SeanM Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 I do not own a new Airport Extreme, so I couldn't test this on any of the Leopard builds but I'm sure someone here has. I am interested in getting an Airport Extreme and hooking up an external hard drive to it ("Airport Disk") for use with Time Machine. Basically I want to not have an external drive cluttering up my desk, and have all of my Macs back up wirelessly. Obviously backing up over the network would be slower than using a USB drive that was directly connected to the computer, but does anyone know what the performance over wireless is like? Does it hang and crash or anything? Basically I'm wondering if it's too slow or unstable to use as a backup method. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
fixxer Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 Copy a large test file from mac to another wirelessly and there you go. Now you know the speed. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-475592 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgislm Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 I have a HD hooked up to an Airport Exteme Base Station N. I use the disk for general network file serving and storage. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be selectable in Time Machine as a backup drive. Not on my setup with build 9A559 anyway. As far as general file transfer speeds when copying a single, large file from my MacBook Pro to the Airport hard disk via 11n wireless @ 5GHz, I get anywhere up to 75Mbps (Megabits per second). Often much slower than that. It all depends on the phase of the moon, the position of Jupiter in the sky, etc. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-475899 Share on other sites More sharing options...
isdanreally Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 It appears likely that it won't work. Apple used to claim that Airport disks would work with time machine, but now they have removed all such references from the time machine feature description on their web site. The old text was: "Effortless meets wireless.With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine." The new text is: "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices." There is a discussion about it in the Apple Airport Extreme discussion forums on the Apple support site. Although apparently this worked fine in some of the betas, so possibly the feature was pulled and will be added back in the future. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-475968 Share on other sites More sharing options...
five337 Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 Airport Disks work fine for me in 559. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476163 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgislm Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 Airport Disks work fine for me in 559. I wonder why it won't work for me. Here's another question for you. Does Airport Disk Utility automatically mount the drives for you? I have to mount mine manually each time I start up. And the Airport Disk Utility icon will not appear on in the menubar on my setup. Thanks. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476188 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wisequark Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 AirDisk works fine for me and so does backing up to the share via TimeMachine Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476233 Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanM Posted October 21, 2007 Author Share Posted October 21, 2007 AirDisk works fine for me and so does backing up to the share via TimeMachine Is it "transparent" where everything happens behind the scenes, or is there some kind of progress bar/window? And do you notice any slowdowns when Time Machine is backing up to your AirDisk? And what happens if you shut down your Mac while it's backing up? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476241 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wisequark Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 There isn't a progress bar except for the initial back-up. Network transfers will seem slower if you're on something less than gigabit and are backing up files at the time. If you shut down the backup just won't finish. Hourly backups are usually pretty small as it only saves edited files. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476246 Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanM Posted October 21, 2007 Author Share Posted October 21, 2007 Thanks! The new Airport Extremes have gigabit and my (aluminum/2007) iMac has 802.11n I believe, so I should be good there I guess. Though all my other Macs and devices on the network are 802.11g so it'll probably be slower. One more question: When you say the backup just won't finish when I shut down, that would mean at least one of the files (the one it was currently backing up at the time) would be corrupt, right? Does the backup process resume from where it left off the next time you boot your system or does it wait another hour? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476267 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgislm Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 Airport Disks work fine for me in 559. For wisequark and five337: Just curious... Are you both using the new Extreme N Gigabit or the original Extreme N? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476402 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wisequark Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 Sean: it would start where it left off and continue until it's done. dgislm: I've got an original one Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476422 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksec Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 Just wondering what speed do you get for transferring files from Mac to Airport Disc with Gigabit Ethernet? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476622 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 The speed isn't really that important is it? I mean, this is backup that runs in the background. It transfers small files every hour, and if it's disconnected, it resumes again later. You will just forget about it anyway. The important thing is, there is always an up-to date backup available, not the performance. It's about convenience & peace of mind... Gigabit ethernet would be fast. But I would be satisfied with wireless speed, even 802.11G speeds are fine for me when copying large files...I just leave it! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476626 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Fogge Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 You can make any disk work by creating one simple file on the root of the drive. "com.apple.timemachine.supported" To avoid having to look at this file every time you look at the drive, you can just open the Terminal and enter the following command... touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported This will create a hidden file for you. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476725 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wisequark Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 On gigabit you'd get about the same speed you'd get using the drive over USB 2.0. Maybe a little slower. It really depends on the drive at that point. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476775 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgislm Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 I earlier had problems getting Time Machine to work with drives hooked up to my Airport Extreme N. I am glad to report that the problems are resolved. Basically, it would not work on a HD I had originally connected as it would not show up as a selectable backup destination in TM. However, when I connected another freshly formatted drive, it worked. And I have no idea why it would not work with the first drive as it had lots of space and had been working perfectly fine as a network resource for a long time. Perhaps there are issues with TM that Apple needs to work out. Also, it is interesting to note that TM does a backup on Airdisk drives by creating a sparse disk image and then mounting that and then making the backup in that mounted image. Didn't quite expect that as it doesn't do that with physically connected backup drives. In any case, it works. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476803 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taylor_C Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 USB 2.0 is still painfully slow compared to FireWire. I use both FireWire and USB external drives, though. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-476826 Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSPHax0r9 Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 You can make any disk work by creating one simple file on the root of the drive. "com.apple.timemachine.supported" To avoid having to look at this file every time you look at the drive, you can just open the Terminal and enter the following command... touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported This will create a hidden file for you. Awesome, thanks! The only problem is that when i direct terminal to the drive and touch the file, it doesn't become hidden. I've relaunched Finder and it's still there. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-477043 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgislm Posted October 22, 2007 Share Posted October 22, 2007 Awesome, thanks! The only problem is that when i direct terminal to the drive and touch the file, it doesn't become hidden. I've relaunched Finder and it's still there. Did you put a period '.' before 'com'? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-477389 Share on other sites More sharing options...
brbo Posted October 24, 2007 Share Posted October 24, 2007 it seems as if using network drives with Time Machine is gone in 10.5 GM. creating hidden file .com.apple.timemachine.supported doesn't help anymore. can anyone with airport confirm this. i could only test it with samba and afp shares. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-479769 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timan Posted October 24, 2007 Share Posted October 24, 2007 it seems as if using network drives with Time Machine is gone in 10.5 GM. creating hidden file .com.apple.timemachine.supported doesn't help anymore. can anyone with airport confirm this. i could only test it with samba and afp shares. Yep, seems to be the case. Also can't seem to mount any of my network'd drives from my Airport Extreme with leopard. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67028-time-machine-and-airport-disks/#findComment-479943 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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