Wirelles Network Home Set-up

[Mark Jacobs]

I have this set-up in my mind but i don't know if it will work.

At the moment I own a iMac with a iOmega MiniMax 1TB harddrive serving as a back up with time machine. I want to change this setup to a laptop (Macbook Air) to be able to do some work in the living room and not to leave for the study where I can't leave my not yet 2 yr old son.

So I have the following set-up in mind.
- A Airport Express serving as a router and is connected to my stereo (same as now, that's is where my internet connection comes in the house)
- A time capsule with the iOmega harddrive connected, serving as a wireless network storage and back-up for time machine.
- A printer/scanner connected to the external harddrive (which functions as a hub as well)

Questions:
1. Can I use the time capsule/external HDD as primary storage and back-up? Which device is preferable as main storage?
2. Will the printer/scanner connected to the External HDD still work.
3. Is it possible to configure this all so multiple laptops can make use of all the files stored on one of both devices.
4. Should the operating files on the Air also be backed-up?

Any help on this matter is appreciated. My main concern is that the printer will not work wirellesly. I don't want to buy to many devices. I understand buying another Airport Express would do the trick. (if only the time capsule came with a digital stereo output)

Thanks,
Mark

 

[agentphish]

Questions:
1. Can I use the time capsule/external HDD as primary storage and back-up?
Which device is preferable as main storage?

You will want to use the internal drive in the time capsule as your time machine backup. The iomega device can be secondary storage as usb attached HD's are not officially supported by apple as time machine drives, some people have gotten it to work with mixed results. further compounded by 10.7 if you are running that which had flaky (at best) for network attached storage.

2. Will the printer/scanner connected to the External HDD still work.

Doubtful. Daisy chained devices on a single USB port typically have trouble.

3. Is it possible to configure this all so multiple laptops can make use of all the files stored on one of both devices.

As long as you are on the same network, all devices should be able to see the storage/backup system.

4. Should the operating files on the Air also be backed-up?

Backing up the OS is personal preference. I only do my user stuff.

 

[Mark Jacobs]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; nl-nl) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Thanks for the reply. I think i have to let go of the wireless printing. That is something which i can life with.

 

[Mark Jacobs]

Time Capsule in use

Well,
The Time Capsule is installed with an external HDD attached to it. Here's the deal.
My initial plan to use either one of the disks as primary storage and the other one as back-up disk failed. Time machine is not backing up anyone of them. In the program I've selected both disks (in separate attempts) and than point to my MacBook Air to NOT backup that one. Than Time Machine starts preparing for backup and than it is telling me there is nothing to backup.
This is a major let down for me! I have been searching the web for answers but nothing till so far. The only tip I've read is to use the archive function in the Airport utility. Than it is archiving to a External HDD, but not the one connected to the TC. I have not tried connected the Disk to the MacBook but I've no doubt that will work.
I am a bit disappointed and the worst part is I've got myself to blame. If only I did some more research. Anyway I hope some people will read this and can use this in their advantage.