Hi there, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong area, but does anyone have any direct experience using Apple Time Machine and the Time Capsule? I have 2 macs and was wondering if i can back both up. Also, are there cheaper alternatives? Thanks
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Apple Time Capsule as a backup
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Yes, Time Capsule can back up multiple macs. Cheaper alternative: by a large external hd from a store, and manually copy files over.
Sorry cant help more, dont own a mac......yet.
Sorry cant help more, dont own a mac......yet.
Cheaper and more convenient alternative: buy an AEBS and an external hdd, and use Time Machine to make regular automatic backups for you over your network.
True, but there are articles circulating that say it is not a supported feature for the AEBS. They're thinking it was a leftover debugging feature that wasn't turned off before the last update and you will not be able to get support for it if you call Apple. I'd be afraid of Apple removing this feature in future updates. Seems like Time Capsule's the only officially supported way to back up wirelessly with Time Machine.
And for the OP, I have a Time Capsule, and although I'm only backing up one computer, it's worked relatively flawlessly.
Edit: And you can use Time Capsule to back up multiple computers according to Apple documentation.
This isn't really cheaper and it certainly isn't more conveinient. If you price out an Airport Extreme and a 500GB external HD (or 1TB) I think you'll find it comes to about the same price as a TC (especially if you use the same drive).
Is it possible for me to take the files from the Time Capsule when im not connected to the wifi network that it is making? Ex; I live in NY and if im in FL and I need a file from my Time Capsule. Is it possible to connect to the Time Capsule from FL and take a file from it?
unfortunately not. if that's a feature that you're really interested in, you should get a .mac account. one of the features, back to my mac, allows you to access things on your computer in NY from anywhere. And another feature, idisk, allows you to have 10gb of virtual space on the internet. So you would just back up whatever files you wanted to the idisk in new york and then you could access those files from anywhere.
I've never used this feature, but wouldn't you be able to enable sharing of your Time Capsule disk over WAN and access it using your IP address?
Well, you can certainly do that with the AEBS, and I've done it. Presumably, the Time Capsule is an AEBS with a hard drive in it, so I would be surprised if this didn't work.
Okay, that's what I thought. I know I have the options in my AirPort Utility for my Time Capsule, but as I've had no use for it, I haven't tested this out.
Yes it was turned off before the release of the AE, but recently they enabled it with a firmware update.
I know that, but if you pay attention to the article date, you'll see that it was published after the firmware update and that Apple says that it is an "unsupported feature". This would imply that Apple did not mean to enable it with the update, so you won't be able to get help from Apple if you have a problem with Time Capsule backing up to a drive connected to the AEBS.