??

Thanks for clearing that up.

Any ideas about backing up external USB hdd.

Ben
 
Thanks guys that is I think what I will do but part of me had kind of started to convince myself that I needed a time capsule!! Oh well I guess i can't justify that in the AE method works ok.

Any thoughts on backing up the external USB drives?

Ben
 
ben2579 said:
Thanks guys that is I think what I will do but part of me had kind of started to convince myself that I needed a time capsule!! Oh well I guess i can't justify that in the AE method works ok.

Any thoughts on backing up the external USB drives?

Ben

I believe it will if e external drive is HFS formatted. You may also need to remove the external drive from the list of excluded files and directories in Time Machine.

I haven't tried this myself, it's the result of me searching on google.
 
I believe it will if e external drive is HFS formatted. You may also need to remove the external drive from the list of excluded files and directories in Time Machine.

I haven't tried this myself, it's the result of me searching on google.

I think the requirements for TM compatibility are HFS+ with journalling?
 
Thanks for all the replies. Looks like its a plain old external drive for me then! Can't really justify time capsule. Last thought - has anyone who set up time machine via AE used a portable hd or does it need to be powered?
 
Thanks for all the replies. Looks like its a plain old external drive for me then! Can't really justify time capsule. Last thought - has anyone who set up time machine via AE used a portable hd or does it need to be powered?

It doesn't need to be powered, if it's a laptop style drive, I ran mine like this for a while. If the drive can be powered by a single USB connection to a PC or laptop, then it should be capable of being powered by an AEBS.
 
Been looking at external hd's and each time I keep coming back to look at Tc - it's only x amount more and I can probably sell the AE 2nd gen for a little bit. What's wrong with me!!!!
 
Nothing wrong by preferring a cleaner uncluttered solution. The new TC and Extreme offer better signal quality than the previous models so you will gain there too. Good second hand values to be had too and might not work out that expensive once you sell the old one. :)
 

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