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AirPort Extreme, external drive = Time Machine?

C

Che Castro

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 21, 2009
5,878
676
is anybody using an airport extreme with an external drive for time machine successfully ?
i know apple doesn't support this

i did some google searching and the people that where having problems where the ones backing up 2 macs in the same drive without making 2 partitions

ill only be backing up a mac mini ,i have an old 2tb drive im not using

so will this work?

wd 2tb drive to airport extreme
have time machine do a backup once a week
i want everything to be included, movies, music

so the backup will be around 1.5tb

my mac mini is connected to the airport extreme via Ethernet if that's makes a difference ?


ill be doing a backup once a week during night time, i keep my mini in sleep mode :apple:
 
S

supernet33

macrumors 6502
Jan 29, 2008
366
25
Che Castro said:
is anybody using an airport extreme with an external drive for time machine successfully ?
i know apple doesn't support this

i did some google searching and the people that where having problems where the ones backing up 2 macs in the same drive without making 2 partitions

ill only be backing up a mac mini ,i have an old 2tb drive im not using

so will this work?

wd 2tb drive to airport extreme
have time machine do a backup once a week
i want everything to be included, movies, music

so the backup will be around 1.5tb

my mac mini is connected to the airport extreme via Ethernet if that's makes a difference ?


ill be doing a backup once a week during night time, i keep my mini in sleep mode :apple:
Click to expand...


It works great, I been doing it for years without an issue.
 
FreakinEurekan

FreakinEurekan

macrumors 603
Sep 8, 2011
5,550
2,607
You could, but if only backing up the one Mac Mini what's the benefit? Plug it directly into the Mini, it's faster & easier.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
Che Castro said:
is anybody using an airport extreme with an external drive for time machine successfully ?
i know apple doesn't support this

i did some google searching and the people that where having problems where the ones backing up 2 macs in the same drive without making 2 partitions

ill only be backing up a mac mini ,i have an old 2tb drive im not using

so will this work?

wd 2tb drive to airport extreme
have time machine do a backup once a week
i want everything to be included, movies, music

so the backup will be around 1.5tb

my mac mini is connected to the airport extreme via Ethernet if that's makes a difference ?


ill be doing a backup once a week during night time, i keep my mini in sleep mode :apple:
Click to expand...

It is not supported by Apple. It seems to work just fine for some users and for others it just stops working for no known reason.
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
I have my suspicions that the extreme + drive use as a time machine backup fails due to wireless glitches messing up the backup process. No empirical proof but it might be interesting to see if connecting with Ethernet provides a more reliable system.

In this case I would attach the drive to the mini unless there's a good reason to remote it.
 
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