Airport Extreme and RAID

[RaceTripper]

Maybe this has been answered, but I didn't find it via search (I did look).

I have an Airport Extreme and it currently has a Maxtor 320GB drive on the USB port. But I want to get a 1 TB and use it as a 500GB mirrored RAID (for backups using either Backup and/or Retrospect, plus RAW camera file storage). I was looking at the Western Digital MyBook Pro or Premium 1 TB drives for this purpose. However, this Apple article states only hardware RAID works with the Extreme. I believe the WD MyBook drives are software RAID.

Is it correct that I cannot use the 1 TB MyBook drives with the Airport Extreme? Otherwise, has anyone gotten it to work? If not bummer because I really wanted to do a mirrored drive, and I suppose a hardware RAID is going to be pricey, unless someone has recommendations to the contrary.

BTW: I'm a recent re-switcher. Started in the 80s with a Fat Mac and Mac Plus, and switched to Solaris and Windows in the late 90s (Apple's fault to a big degree). Now Im back with a new 17" MBP (plus a 15 for the wife) after having had enough with my Dell craptop. Life is good again.

 

[micsaund]

Yeah, the AEX won't do RAID on it's own - you must have an enclosure that does the RAID in its own hardware (means big $$$).

That's one of the "bummer" things for me about the AEX. If you could plug two drives in and tell the AEX to mirror them, that would really make it a nice home network server (well, once they fix the airdisk issues with lots of large files that caused me to return mine recently...)

Mike

 

[RaceTripper]

Thanks for replying (I had email notification turned off accidently and just noticed). I just bought a second 320 GB (Iomega USB2 for $33 after rebate and coupon). So for now I'll use 2 320 GB drives on a USB hub with my Airport Extreme.

I'll revisit the drive situation after Leopard comes out and I can evaluate how Time Machine works with my 2 MBPs. In the meantime not buying a 1 TB drive leaves me money to buy tickets for a weekend of races at Road America.