I've not had a problem with this; two macs and one 250GB disk. Works just like you'd want it to.
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Time Machine Now Works with Airport Extreme USB Drives
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I've not had a problem with this; two macs and one 250GB disk. Works just like you'd want it to.
Will the disk ever spin down?
So far, the AEBS + USB disk TM backup scheme works great for me with two computers dumping files to the disk. And the updated Airport Utility works properly too, letting me know if anyone is accessing the disk. But most of the time the disk is not connected, and sits spinning away with a quiet hum (that may prove to drive me crazy after a while). Do any of you have a disk that sleeps between backups? I wonder if this is a consequence of the disk connected to the AEBS, or if it varies from disk to disk.
So far, the AEBS + USB disk TM backup scheme works great for me with two computers dumping files to the disk. And the updated Airport Utility works properly too, letting me know if anyone is accessing the disk. But most of the time the disk is not connected, and sits spinning away with a quiet hum (that may prove to drive me crazy after a while). Do any of you have a disk that sleeps between backups? I wonder if this is a consequence of the disk connected to the AEBS, or if it varies from disk to disk.
Yeah.....I suppose I'll just leave well enough alone.
As long as I have your attention.....
I have been using my external HD with Time Machine for some time now. So.....do I simply eject it than plug it into my AEBS and that's it?
Yup... The Airport will automatically detect, and bring online the HD.
I split the HD into two volumes, one for each mac... Got everything running beautifully.
Not officially supported by Apple
So, I called AppleCare and spoke with a tier 2 customer service representative regarding an ongoing issue unrelated to AirPort Extreme and Time Machine.
I did, however, ask the Rep. if it was OK to use AirPort Extreme's AirDisk as a Time Machine backup drive. The Rep. told me that although Apple is aware that the latest firmware update allows you to use an AirPort Extreme-connected USB drive as a Time Machine drive — it's not recommended and officially unsupported by Apple.
He said only Time Capsule was supported by Apple for wireless backups.
Now, whether this Rep. was out of the loop, made it up and/or AppleCare hasn't been updated on the issue is unknown. However, I thought it was interesting to point out.
I don't think it will be stopping me.
So, I called AppleCare and spoke with a tier 2 customer service representative regarding an ongoing issue unrelated to AirPort Extreme and Time Machine.
I did, however, ask the Rep. if it was OK to use AirPort Extreme's AirDisk as a Time Machine backup drive. The Rep. told me that although Apple is aware that the latest firmware update allows you to use an AirPort Extreme-connected USB drive as a Time Machine drive — it's not recommended and officially unsupported by Apple.
He said only Time Capsule was supported by Apple for wireless backups.
Now, whether this Rep. was out of the loop, made it up and/or AppleCare hasn't been updated on the issue is unknown. However, I thought it was interesting to point out.
I don't think it will be stopping me.
Easy way to do this is have 2 External drives, one split into 2 volumes for Airdisk Time machine backup and then you can use the second HD (or maybe a 3rd volume) to essentially do this:
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-hard-drive/
There are other ways...
This did it once both partitions had a .com.apple.timemachine.supported file. Thanks a bunch.
Interestingly you don't seem to have to have the EHD attached to the AEBS now either.
I've got an EHD attached to a Mac Mini, which is connected via ethernet to my AEBS.
Since I did the update a shared folder on the EHD on the Mini now appears as available in Time Machine on my Macbook Pro over wireless. It definitely didn't before.
Now I've not tried to use it yet, so it might not work, but it shows. Is this because my network runs via an AEBS, or would this now work for any wireless router you might have?
I've got an EHD attached to a Mac Mini, which is connected via ethernet to my AEBS.
Since I did the update a shared folder on the EHD on the Mini now appears as available in Time Machine on my Macbook Pro over wireless. It definitely didn't before.
Now I've not tried to use it yet, so it might not work, but it shows. Is this because my network runs via an AEBS, or would this now work for any wireless router you might have?
I honestly don't get why people vote negative on this.
Seriously, this is awesome for people who already have Airport.
Seriously, this is awesome for people who already have Airport.
If the disk spins down then data can be lost as the AEBS can't cache it otherwise (basically the computer can only tell if the airport extreme has received the information, not whether it is written onto the disk), so a penalty is that the disk will always be kept spinning.
Network HD Via a Ethernet Gigbit Connection
GREAT NEWS.
Now does anyone know whether I can connect an Ethernet Network Hard Drive and still do Time Machine back ups. More importantly will an actual Ethernet hard drive work when connected to AEB.
Need to upgrade as current hard drive is way too small. My current set up to AEB is USB hub with hard drive and printer. Works a treat but I believe an networked hard drive with Ethernet is better and quicker?
Any ideas. Thanks.
GREAT NEWS.
Now does anyone know whether I can connect an Ethernet Network Hard Drive and still do Time Machine back ups. More importantly will an actual Ethernet hard drive work when connected to AEB.
Need to upgrade as current hard drive is way too small. My current set up to AEB is USB hub with hard drive and printer. Works a treat but I believe an networked hard drive with Ethernet is better and quicker?
Any ideas. Thanks.
Thankyou!
I'm really glad someone tried that! I was going to attempt the same - that's the perfect solution all round for a family of macs if you can password each partition seperately.
1TB drive shopping I go!
I'm pretty surprised it works tbh! Pretty chuffed! This is one of the main reasons I got the AEBS in the first place. I hope Apple don't disable it again, lol.
An Imperfect Solution
OK, so here's the deal:
1 MbP Directly Connected to a 1TB 3-partition USB HDD, TM works perfectly, but because I don't remember to plug it in, and I'm not always in the same place, I don't have the promised hourly backups.
Now, I've hooked up the same HDD to my AEBS (GigE) and my MbP starts to backup wirelessly. Realizing that even with 802.11n this is going to take forever, I stopped the backup.
Now, I have an empty sparsebundle (except for Backups.backupdb and the "computername" directory under it). So, seeing as I have backups from October on the same drive, for real, I tried copying them over. This simply doesn't work, I tried using Finder Drag&Drop and CLI cp -R and even rsync.
Next I moved the HDD back to being connected locally via USB to the MbP thinking maybe that would help transfer the files, but I can't even mount the sparseimage. I get the "Operation not supported on socket" error.
Anyhow, long story short, I'm now doing a FULL backup over ethernet (4.5MB/s), to the sparsebundle, and I do not have the old backups (going back to October) in it. HOWEVER, there is a SOLUTION:
Option+Click the TM menu in the menu bar, and you get an option to "Browse Other Time Machine Disks", using this you CAN get to the original backups, in the original Backups.backupdb and restore them over the network, however all new backups going forward are in the sparsebundle.
The only real issue I have with this, is I now have a new start-point, this means I'm taking up the entire 90+GB of space again, rather than just the differentials + hardlinks if I were able to continue the backups. I have over 560GB on this partition though, so it's no big deal.
Ideally, I'd still love to continue the old backups from where I left off, but for the convenience of doing it over wifi, I'll live.
- Davey
OK, so here's the deal:
1 MbP Directly Connected to a 1TB 3-partition USB HDD, TM works perfectly, but because I don't remember to plug it in, and I'm not always in the same place, I don't have the promised hourly backups.
Now, I've hooked up the same HDD to my AEBS (GigE) and my MbP starts to backup wirelessly. Realizing that even with 802.11n this is going to take forever, I stopped the backup.
Now, I have an empty sparsebundle (except for Backups.backupdb and the "computername" directory under it). So, seeing as I have backups from October on the same drive, for real, I tried copying them over. This simply doesn't work, I tried using Finder Drag&Drop and CLI cp -R and even rsync.
Next I moved the HDD back to being connected locally via USB to the MbP thinking maybe that would help transfer the files, but I can't even mount the sparseimage. I get the "Operation not supported on socket" error.
Anyhow, long story short, I'm now doing a FULL backup over ethernet (4.5MB/s), to the sparsebundle, and I do not have the old backups (going back to October) in it. HOWEVER, there is a SOLUTION:
Option+Click the TM menu in the menu bar, and you get an option to "Browse Other Time Machine Disks", using this you CAN get to the original backups, in the original Backups.backupdb and restore them over the network, however all new backups going forward are in the sparsebundle.
The only real issue I have with this, is I now have a new start-point, this means I'm taking up the entire 90+GB of space again, rather than just the differentials + hardlinks if I were able to continue the backups. I have over 560GB on this partition though, so it's no big deal.
Ideally, I'd still love to continue the old backups from where I left off, but for the convenience of doing it over wifi, I'll live.
- Davey
Interesting. This would explain why they made no mention of this in the release notes. They're really pushing that time capsule aren't they? I get the feeling Apple really regrets ever stating that AEBS airdisks would work with time machine (which they did before Leopard's release).
Whatever reason (avoiding lawsuit, doing the right thing, etc.) they had for finally updating the AEBS, I'm just glad they did...even if they won't "officially" support it.
Now if they would only allow time machine to work on my NAS without resorting to a terminal hack...but that's probably pushing it.
I've tested it yesterday in my environment. The result was not what I was hoping for.
The attempts to use an AFP share on an Linux server for TM also failed. So no improvement on this side.
I hope Apple allows AFP shares in the future or explicitly tells the specification how to use.
Jochen
- The throughput of my MBP dropped from ~3-5MBytes/s in the beginning to less than 1MBytes/s after some time.
- The MB stopped backing up after some time. The throughput was also very low.
The attempts to use an AFP share on an Linux server for TM also failed. So no improvement on this side.
I hope Apple allows AFP shares in the future or explicitly tells the specification how to use.
Jochen
Don't use RAID 0 for backup!
OK, let me get this straight.
Apple is recommending the G-RAID2 drives for use as backup drives?
So they're recommending a Raid-0 setup for backup?
Raid-0, as in you've now doubled the chance of losing ALL your data due to drive failure?
The one and ONLY advantage of RAID 0 is speed, which doesn't mean squat if you're using this with an AEBS, since the wireless or ethernet connection is your bottleneck.
Do yourselves a favor and stay away from Raid-0, unless you really need speed over reliability.
OK, let me get this straight.
Apple is recommending the G-RAID2 drives for use as backup drives?
So they're recommending a Raid-0 setup for backup?
Raid-0, as in you've now doubled the chance of losing ALL your data due to drive failure?
The one and ONLY advantage of RAID 0 is speed, which doesn't mean squat if you're using this with an AEBS, since the wireless or ethernet connection is your bottleneck.
Do yourselves a favor and stay away from Raid-0, unless you really need speed over reliability.
anyone got an idea which would be faster for TM over wireless?
1) USB drive hooked up direct to AEBS as an AirDisk
2) USB drive hooked up to MacMini (1.6ghz solo) connected to AEBS via ethernet
I assume the bottleneck would be the 'g' wireless, rather than the controllers on either the mini or the AEBS....
1) USB drive hooked up direct to AEBS as an AirDisk
2) USB drive hooked up to MacMini (1.6ghz solo) connected to AEBS via ethernet
I assume the bottleneck would be the 'g' wireless, rather than the controllers on either the mini or the AEBS....
It will work, but there is one problem: If you backed up in place A right now, and you drive two hours to place B, then Time Machine will see that something is not right (your Mac was backed up two hours ago, but these backups are not on the Time Machine disk). So Time Machine will carefully compare everything on your hard disk with the time machine backup first. After that, it will function absolutely fine. It just takes a long time every time you use the other backup disk for the first time.
So if you stay a week or two at a time at each place, you are fine. If you stay somewhere over the weekend, I'd say its not worth it.
No, it's not going to work. Once a "changed" file is backed up on one side it's not going to be backed up on the other. It may "work" in the sense that it doesn't throw errors. But your backups are going to be so mangled as to be nearly useless. File A backed up in location 1 and file B backed up on location 2, version 2 of file A on location 2, but version 1 only remaining on location 1, etc, etc. I'm also not convinced you can trick time machine into using two different drives in the first place, but I haven't tried, so I'm not certain it's not possible. But at any rate, neither backup is going to be complete, so what's the point in having two incomplete backups?
You'd be wrong.
The USB implementation on the AEBS is the biggest bottleneck of them all. This doesn't surprise those of us who remember debating whether or not to use USB 1.0 peripherals on a Pentium 200, because of the CPU overhead. The AEBS is probably a bit more powerful, but the volume of operations necessary is a lot higher.Ta Guess I'll stick to using my Mini as the file/printserver instead then...
Guess I'll stick to using my Mini as the file/printserver instead then...You'd be wrong.
You should not trust TM over the AirDisk
It is not official yet, Apple is not supporting it. Just because it SEEMS to work it does not mean your data is safe.
Apple likes everything to work the same, this stuff works in two different ways.
1) Apple does not yet have a statement that Time Machine can use an AirDisk
2) The Airport does not have a statement that the AirDisk can be used with TM
3) TM records into the disk differently when connected directly to a USB drive, it creates a series of folders and stores the backup in a folder with the machine name.
4) TM when connected to a drive via AirDisk, skips the creation of the directory structure and instead it writes the backups at the root level of the drive
5) TM is unable to take into consideration the previous backups that were created when the drive was directly connected to the Mac and does not attempt to convert the old backup to the new format (sparse tree).
6) In about this mac, the new build number is rather odd and not similar to the previous
7) The patch screw-up the copyright of OSX by setting it to 2007 instead of 2008
Do not trust it.
It is not official yet, Apple is not supporting it. Just because it SEEMS to work it does not mean your data is safe.
Apple likes everything to work the same, this stuff works in two different ways.
1) Apple does not yet have a statement that Time Machine can use an AirDisk
2) The Airport does not have a statement that the AirDisk can be used with TM
3) TM records into the disk differently when connected directly to a USB drive, it creates a series of folders and stores the backup in a folder with the machine name.
4) TM when connected to a drive via AirDisk, skips the creation of the directory structure and instead it writes the backups at the root level of the drive
5) TM is unable to take into consideration the previous backups that were created when the drive was directly connected to the Mac and does not attempt to convert the old backup to the new format (sparse tree).
6) In about this mac, the new build number is rather odd and not similar to the previous
7) The patch screw-up the copyright of OSX by setting it to 2007 instead of 2008
Do not trust it.
Wait, so you're saying that it might be a bug they decrippled it, and that perhaps it was never their intention to do so?
Do I always have to start over?
I understand that if I take my locally-connected Time Machine drive and attach it my AEBS, I will be starting over with new backups (because the remote backups are stored on sparseimages, not as folders).
Is this correct? If so, does this also mean that I always have to make my first backup over the air?
I understand that if I take my locally-connected Time Machine drive and attach it my AEBS, I will be starting over with new backups (because the remote backups are stored on sparseimages, not as folders).
Is this correct? If so, does this also mean that I always have to make my first backup over the air?