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Time Capsule or fire wire 800 HD?

B

brownieb99

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 2, 2010
3
0
Hi all,

I'm new to this forum so if this is in the wrong place or just got it horribly wrong i do apologise.

I have a 15" mac book pro with 4G of ram and 320G of HD.

Due to the internal HD filling up, I have decide to install a new internal HD myself which will be with me in the next few days. Installing the HD I have no issues with its the loading up of the new HD that I’m a little unsure of.

Until a few days ago my time capsule was a 320G Western Digital fire wire 800, which has worked well but is now full, this coupled with the need to back up my girlfriends Mac book I decided to buy a Time Capsule, which I made the default. However it took 24hrs to back up 200G wirelessly and the girlfriends Mac book via Ethernet is not going much quicker (only 80G).

My question is this, when I have installed my new internal HD would it be better to restore from the external hard drive or from the time capsule bearing in mind it took nearly 24hs in the first instance?

Any help or ideas, I would love to hear them.

Brownieb
 
time capsule is WAY slower then the FW drive

i've never seen timecapusle pass 8MB/s on wireless. the FW drive will do 70MB/s easily.

however I always recommend a fresh install.

the only thing that makes timecapsule somewhat worth it is because its wireless.
 
Id do neither. Get a airport extreme and USB 2.0

You can do the first, long backup manually with USB and stick the drive on airport extreme after and it acts just like a time capsule. The tc is known to die right at 1.5 yrs so you will lose both data and router at once.
 
farmermac said:
Id do neither. Get a airport extreme and USB 2.0

You can do the first, long backup manually with USB and stick the drive on airport extreme after and it acts just like a time capsule. The tc is known to die right at 1.5 yrs so you will lose both data and router at once.
Click to expand...

you should do your homework before posting
you cannot backup through AEBS USB drive.
 
funny, bought my AEBS less then a year ago, this was released March 19, 2008, I still cant do it.

all up to date.
 
farmermac said:
Id do neither. Get a airport extreme and USB 2.0

You can do the first, long backup manually with USB and stick the drive on airport extreme after and it acts just like a time capsule. The tc is known to die right at 1.5 yrs so you will lose both data and router at once.
Click to expand...

I agree with this option--at least trying it this way--if not, then connecting a drive via Firewire or USB directly to your Mac instead of using a Time Capsule. I have a Time Capsule and it works fine and I have had no problems with it (mostly I think because it sits on a shelf all by itself near the floor so it runs cooler than most). But I don't think I would replace it with another Time Capsule. Seems a better option to not put the two in the same unit--better configured as separate router and backup drive. I would probably try farmermac's option first just to see how well it works.
 
mulo said:
funny, bought my AEBS less then a year ago, this was released Wednesday March 19, 2008 04:43 PM EST I still cant do it.

all up to date.
Click to expand...

Code: 
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Paste that to Terminal and Time Machine should recognize the AirDisk
 
farmermac said:
Id do neither. Get a airport extreme and USB 2.0

You can do the first, long backup manually with USB and stick the drive on airport extreme after and it acts just like a time capsule. The tc is known to die right at 1.5 yrs so you will lose both data and router at once.
Click to expand...
Can you do this? I used to use a usb drive to back up and recently got an airport extreme. When i plugged my time machine drive into the AE, time machine didn't recognise it so it tried to back up my whole drive again.

It might just be my drive as that seems like it is about to fail so I'm replacing it with a much better and newer wd drive which is silent. Can i do my first (new) backup via usb then plug the usb drive into my airport and only do smaller subsequent backups from then on?

Thanks

Back to the original question, it depends on your situation but I'd also recommend the airport extreme with the usb drive. It's a great router and If you partition the usb drive, it's a lot more practical than firewire if you need to share with windows computer and it's cheaper to replace than firewire. Firewire is great for storage and where the faster transfer rate is needed but apart from the initial back-up, how quick do you need to back up a couple of hundred MBs?
 
Caution on Time Capsules

There have been quite a number of reports of time capsules failing around the 18 month mark of usage. I think it was something with the power supply.
 
mulo said:
you should do your homework before posting
you cannot backup through AEBS USB drive.
Click to expand...

Buddy you should do your research yourself. That's precisely the setup I am using.

You need to go into your aex settings, make sure disk sharing is enabled, then access the airport extreme from finder and browse to the drive. This moire the drive and makes it viewable to time machine. Set up time machine with it and it will work. You don't need to mount the drive everytime. Time machines does everything. It is the best backup setup because you can start the initial backup via wireless, interrupt it as soon as it starts, connect the drive manually to your computer, finish the backup, then hook it up to aex again and it will do incrementals no problem.

If you ever need to restore you can plug the USB directly to your computer too
 
paddyhazard said:
Can you do this? I used to use a usb drive to back up and recently got an airport extreme. When i plugged my time machine drive into the AE, time machine didn't recognise it so it tried to back up my whole drive again.

It might just be my drive as that seems like it is about to fail so I'm replacing it with a much better and newer wd drive which is silent. Can i do my first (new) backup via usb then plug the usb drive into my airport and only do smaller subsequent backups from then on?

Thanks

/QUOTE]

Access the drive manually through finder. Click on aex, browse to the drive. This will mount the drive. Then access it through time machine. It's a documented feature of airport extreme.
Click to expand...
 
paddyhazard said:
Can you do this? I used to use a usb drive to back up and recently got an airport extreme. When i plugged my time machine drive into the AE, time machine didn't recognise it so it tried to back up my whole drive again.

It might just be my drive as that seems like it is about to fail so I'm replacing it with a much better and newer wd drive which is silent. Can i do my first (new) backup via usb then plug the usb drive into my airport and only do smaller subsequent backups from then on?

Thanks

Back to the original question, it depends on your situation but I'd also recommend the airport extreme with the usb drive. It's a great router and If you partition the usb drive, it's a lot more practical than firewire if you need to share with windows computer and it's cheaper to replace than firewire. Firewire is great for storage and where the faster transfer rate is needed but apart from the initial back-up, how quick do you need to back up a couple of hundred MBs?
Click to expand...

I need my Mac back as soon as so the speed of the restore is an issue.

What i have now done is i have got a recent up date on the external HD which i will restore back from then once it has completed go back to using the TC.

Thanks for all you replies.
 
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