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opinio

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 23, 2013
1,171
7
I have a 2013 TC. I am wondering what the 'Archive Disk' feature in the AirPort app does? I have never bothered with it. Does it simply back up what is on the internal drive to an external USB drive? Is so what is the use of that... You could do that anyway with any Mac.
 
Yes, it lets you copy the data from the Time Capsule to an external USB drive, for example to make an off-site backup.

The benefit of using that instead of a Mac is that the archive function takes place entirely on the Time Capsule. The Mac doesn't have to remain on, and the data goes directly from the TC to the external disk (if you copied it from the Mac, the data would actually have to go through the network).
 
Yes, it lets you copy the data from the Time Capsule to an external USB drive, for example to make an off-site backup.

The benefit of using that instead of a Mac is that the archive function takes place entirely on the Time Capsule. The Mac doesn't have to remain on, and the data goes directly from the TC to the external disk (if you copied it from the Mac, the data would actually have to go through the network).

Good point.

But I take it it is a one-off copy feature. I am guessing it was designed to allow you to offload a full internal Time Machine disk to an external backup so you could then erase the internal and start again (or variants of that scenario).

Or to copy the data off the drive if you planned to sell the TC or erase the drive.
 
Good point.

But I take it it is a one-off copy feature. I am guessing it was designed to allow you to offload a full internal Time Machine disk to an external backup so you could then erase the internal and start again (or variants of that scenario).

Or to copy the data off the drive if you planned to sell the TC or erase the drive.

Correct, or to simply create a copy for offsite storage.
 
Yes, it lets you copy the data from the Time Capsule to an external USB drive, for example to make an off-site backup.

The benefit of using that instead of a Mac is that the archive function takes place entirely on the Time Capsule. The Mac doesn't have to remain on, and the data goes directly from the TC to the external disk (if you copied it from the Mac, the data would actually have to go through the network).

This is what I expected... however I'm doing this right now with a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule and it's saying it's going to take 24 hours to "archive" 1.7TB of data.

It sure sounds like that's going over the network to me even though the drive is directly connected. What's going on?

Thanks!
 
This is what I expected... however I'm doing this right now with a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule and it's saying it's going to take 24 hours to "archive" 1.7TB of data.

It sure sounds like that's going over the network to me even though the drive is directly connected. What's going on?

Thanks!

USB drives run through the USB port on the Time Capsule are generally about 25 MB/s. Couple that with overhead and the actually processes that must go on in the background and that 24 hour time frame is about right for the 1.7 TB archive.
 
This is what I expected... however I'm doing this right now with a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule and it's saying it's going to take 24 hours to "archive" 1.7TB of data.

It sure sounds like that's going over the network to me even though the drive is directly connected. What's going on?

1957GoldTop is correct - the Time Capsule USB ports are USB 2.0 so pretty slow for a full clone.

I've quit doing that for my off-sites; now I use Time Capsule for local backups and CrashPlan as an off-site safety net. Archiving the TC backups was too inconvenient, which meant that it didn't get done frequently enough to be effective as an off-site.
 
How to use the ATC Archive?

1957GoldTop is correct - the Time Capsule USB ports are USB 2.0 so pretty slow for a full clone.

I've quit doing that for my off-sites; now I use Time Capsule for local backups and CrashPlan as an off-site safety net. Archiving the TC backups was too inconvenient, which meant that it didn't get done frequently enough to be effective as an off-site.

Assuming I have done an Archive of the ATC, how can I use it? Can I plug the external HDD to another ATC to restore the archive?
 
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