Refurb Airport Extreme or brand new?

[craigc_]

Anyone think its safe to buy a refurbished Airport Extreme or should I go brand new. It is a difference of $50.

 

[munkery]

My refurb airport extreme works great never had a problem but I wish I would have waited for a Time Capsule.

 

[craigc_]

My refurb airport extreme works great never had a problem but I wish I would have waited for a Time Capsule.

I was thinking of buying a refurb time capsule but im not sure if i trust a refurb hard drive in that thing.

 

[munkery]

True, the airport extreme has no (edit: less, I am not sure if it has none) moving parts so it should be more reliable. Plus I do kinda like having a portable HD for time machine for when I am on the go.

 

[craigc_]

My concern now is if I will be able to use a hard drive with the airport extreme for time machine. I know the capability was enabled in a firmware update a while back but I'm not sure if apple fixed this with a new update since they introduced the time capsule.

 

[munkery]

You mean with the hard drive plugged into the airport's usb? I am pretty sure you can but not absolutely.

I do keep my external hard drive plugged straight into my macbook as it is only for that machine and sometimes I do take it with me; so, I can't answer that question for sure.

 

[craigc_]

Yeah I want to network my external hard drive on the airport extreme and use it with time machine. I believe this requires Airdisk which at first was not supported by Time Machine, and then with a firmware update on the AE, was enabled. But im not sure if it has been deactivated or not. I need to know for sure before I buy.

 

[munkery]

Yes you can! With the AirPort Extreme you can connect a harddrive and use it as an "AirDisk" or as a Time Machine back-up destination. If you want to use 1 drive to do both, however, this can cause problems. You could partition the drive in 2, but if you ever needed to change partition sizes, you would loose all of your data.

What I would do is buy two hard drives, and use one for TM backups and the other for network file storage. I do something similar where each Mac has it's own Time Machine back up drive connected to the Time Capsule.

Hope this helps.

Dylan.

This is from another thread (dated Dec. 4/2008) so I can not guarantee its accuracy. The thread also said that the external hard drive had to be non-usb powered, meaning it must have its own power supply.