With the latest firmware release for Apple’s Airport Extreme Base Station router comes the ability to use a connected USB drive as a Time Machine backup disk. I (and many others) have waited for this feature since Leopard’s release six months ago.
The big question is if it would work as expected. In my case, my Macbook easily found the drive and Time Machine recognized it. The initial backup (50G) took all night even with a supposed 100MB throughput. Subsequent backups were slow to complete, if they even started at all. Most of the time (80% or so), Time Machine would hang with “Preparing Backup”.
One other thing that slightly annoyed me was that Time Machine creates a sparse bundle image on the AirDisk containing your backups. I assume this is done as many people can potentially use the AirDisk for backups. This causes two mounts on your system instead of one. Not a huge deal, but it’s just one more thing that can fail. I don’t like things that can fail in a backup process, especially one that is designed to be so behind the scenes.
Right now, Time Machine is doing its initial backup again as a USB connected drive to my trusty Macbook. The AirDisk seems to still have some quirks that need to be ironed out.
Also of note, I suffered a hard drive crash last week and luckily I did have Time Machine backups. I have to say that restoring Leopard from Time Machine was effortless and it was also the very first time I’ve had a full restore of an operating system actually work in over a decade of Windows, Linux, and Mac usage!
I got the update this morning, but I’ve had no luck all day getting it to connect. What a shame Apple still won’t address this issue in its entirety. Ah well, back to the Airport Utility…
Does the drive show up at all in your Finder? My drive was recognized immediately. How odd…
It’ll connect for about an hour so or, but then disconnects randomly. How lame is that? It worked great before I installed the update.