Update enables Time Machine backups to AirPort Extreme USB drives
A software update released Wednesday allows Apple's Time Machine software to perform backups to external USB drives connected to AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Stations, essentially replicating the behavior of the company's Time Capsule appliance.
The functionality, dubbed AirPort Disk, was at one time an highly touted feature of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. But to the dismay of many, it was subsequently scratched in the weeks leading up to the operating system's release last October, with all references to its existence vanishing from Apple's website without explanation
Despite Apple's silence on the matter, AppleInsider later cited a person familiar with the ongoing development of Leopard as saying that company had internally classified the inability to select an AirPort Disk under Time Machine as a known issue. The matter was assigned a unique "Bug ID" number and titled: "Cannot set Time Machine Backup to AirPort Disk."
In the bug report, Apple noted that the issue was "currently being investigated by engineering," offering a ray of hope that it would be restored one day once the technological kinks had been knocked out. On Wednesday, the company released Time Machine and AirPort Update 1.0, marking the feature's long awaited return.
After downloading the update, users reported the ability to select external USB drives connected to the latest AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Stations as the destination drive for backups under the Time Machine control panel. They also reported that the software update changed their Leopard build from 9C31 to 9C7010.
The functionality, dubbed AirPort Disk, was at one time an highly touted feature of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. But to the dismay of many, it was subsequently scratched in the weeks leading up to the operating system's release last October, with all references to its existence vanishing from Apple's website without explanation
Despite Apple's silence on the matter, AppleInsider later cited a person familiar with the ongoing development of Leopard as saying that company had internally classified the inability to select an AirPort Disk under Time Machine as a known issue. The matter was assigned a unique "Bug ID" number and titled: "Cannot set Time Machine Backup to AirPort Disk."
In the bug report, Apple noted that the issue was "currently being investigated by engineering," offering a ray of hope that it would be restored one day once the technological kinks had been knocked out. On Wednesday, the company released Time Machine and AirPort Update 1.0, marking the feature's long awaited return.
After downloading the update, users reported the ability to select external USB drives connected to the latest AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Stations as the destination drive for backups under the Time Machine control panel. They also reported that the software update changed their Leopard build from 9C31 to 9C7010.
Comments
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
i have a linksys n router would like to go apple so what's the best way to go
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
Whichever works for you. You can stick a USB hub onto the single USB port of both TC and AE but you're limited to USB. No Firewire nor any booting up I'm afraid.
What I like about the Airport Extreme approach (which I can now thankfully take advantage of) is that as long as the hard drive is recognizable by the unit as a USB device, I can effectivly add as much (or as little) storage as I want.
So while I may decide that 500GB is enough for me now as a backup target, I can easilly bump it up to 1TB or higher by swapping out the hard drive attached to the Airport, or even through the adding of a USB raid enclosure.
Then again... this is only my opinion.
i have a linksys n router would like to go apple so what's the best way to go
TC or AE w/drive??
can you add drives to both for future expansion, and what about booting up from this disk?
right now i use superduper with 2 firewire drive(triple interface drives), can these be added??
Thank you Apple.
Anyway, I had hoped that the airport driver update would speed up airport re-connect after sleep, but no such luck.
I can still open the laptop, press cmd-L to open a Safari window, type an address, press return and get the "you are not connected to the internet", and no, I am not really that fast, so that is disappointing.
And yes, I have thrown away .plists and network keys/settings and set IPV6 to "off", but no difference.
Oh well, maybe 10.5.3.
The USB disk need not be connected to AEBS. I am able to back up via WiFi to a USB disk that is connected to another Mac. Both machines have 10.5.2. Actually, Time Machine can 'see' all the hard disks, both internal and external, in all the Macs in my network.
This is true and if one of those Macs is on 24/7/365 (such as a server) that is the way to go I feel, if not an AE is next best choice I suspect (but will do some tests asap) AE will be slower ... but maybe not. Anyone done any test?
I wish the initial back up could be done over Firewire as it takes so long wirelessly. I tried this but once relocated the TM starts a fresh initial back up, ignoring the one already there. Has anyone found a work around for this?
I have a USB connected harddrive that i've been using for months now. How do i go about plugging it into my Airport Extreme and noticing it? I did the software and firmware updates, plugged it in, and the drive is there in finder, but can't be selected in the Time Machine settings.
Is the drive HSF+?
Three cheers for time machine backups to USB disks! Even though I have a TC myself.
Anyway, I had hoped that the airport driver update would speed up airport re-connect after sleep, but no such luck.
I can still open the laptop, press cmd-L to open a Safari window, type an address, press return and get the "you are not connected to the internet", and no, I am not really that fast, so that is disappointing.
And yes, I have thrown away .plists and network keys/settings and set IPV6 to "off", but no difference.
Oh well, maybe 10.5.3.
Something odd there ... I have an old iBook G4 and a MacBook on the network here and both wake up and connect almost instantly.
Do we know if Time Machine will back up to an HDD connected to Airport Express?
No I don't think so, the express usb port can only be used for printers.
Something odd there ... I have an old iBook G4 and a MacBook on the network here and both wake up and connect almost instantly.
Yeah, that sounds like the way it should be! I mean it doesn't take forever, but often up to 5 seconds.
Right after I installed 10.5.2 I got very quick reconnects (less than one second) if the machine had been asleep for a short time (about an hour or so). If it had been asleep over night the airport function seemed to restart from scratch after sleep (I got the "hollow" airport symbol you get when you turn off airport and then it reconnected).
Now after the driver update I don't get the "restart", but on the other hand the slow reconnect is back also after a short sleep.
The problems started with the security update for OS X 10.4 that was release in the spring 2007 (don't remember the number).
I have since then switched to Leopard, doing a clean install, but the problems persist. I have a MacBook 2.0 Core Duo (May 2006).
Methinks it's possible the bug causing the delay for "AirDisk" backup might have been the bug up someone's butt to get out a high-margin Apple-branded TimeCapsule product people would buy first before they released the capability to do it with a cheap third-party disk.
I think TC is priced right...the AEBS is 180, by adding 120 more, you get a 500 TB disk! And it all fit into one!
The only gripe I have with TC now is the xbox 360 wireless connectivity issue!! Anyone got it working with their 360 since the firmware update yesterday??
Yeah, that sounds like the way it should be! I mean it doesn't take forever, but often up to 5 seconds.
Right after I installed 10.5.2 I got very quick reconnects (less than one second) if the machine had been asleep for a short time (about an hour or so). If it had been asleep over night the airport function seemed to restart from scratch after sleep (I got the "hollow" airport symbol you get when you turn off airport and then it reconnected).
Now after the driver update I don't get the "restart", but on the other hand the slow reconnect is back also after a short sleep.
The problems started with the security update for OS X 10.4 that was release in the spring 2007 (don't remember the number).
I have since then switched to Leopard, doing a clean install, but the problems persist. I have a MacBook 2.0 Core Duo (May 2006).
To be honest '5 seconds' is 'instantly' in my book ... maybe I am older and time is running faster
I think TC is priced right...the AEBS is 180, by adding 120 more, you get a 500 TB disk! And it all fit into one!
The only gripe I have with TC now is the xbox 360 wireless connectivity issue!! Anyone got it working with their 360 since the firmware update yesterday??
Remember that the hard disk in the Time Capsule is a Server grade hard disk. You are going to see a far lower failure rate on those drives compared to the off the shelf cheapies out there.
Methinks it's possible the bug causing the delay for "AirDisk" backup might have been the bug up someone's butt to get out a high-margin Apple-branded TimeCapsule product people would buy first before they released the capability to do it with a cheap third-party disk.
It's not that much savings. Time Capsule is not at a bad price compared to AE+external drive. That will change over the coming months, but it's not bad right now, it's self contained, with less risk of the USB cable yanking, one less power brick, one less power cord and so on.