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alternatives to time capsule?
- Thread starter tbluhp
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There are many external HDDs that are compatible with Time Machine. Obviously though it won't have routing capabilities that the Time Capsule does.
Likewise, though I have found that in Lion it routinely corrupts and throws away my old backup and forces me to start a new one. Make sure you update the firmware.
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I am not aware of another router/drive all in one device like the Time Capsule. You can get a conventional router then run a drive over the network as others have mentioned here, but it is not the same as an all in one device.
Two ways to go if you don't want a Time Capsule.
1. Just buy any router and plug a network attached storage (NAS) device into it and backup over the network to the device.
2. Buy a router with a USB port and plug a USB external hard drive into the router and backup to that drive.
Just note that not all NAS support Time Machine, particularly Lion's version.
Many router NAS implementations may only support SMB/CIFS and thus are not a great replacement for Time Capsule for Time Machine. Even though they may be fine as a simple file server.
YMMV.
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OP>> Not dumb questions at all. balamw is correct in that you need to make sure the components you buy will work together with either of these setups. No offense
, but from your questions it sounds like this might be a little more advanced tinkering than you want to do (?). Maybe you would be better off just going with the Time Capsule if just straight Time Machine backup is all you want.
More to the point. Exactly what features of Time Capsule do you want to replicate?
Example: An Airport Extreme does everything the Time Capsule does once you add a USB hard drive, except of course that Apple doesn't officially support Time Machine that way, and compared to many other dedicated NAS devices both are not stellar in terms of performance or features.
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Interesting. Haven't had any TC corruption issues yet. I keep Time Machine off and do backups once a week with my MBP.
They've been working on this in the firmware releases. I hope this most recent one finally fixed it. I am also backing up three Macs to it with the default settings which may make a difference. Most of my data is on a separate NAS anyhow....
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One is a router that is also a NAS, while the other is a low cost single drive NAS.
What are you trying to accomplish? If you need a router, the MyBookLive won't do anything for you.
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What are you trying to accomplish? If you need a router, the MyBookLive won't do anything for you.
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That you can do. Even though your backups will be wireless, you should cable the NAS (network attached storage) to your router. Performance degrades quickly if both the notebook and NAS are wireless as you have half the bandwidth available.
Again, YMMV if the client machine is running Lion. At least in my case I have lost backups, but since it isn't my primary backup I don't care as much.
Overall I get better backup performance (faster) with my WD MyBookLive wired to my Airport Extreme via Gigabit Ethernet than I did with my Time Capsule. EVen though, so far, those backups have been less reliable.
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Again, YMMV if the client machine is running Lion. At least in my case I have lost backups, but since it isn't my primary backup I don't care as much.
Overall I get better backup performance (faster) with my WD MyBookLive wired to my Airport Extreme via Gigabit Ethernet than I did with my Time Capsule. EVen though, so far, those backups have been less reliable.
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