Goodwill find - Airport Extreme Base Station A1408

[eyoungren]

Airport Extreme + USB drive is functionally identical to Time Capsule, kind of?

I bought Airport Extreme time ago, but desperately failed to configure it to join wifi network (which it actually should be able to, when using older Airport Utility). It is sitting idle now.

It is similar.

I'm just not sure how robust it is. I later disconnected those drives and turned them off. Any time I tried lengthy copying or copying of more than a few hundred MBs the drives dropped out. Then it became a series of turn the drive off, then back on in order to get it to show back up inside the Airport utility.

That could be down to my cases though (I doubt it's the hard drives inside) as their functionality has seemed to degrade over time.

 

[Spock]

I use one that is separated from my main network with a hidden 802.11b SSID so I can connect my older iBooks and PowerBooks to my WiFi, its been a very solid device for a few years now.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Airport Extreme + USB drive is functionally identical to Time Capsule, kind of?

I bought Airport Extreme time ago, but desperately failed to configure it to join wifi network (which it actually should be able to, when using older Airport Utility). It is sitting idle now.

In theory. But every Airport Extreme ever made only has USB 2.0. That pokey 480Mbps interface becomes a real bottleneck especially over WiFi. IIRC using a drive over USB with an Airport Extreme as a time capsule was only officially supported on the AC model too. The real Time Capsules have SATA interfaces and are MUCH faster to backup. They aren't too expensive either used especially if you go for one of the older ones. The drives can be replaced although it can be a bit of work in some models as Apple glued a rubber pad on.

 

[barracuda156]

In theory. But every Airport Extreme ever made only has USB 2.0. That pokey 480Mbps interface becomes a real bottleneck especially over WiFi. IIRC using a drive over USB with an Airport Extreme as a time capsule was only officially supported on the AC model too. The real Time Capsules have SATA interfaces and are MUCH faster to backup. They aren't too expensive either used especially if you go for one of the older ones. The drives can be replaced although it can be a bit of work in some models as Apple glued a rubber pad on.

I got Time Capsule, though mostly use FireWire hard-drives. I am just thinking what to do with Extreme (if it can be configured for anything; I am unsure so far).