Time Capsule or External Drive over airport extreme?

[lightz39]

What do you think would be my best bet. I currently own an Airport extreme and a WD My Passport 2TB usb 3 drive. I would like to setup a wireless time machine backup. Is my best bet to go with what I already own or to buy a 2TB time capsule and set that up instead? I would like to put other files on it as well. Example my movies, game installers, etc to save room on my os drive. I probably have 1tb worth of data I would like to have then have 1tb for a back up.

 

[Weaselboy]

Using an external USB drive off an Airport Extreme for Time Machine is not supported by Apple, so that leaves you with the Time Capsule option.

You will see some reports of users getting an external with Time Machine to work, but many people report is sporadically has problems.

You can just make a folder on the Time Capsule and store whatever you want there, but just be aware this data won't be backed up.

 

[switon]

RE: two partitions...

Hi,

I'd just like to add a further suggestion: if you decide to save other files on the same drive as you are saving the TM backups, it is typically recommended that you format the drive into two partitions, one for TM and one for your other files.

Regards,
Switon

 

[lightz39]

If I purchase the time capsule I will be using it strictly for back ups and my WD for the other data. I think I might go this route after all. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[araje]

Using an external USB drive off an Airport Extreme for Time Machine is not supported by Apple, so that leaves you with the Time Capsule option.

Nope, this works rock solid since past 3 months which is when I bought AirPort Extreme.
I have a 1TB connected to the AirPort Extreme. I have partitioned it to be 500-500 and use one drive for time machine and the other for some archive data.
Both of them show up perfectly fine in my Mac with my Mac taking backups every hour.
What's more, both the drives show up on my iPhone, iPad, my wife's S3 and my office laptop which is windows 7.

No problems at all.
This setup is scalable and practically fraction of the cost of the time capsule.

 

[Weaselboy]

Nope, this works rock solid since past 3 months which is when I bought AirPort Extreme.
I have a 1TB connected to the AirPort Extreme. I have partitioned it to be 500-500 and use one drive for time machine and the other for some archive data.
Both of them show up perfectly fine in my Mac with my Mac taking backups every hour.
What's more, both the drives show up on my iPhone, iPad, my wife's S3 and my office laptop which is windows 7.

No problems at all.
This setup is scalable and practically fraction of the cost of the time capsule.

Glad it is working for you, but for some users it just seems spotty and works sometimes and just stops others. If you search the forums here and in the Apple community forums you will find many posts on this topic. Like explained in the link I posted, it is not supported by Apple. If you look in Lion and Mountain Lion help (screen cap below), it specifically says not to use it with a USB drive off an Airport Extreme.

I am not saying you are lying or that it is not working for you, I am just saying it is not supported by Apple and in addition other users have found it problematic. I would not trust my data to this setup.

 

[matt334]

could you tell me how you did it?

I tried to make it work but my TimeMachine won't find my WD 2TB HDD connected to Airport Extreme.

I created a sparebundel , left it on my hdd (which is splitted in two partitions as yours) and selected it in TimeMachine App on Mac. Mac is just trying to find my hdd

 

[ianwuk]

Using Time Machine to backup to an external drive has never given me any issues but now I just use Carbon Copy Cloner instead and it works just as well also.