I know why Apple doesn't want us to back up OTA...

[Cloudsurfer]

Because it's excruciatingly slow. I tried the workaround that was referred to in one of the front page posts, and it's really not all that pretty. It's now backing up 34 GB at roughly an MB per second. That's a quarter of an hour per GB, on an 802.11n connection. It will take me over 8 hours for the backup to finish.

I'm on a late 2006 iMac (with 802.11n) and have the disk hooked up to an Extreme N. Network Utility claims a connection speed of 130 Mbps.

Now, it could very well be that Time Machine isn't built for this purpose, this being a workaround and all. I'm not technical at all, so for all I know things could be optimized. But if this is an indication of the current state of things, I feel sorry for everyone who got themselves a Time Capsule and have hundreds of GB to back up.

 

[Jiddick ExRex]

Keep in mind that Time Machine won't backup your entire drive each time a backup is called for. It simply backs up new files or files that have changed during the day (a so called 'Incremental' Backup).

I believe the reason why Airdisk backup support was pulled, was due to instability with larger files and the AEBS's notification procedure, so that if the connection was interrupted during backup, the AEBS would notify TM that the file was received although transfer wasn't finished yet.

 

[liquidh2o]

why not back up directly to the external drive then attach it to the wifi router?

 

[Cloudsurfer]

Because I'm switching to an MBP in a few weeks and I don't want to plug in the drive every time I need to do a backup.

I am aware that TM doesn't make a complete backup every hour, but there are folks out there who work with large files on a daily basis. Then again, those people will probably backup through a physical connection.

 

[liquidh2o]

Because I'm switching to an MBP in a few weeks and I don't want to plug in the drive every time I need to do a backup.

I am aware that TM doesn't make a complete backup every hour, but there are folks out there who work with large files on a daily basis. Then again, those people will probably backup through a physical connection.

First time is a full back up, after that time machine is just taking snap shots. Apple even came out and said the first update would most likely take hours. After that you'd be hard pressed to notice time machine taking snap shots (according to apple). This is why i mentioned doing a one-time initial back up w/ a physical connection and subsequent snapshots wirelessly. Sorry if i miscommunicated that

 

[Jiddick ExRex]

Because I'm switching to an MBP in a few weeks and I don't want to plug in the drive every time I need to do a backup.

I am aware that TM doesn't make a complete backup every hour, but there are folks out there who work with large files on a daily basis. Then again, those people will probably backup through a physical connection.

Seeing as you differ between 'you' and 'them', it doesn't seem like you are in the boat where backing up large files will be a problem.

Two things remain though for casual users:
1. Using Parallels or VMWare will make Time Machine act up, because the Virtual hard disk image you are using will change each time you launch Windows.
2. Using entourage mail will cause TM to backup your entire mail folder each time you access your mail account, as it is one xml-file (pretty moronic implemented, I will grant you that).

This however won't really affect your use with the computer, as having an N-connection and using some of the bandwidth for backing up shouldn't slow your machine to a crawl anyway, unless it's actually making full backups each time which it doesn't.

As the previous poster commented, try making the full-backup via. a FW or USB port first, then plug the drive into the AEBS and use the Airdisk.

 

[macleod199]

Now, it could very well be that Time Machine isn't built for this purpose, this being a workaround and all. I'm not technical at all, so for all I know things could be optimized. But if this is an indication of the current state of things, I feel sorry for everyone who got themselves a Time Capsule and have hundreds of GB to back up.

Presumably the Time Capsule has a more efficient connection/conversion between the network and the drive than USB. USB is pretty horribly CPU intensive, and the CPU in the AEBS isn't exactly a powerhouse.

We'll know when people get their systems and testing it how much faster TC is, and once people open it up we'll have a better idea of why.

 

[kmay]

I tried backing up to USB and then connected to Airport Extreme

I connected my LaCie hard drive to a USB port and did a full backup using Time Machine. Then I connected the drive to the USB port on my Airport Extreme. The problem is when I connect through the network, I can see the drive and even write files to the drive, but I can't see the Time Machine file or any other file written through a direct USB connection to my Mac Pro. By the same token, if I copy a file through the network connection and then plug it directly into my computer, I can't see the file either. This same behavior is present on a WD passport hard drive as well.

Alas, I'm trying to run the initial Time Machine backup through my wireless network and it's painfully slow. Any ideas?

 

[benpatient]

ignore the hype and embrace the skepticism.

sadly, that's the best advice you can get when dealing with apple these days.

 

[maxp1]

Presumably the Time Capsule has a more efficient connection/conversion between the network and the drive than USB. USB is pretty horribly CPU intensive, and the CPU in the AEBS isn't exactly a powerhouse.

We'll know when people get their systems and testing it how much faster TC is, and once people open it up we'll have a better idea of why.

Yeah, I bet we'll see that it has some low end of medium grade CPU, about twice the speed of AEBS. I backed up via TM last night to a USB disk and it took all night, some 770k files. I can understand where there might be a problem if the CPU of the AEBS had to handle any of that load.

I've also read that there's a problem because the AEBS can't inform the source computer that the data has been written to the airdisk, only that the data has been received.

The thing that I think is interesting about this is that if either of these were the reason the feature was pulled, why was it listed as a feature in the first place? Wouldn't Apple engineers have figured out that it wasn't going to work for one of these very basic reasons at a fairly early stage, not the week before release? This is the only thing that keeps me hopeful that a firmware update to AEBS will make this feature available.

 

[kmay]

Time machine update

The final initial backup took about 22 hours. Subsequent backups take only a few minutes.

I think the real issue would be trying to restore a time machine backup wirelessly. I not convinced it will work. It wouldn't be a problem if you could just plug the HD directly into the computer USB port and restore a previous backup, however a file written through the network won't be recognized when plugged directly into the computer.

 

[macleod199]

The thing that I think is interesting about this is that if either of these were the reason the feature was pulled, why was it listed as a feature in the first place? Wouldn't Apple engineers have figured out that it wasn't going to work for one of these very basic reasons at a fairly early stage, not the week before release? This is the only thing that keeps me hopeful that a firmware update to AEBS will make this feature available.

I think they're definitely having some issues getting the new firmware for the AEBS out (there's at least one or two well-known bugs with 7.2.1)... maybe they thought they would have this solved, but it was harder than they thought, or they got pulled onto some other project (i.e. time capsule!). Kind of like how Leopard got delayed because people were pulled to work on the iPhone OS in a panic.

It's especially hard to get people who are good at programming embedded firmware, and there's all sorts of extra memory/power/space constraints that may be making it difficult to fix this.

 

[marclapierre13]

Because I'm switching to an MBP in a few weeks and I don't want to plug in the drive every time I need to do a backup.

I am aware that TM doesn't make a complete backup every hour, but there are folks out there who work with large files on a daily basis. Then again, those people will probably backup through a physical connection.

Just hook it up to the external HD, transfer your whole HD to the external HD, and then when you need to use the time machine airport back up, it wont need to back up the whole thing OTA, just the changes. Thats what Im going to do.
Even backing up small files on the iDisk is friggin slow.