Time Capsule vs Airport Extreme?

[amitabhbansal]

friends
i have purchased a Airport Extreme Dual Band Base Station and hooked up a 500GB HDD on it, i use iMac, Macbook Pro and a Sony Vaio Laptop, but whenever i use iMac or Macbook it display a notification to backup on the hooked HDD with AEBS, i never did that before and i afraid to do so as because i use that HDD for transfering my files and data from Sony Vaio, then i saw that there is a product named Time Capsule also, when i visit the apple site i found that there is not a difference between both of them just a difference that my HDD is plugged out in AEBS and in Time Capsule its internal, so i want to know few things lets start by step by step as my english is not so good.
1. for using HDD with AEBS i have to format it on ExFat and installed Macdrive on Sony Vaio, but the transfer rate is very slow. is there any way to make it more faster?
2. my HDD is 270GB fulled with important data and if i use time machine software on imac or macbook pro will it delete any file on it?
3. what is the main difference between Time Capsule and AEBS hooked up with USB HDD

Thanks in advance

 

[Weaselboy]

1. for using HDD with AEBS i have to format it on ExFat and installed Macdrive on Sony Vaio, but the transfer rate is very slow. is there any way to make it more faster?

If you attach a USB drive to the AEBS, both the Mac and the Windows machine should see it as a networked drive without you having to install anything like Macdrive. Just mount the shared drive in Windows and it should work.

2. my HDD is 270GB fulled with important data and if i use time machine software on imac or macbook pro will it delete any file on it?

No. Time Machine backs up everything on the drive to whatever external drive you select as the destination. Time Machine will not delete anything on your computer.

3. what is the main difference between Time Capsule and AEBS hooked up with USB HDD

Using Time Machine to backup to a USB drive attached to a AEBS is not supported by Apple. See this. It even says in Lion and Mountain Lion help on your computer not to do this. That said, some users says it works for them... others report problems. I would not trust my data to an unsupported solution, but that's just me. I would get the Time Capsule.

 

[amitabhbansal]

If you attach a USB drive to the AEBS, both the Mac and the Windows machine should see it as a networked drive without you having to install anything like Macdrive. Just mount the shared drive in Windows and it should work.



No. Time Machine backs up everything on the drive to whatever external drive you select as the destination. Time Machine will not delete anything on your computer.



Using Time Machine to backup to a USB drive attached to a AEBS is not supported by Apple. See this. It even says in Lion and Mountain Lion help on your computer not to do this. That said, some users says it works for them... others report problems. I would not trust my data to an unsupported solution, but that's just me. I would get the Time Capsule.

As u said just connect the HDD with AEBS and shared it with windows and mac it will show up, but someone in this forum told me that AEBS doesnt support NTFS for big file size thats why i have to make it ExFat and to read exfat on windows i have to use Macdrive.

I am not saying backing up will delete the files from computer, i am saying will it delete from the AEBS hooked HDD or not?

 

[Weaselboy]

As u said just connect the HDD with AEBS and shared it with windows and mac it will show up, but someone in this forum told me that AEBS doesnt support NTFS for big file size thats why i have to make it ExFat and to read exfat on windows i have to use Macdrive.

You don't need Macdrive. Windows XP and up will natively read/write ExFAT. You would only need Macdrive if you were trying to read/write to OS X HFS+ formatted drives.

I am not saying backing up will delete the files from computer, i am saying will it delete from the AEBS hooked HDD or not?

Ah.... sorry... did not understand the question. No it won't. Networked Time Machine backups like on a Time Capsule or a HDD on a AEBS backup to a sparse bundle image that will coexist on the drive with other files.

 

[amitabhbansal]

You don't need Macdrive. Windows XP and up will natively read/write ExFAT. You would only need Macdrive if you were trying to read/write to OS X HFS+ formatted drives.



Ah.... sorry... did not understand the question. No it won't. Networked Time Machine backups like on a Time Capsule or a HDD on a AEBS backup to a sparse bundle image that will coexist on the drive with other files.

thanks for the info, could you please solve my last confusion, what is the main difference between AEBS plugged HDD vs Time Capsule? and if i buy a time capsule will be the transfer speed remain same like the AEBS with HDD i have now or it will be faster? if faster then how much?

 

[Weaselboy]

thanks for the info, could you please solve my last confusion, what is the main difference between AEBS plugged HDD vs Time Capsule? and if i buy a time capsule will be the transfer speed remain same like the AEBS with HDD i have now or it will be faster? if faster then how much?

I am as confused as you about why a USB HDD attached to a AEBS is not "supported". Hypothetically, there is no reason it could not be made to work by Apple. A USB external attached outside a Time Capsule works, so why couldn't they make it work with the AEBS? My personal theory is Apple wants you to fork out the extra money for a Time Capsule, so they borked this feature on the AEBS .

I have never seen a speed test comparing the two. I would think the TC might be faster as it is not restricted by the USB connection. That said, I think the network speed is going to be the limiting factor in either setup.

 

[amitabhbansal]

thanks for the support brother, but will wait for another reviews, please dont mind me saying this, but Time Capsule is very very expensive in India so i think i will wait for another replies
Thanks for your great time

 

[Weaselboy]

thanks for the support brother, but will wait for another reviews, please dont mind me saying this, but Time Capsule is very very expensive in India so i think i will wait for another replies
Thanks for your great time

You bet . I agree the TC is expensive.

P.S. Your English is quite good my friend.

 

[amitabhbansal]

You bet . I agree the TC is expensive.

P.S. Your English is quite good my friend.

thanks a lot bro

 

[AirThis]

Having recently purchased a 2TB time capsule, I just have one little comment to make. If you go for the TC, make sure you download the old Airport utility ver 5.6. The one which comes with ML is extremely limited. There are many missing features such as logs, access profiles, etc.

Edit: This comment is probably valid for the AE as well.

As for the slowness, Time Machine itself is quite slow. Try hooking up an external disk to a Mac directly and make a backup. You'll see that some features are not exactly zippy (e.g. browsing the TC archives).