Need help with DIY time capsule

[Tartarus]

hello, We currently have 2 MacBooks running mountain lion and we would like for both of us (me and my brother) to get a new router and a usb HDD (around 1tb or so) for use with time machine, no manual backups, i want to be able to have it back me and him up automatically when we are on the wifi at our house. i am super tech savvy and am willing to try about anything, we sure as heck aint buying a $500 time capsule.

also, i currently have another router acting as a repeater at the other end of the house, if that makes any difference. (its not that important as any newer router will be better signal strength wise than our old ones.

if anyone knows how to do this, that would be great!
and if you need any more info, I can give you any info at all
thanks!!

 

[ColdCase]

You can use an Airport Extreme base station (which is a very good router with wifi). Connect any USB drive to it and use it for TM backups. A time capsule may be less money than a AEBS plus drive, however.

You could also add USB drives to a base time capsule...

You could use a plain old NAS attached to your network, but that is somewhat tricky and may not be as reliable (not supported by apple). Several here have done that with varying degrees of success. There are other backup software solutions that you could use instead of Time Machine. CCC or CrashPlan for example.

 

[Orlandoech]

Few options without buying an actual TC.

1. AirPort Extreme w/ 1TB HDD - easiest, chepeast
2. NAS (Synology prerably) - most redundant, most expensive

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You could use a plain old NAS attached to your network, but that is somewhat tricky and may not be as reliable (not supported by apple).

NOT TRUE AT ALL.

This is extremely easy and supported by any Synology NAS. http://www.synology.com/dsm/dsm_for_home.php?lang=us

Backup
Back up important files or the system image directly from Windows and Mac computers. You can easily backup data from external storage devices and vice versa with a few clicks. Time Backup snapshots your storage at particular points of time to keep multiple versions. It’s just that easy.