MBP, External HDD, Airport Extreme, Time Machine, Back to My Mac?

ross.32

Sometime in the next couple of months, I will be buying a MBP (hopefully right after Steve unviells a new one in January) and have a couple of questions.



I will be getting an external HDD (at least 1TB, possibly more) and will set up a 300 GB partition for Time Machine (assuming I am able to get a 200 GB internal). The rest I will use for all of my pictures and videos that I do not want to keep directly on the MBP. If I have the drive connected through an Airport Extreme through ethernet, not USB, will I be able to connect to it and access it's files through 'Back to My Mac' like I would another Mac computer. The college I go to has WIFI everywhere so this would be great to have over a TB worth of videos with me wherever I go. I already read that Time Machine would be sync with a network drive, so I do not anticipate any problems there.



Thanks,

Ross

filburt

Quote:

Originally Posted by ross.32


I will be getting an external HDD (at least 1TB, possibly more) and will set up a 300 GB partition for Time Machine (assuming I am able to get a 200 GB internal). The rest I will use for all of my pictures and videos that I do not want to keep directly on the MBP.

I wouldn't bother with the partition. Although Leopard provides non-destructive partition resizing on the fly, resizing is not always possible and you are just painting yourself into a corner.



Dedicate the entire disk as a Time Machine drive, while using it to store pictures and videos at the same time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ross.32


If I have the drive connected through an Airport Extreme through ethernet, not USB, will I be able to connect to it and access it's files through 'Back to My Mac' like I would another Mac computer. The college I go to has WIFI everywhere so this would be great to have over a TB worth of videos with me wherever I go. I already read that Time Machine would be sync with a network drive, so I do not anticipate any problems there.

Currently, Time Machine does not work with AirDisk (disks connected to AirPort Extreme Base Station). Perhaps Apple will allow that in the future, but it won't work until then.



As for Back to My Mac, the feature requires .Mac subscription.

ross.32

I will have a .Mac subscription, so that should not be a problem.



I didn't know I could use the same drive for Time Machine and storage. I will definatly do that then. I guess I will just have to plug it in every day for backups. Oh well.



So I guess the only think left is using the network drive through Back to My Mac?

alfiejr

i understand why Time Machine doesn't use Air Disk - at anything less than "n" wireless speeds, it would take too much ongoing resources for constant backups on the fly when the docs are large files, and too long for the initial process - could be a whole day or two! but what about ethernet? most small businesses are hard wired with ethernet. is there an equivalent to TM in XServe?

ross.32

I would understand not being able to use wireless for the first backup, but for the every hour backup it seems that it would be reasonable, even with g speeds. It does not have to back up alot of data because it does it so often. If it can handle connecting to another computer and accessing files from a remote location, it should be able to copy files wirelessly to your local network.

quadrazontal

Regarding TM and AEBS Disk: the experience would be less than gratifying. Most will find the disk i/o throughput on the AEBS 1Gb model to be in the 30-50Mb/s where reads are better than writes. This may be reasonable if accessing the data via broadband but is certainly not much for performing backups. Many such as myself had higher expectations for throughput to a USB attached drive.

ross.32

Well I would do the first backup through USB, but I figured using N speeds it would be fast enough to do the smaller backups.