Update enables Time Machine backups to AirPort Extreme USB drives
The functionality, dubbed AirPort Disk, was at one time an highly touted feature of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. But to the dismay of many, it was subsequently scratched in the weeks leading up to the operating system's release last October, with all references to its existence vanishing from Apple's website without explanation
Despite Apple's silence on the matter, AppleInsider later cited a person familiar with the ongoing development of Leopard as saying that company had internally classified the inability to select an AirPort Disk under Time Machine as a known issue. The matter was assigned a unique "Bug ID" number and titled: "Cannot set Time Machine Backup to AirPort Disk."
In the bug report, Apple noted that the issue was "currently being investigated by engineering," offering a ray of hope that it would be restored one day once the technological kinks had been knocked out. On Wednesday, the company released Time Machine and AirPort Update 1.0, marking the feature's long awaited return.
After downloading the update, users reported the ability to select external USB drives connected to the latest AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Stations as the destination drive for backups under the Time Machine control panel. They also reported that the software update changed their Leopard build from 9C31 to 9C7010.
64 Comments
i have a linksys n router would like to go apple so what's the best way to go
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
i have a linksys n router would like to go apple so what's the best way to go
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
Whichever works for you. You can stick a USB hub onto the single USB port of both TC and AE but you're limited to USB. No Firewire nor any booting up I'm afraid.
Personally, my opinion would be to keep the backup target disk seperate from a network device. Should a time capsul fail or ever need to be serviced, you are effectivly loosing both your router and system backups at the same time. From what I understand, the Time Capsule will not function with the hard drive removed, nor is there a way to remove the drive without violating warrenty.
What I like about the Airport Extreme approach (which I can now thankfully take advantage of) is that as long as the hard drive is recognizable by the unit as a USB device, I can effectivly add as much (or as little) storage as I want.
So while I may decide that 500GB is enough for me now as a backup target, I can easilly bump it up to 1TB or higher by swapping out the hard drive attached to the Airport, or even through the adding of a USB raid enclosure.
Then again... this is only my opinion. \
i have a linksys n router would like to go apple so what's the best way to go
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
Methinks it's possible the bug causing the delay for "AirDisk" backup might have been the bug up someone's butt to get out a high-margin Apple-branded TimeCapsule product people would buy first before they released the capability to do it with a cheap third-party disk.
I ran out and bought one and have both a USB drive and a AE. I think I am still good for 14 days to return it. hmmmm