DO NOT use Time machine over the Airport Extreme unless you have the Time Capsule.
As with any application that sends or receives information over a network, Time Machine relies on the packets of data that are being checked in to be actually 'checked in'. As far as I'm aware (after reading several articles), although you can hack a drive to be used as an airport disk, time machine doesn't actually check in the packets. What you're doing in the hack is fooling Time Machine to think that the airport disk is a local disk (and therefore doesn't need to have the extra packet checking required for network data).
So, when you do a time machine backup, all may look well, but if any packets don't get through, Time Machine won't alert that a backup is failed as it isn't coded to work this way and do the checking. Your backups will appear to be fine, but you can bet that some of the packets don't get through and therefore your backup won't be successful.
Unless you're using the new time capsule I'd strongly recommend NOT hacking to get this to work.
If you really want to use Time Machine with a network, take a look at Drobo+DroboShare (www.drobo.com). I believe their NAS system actually checks in packets correctly and therefore would be suitable to use time machine.
Or, why not use an alternative such as the free ibackup? Not sure if this has the same problems though.
Yes it is a great shame Apple won't allow us to use the Airport Extreme to do time machine backups. At the end of the day Apple wants to make money and by crippling one device and bringing one out that does support it, Apple is going to make more money.
Personally I've already chewed up 200GB in a couple of months, backing up a Macbook Pro's 80GB drive onto my Drobo using time machine (a lot of PSD files that change a lot). There's no way I could consider a time capsule as the 500GB limit isn't going to be enough; using the Drobo affords me piece of mind that I can keep going and going with my backups if I want to. In this way, the time capsule is very limiting and boo to Apple for not understanding the needs of their users once again.
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DO NOT use Time machine over the Airport Extreme unless you have the Time Capsule.
As with any application that sends or receives information over a network, Time Machine relies on the packets of data that are being checked in to be actually 'checked in'. As far as I'm aware (after reading several articles), although you can hack a drive to be used as an airport disk, time machine doesn't actually check in the packets. What you're doing in the hack is fooling Time Machine to think that the airport disk is a local disk (and therefore doesn't need to have the extra packet checking required for network data).
So, when you do a time machine backup, all may look well, but if any packets don't get through, Time Machine won't alert that a backup is failed as it isn't coded to work this way and do the checking. Your backups will appear to be fine, but you can bet that some of the packets don't get through and therefore your backup won't be successful.
Unless you're using the new time capsule I'd strongly recommend NOT hacking to get this to work.
If you really want to use Time Machine with a network, take a look at Drobo+DroboShare (www.drobo.com). I believe their NAS system actually checks in packets correctly and therefore would be suitable to use time machine.
Or, why not use an alternative such as the free ibackup? Not sure if this has the same problems though.
Yes it is a great shame Apple won't allow us to use the Airport Extreme to do time machine backups. At the end of the day Apple wants to make money and by crippling one device and bringing one out that does support it, Apple is going to make more money.
Personally I've already chewed up 200GB in a couple of months, backing up a Macbook Pro's 80GB drive onto my Drobo using time machine (a lot of PSD files that change a lot). There's no way I could consider a time capsule as the 500GB limit isn't going to be enough; using the Drobo affords me piece of mind that I can keep going and going with my backups if I want to. In this way, the time capsule is very limiting and boo to Apple for not understanding the needs of their users once again.