News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 20, 2008

updates

Apple finally delivers with Time Machine on Airport Extreme

Posted Mar. 20, ’08, 7:02 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Software » Updates

Airport Extreme Were you fooled by Apple’s web pages promising candy Time Machine backups onto Airport Extreme network disks? Still resenting those Time Capsule users? I don’t blame you, I’d feel the same way. Despite the once again curt change notes, the recent Time Machine and AirPort Updates v1.0 actually brings a great new feature.

As just reported on Macworld, you can use Time Machine on Airport Extreme disks now.

Although Apple’s release notes for its Wednesday updates don’t mention adding the ability for Time Machine to back up to a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Station, numerous users reported that the feature had been added, and Macworld can confirm those reports in our testing on an AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Station with Gigabit Ethernet.

Great news. This should have happened a while ago, like from the beginning, but late is better than never. There is a caveat that you need to repaired using Disk Utility, but that’s a small inconvenience for a brand new feature and the piece of mind of a working backup strategy. Reports seem to be mixed on the original “Fast Ethernet” version of the Airport Extreme currently.


5 Comments

fletcher Author Profile Page said:

Yay. It does seem to be working.

Thank You Apple.

I am concerned about the possibility of the sparse images which are used for remote backups going bad over time. I had one sparse image go bad already and now can't access over two months of backups.

Hopefully the various updates have made Time Machine more reliable in addition to opening up this functionality. For now, I'll probably continue to run a periodic clone using Super Duper in addition to using Time Machine.

March 20, 2008 7:57 AM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

This feature, or even the possibility of this feature, didn't really influence my purchase of the Extreme, but it's good to see Apple coming back on their early promise.

Maybe once I can score a huge drive and USB hub I'll give it a try.

Also, has anyone had trouble getting the Airdisk to list files?

March 20, 2008 8:32 AM
goobimama Author Profile Page said:

Nice to see Apple actually delivering something like this for free :)

March 20, 2008 8:33 AM
Paul said:

I thought it was the AEBS firmware update that fixed this, not the Time Machine update? Is there anyone reading this for whom this worked without the firmware update?

Anyway, maybe this should have come earlier, but from what I've read, it wasn't an easy problem to solve and had to be done properly before it could be released. Look at the problems Windows Home Server is having with corrupted data - http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=413 - which is impacting its reputation and probably sales.

And no, corrupted data on AirDisk with the unsupported Time Machine hack doesn't count.

March 20, 2008 8:52 AM
Tim Author Profile Page said:

The feature does gets added with the Airport Extreme firmware update. I don't think it's the time machine update.

March 21, 2008 6:18 AM

Leave a comment

 



IDG IDG NETWORK:   CIO   Computerworld   CSO   GamePro   GamerHelp   IDG Connect   Infoworld  
   JavaWorld   LinuxWorld   Macworld   Network World   PC World   PC World Canada   Playlist   Techworld