Best Hard Drive for Airport Extreme and Time Macine

[Catman77]

OK folks - I realise this has been asked before, though as you can understand I'm looking for updated info - hence the new thread.

I'm looking to purchase a hard drive to attach to my Airport Extreme (first version of their n wireless model, a couple of years old) in order to gain a hard drive that I can back up my MacBook Pro to wirelessly via Time Machine.

I know that Apple says that I should be able to buy a USB drive and attach it and it would 'just work', but recently I purchased an Iomega Prestige 1.5TB and tried it, but it was not recognised / would not mount when I attached it to the Airport Extreme - despite having followed all the instructions to reformat it before trying. Since then I discovered that many others had encountered the same problem with that particular drive.

I'm wondering what your advice would be as to what drive I should purchase to achieve my goal? I understand that a NAS drive could be a possibility - in addition to SOME USB drives.

I suppose I'd like to try and keep the price down - £90-150 if possible, which is why I'm not, at present, considering a Time Capsule (in addition to the fact that I already have the Airport Extreme).

Thanks for any help.

 

[MarkIV]

AEBS Time Machine feature may be broken or disabled

I'm not sure, but my USB drive plugged into my Airport Extreme Base Station stopped working with Time Machine in the last 2 months after working for most of a year. There were a lot of reports on the Apple support forums about this in recent months, and only a few suggested solutions. Don't quote me, but this may not actually be a feature Apple supports. See this link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2299608
This is a real shame.

 

[zen.state]

I have 2x Antec MX-100 HD enclosures that work perfectly with OS X. They actually support even back to OS 9. I have a 500GB in one and a 1TB in the other (both Hitachi) and they fully support HD and system sleep. Totally seamless operation. I use the 500GB for Time Machine and the 1TB for video.

I have never used them with an Airport Extreme though.

Product page: http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NzA0MjIz

 

[Catman77]

Thanks folks. After going into the Apple Store here I ended up getting a Western Digital My Book Studio 1TB (FW800 + USB 2.0). Unlike the Iomega Prestige, it works perfectly with the AEBS. OK, I realise the FW800 is going to waste, but it means it's there in the future if I ever upgrade or decide to do something different with it.

The folks at the Apple Store suggested the Lacie drives as well, but the WD's upright design better met my needs for where it needed to go.

Either way, they offered a 14 day return policy if it didn't work with my Airport Extreme.

Anyways, if anyone else is wondering about my original issue, my advice is to avoid Iomega (unless you don't want to plug it into the Airport), and go for one of the others I've mentioned here.