Okay, the Time Machine / AirPort Extreme situation is now officially ridiculous. TidBITS's Glenn Fleishmann says Apple's confirmed to him that the Extreme is unsupported for use with Time Machine, even though the latest batch of updates
enable AirPort Disks to show up in the Time Machine disk-selection box. Fleishmann thinks a it's leftover developer testing glitch, but either way, Apple's will-they-won't-they routine means lots of people now have an unsupported backup solution that works "erratically." Seriously, if you thought AirPort Extreme owners were
pissed off about Time Capsule, just wait until backups start failing. Not a lot of options left, Apple -- better get this feature up and running ASAP.
posted Apr 7th 2008 8:05PM
That's why I stick to plain, old DVD disks.
Yeah, that makes sense. Back up critical data to a medium that can be destroyed by a scratch.
There is nothing wrong with an external disk, wireless or otherwise. I have two FW800 disks, one I use for Time Machine to backup automatically every hour, the other I use to make a bootable clone each week.
In regards to the article, Apple should either officially add the feature or officially drop the feature. This limbo state is confusing for the consumer.
"Back up critical data to a medium that can be destroyed by a scratch."
*points to small safe containing backups*
harddrives can fail. and if you backup on dvd and it's important to you, you tend to take care of the medium. dvd's don't scratch unless you don't store correctly e.g. cd jewel case.
"cd jewel case."
Yup! That's the one! And locking them up in a cashbox will prevent the discs from getting harmed!
Hard drives can fail, yes, I lost 9 GB of data on one.
For the really important data use both DVD and an external drive. And if it's really, really important, keep a copies in separate locations.
And, don't forget encryption.
Optical media is the best for backing up data.
Hard Drives should never be considered a back-up media. I've lost an entire 250gb external drive... it was a sad time for me.
RCL1221, I pain your feel.
WTF!!! I made a mistake! Darn, I wish I can edit my last post and switch the order of two words.
"I feel your pain."
Engadget, please make editing comments?
AirPort Extreme: $179.
Time Capsule 500 GB: $299
Aguiluz's "I pain your feel": Priceless!
Trying too hard to make a joke work: ...profit?
Actually Juaquin, it was simpler than what you would think; I used a keyboard and a mouse!
Unless, of course, you are a major world government or NGO. Then it is standard procedure to backup your sensitive and critical data on a laptop, and leave it in the foodcourt of the nearest shopping center.
i take it none of you augment with online storage?
increasingly, the stuff i need to back up is media.. mainly movies and music i've done a lot of work to rip/encode, etc, so DVDs are impractical. I might get a RAID setup, but seems like a lotta overhead just for backup.
And what about disc rot?
Back-up? Encryption?
I just remember all of my data.
*points to an LTO3 tape library with a two weeks cycle of tapes in"
My backup media! phweeee...
Pathetic.
Yes it is. I mean, Apple is not compatible with Apple? Maybe the apples are unripe. Thy should take their products to a fix first to make them ripe.
But but.. Macs just work?
I own an airport extreme just purchased the day before the time machine was launched. I wondered if i should return it for a little but seeing how the extreme trashed the network throughput with discs attached i settled for an external drive directly connected.
still, I would think they could do network backup to an external disc connected to the airport extreme just as good as to the time machine. they even could have made an extreme sized disc that can stack under just to do it in a way they make profit. That is a bit silly, but I can't see other companies making it easy either.
If your backups are really that important to you, you should be keeping it as simple as possible anyway.
Yeah, exactly, keep it simple!
Wait, what does this even mean?!!?!?!!! :S
It means put in a disc and burn that shit.
in a paper bag and on a doorstep?
wait, so apple is not the best company in the world?
nope still are the best :| (according to some..or is it most?)
by some or most, you mean Engadget's editorial staff along with all the mac fanboys on here
Apple fanboys are sad, but not quite as sad as Microsoft fanboys that simply can't help posting on Apple related articles with their bullshit.
@salut: Because an Apple fanboy would never comment in a post about Zune or Windows? Do you deny that if this were a Microsoft product, you would not be bashing them? Looking over your post history, you have done the same. You have gone into articles about Surface, Microsoft-Yahoo, XBOX, Zune, Vista, etc. and made (as you call it) "bullshit" comments about Microsoft, but when they are about Apple, they are off limits? Just another sad Apple apologist who will overlook any consumer-screwing action made by Apple, and condemn Microsoft for whatever they do.
Apple is usually very literal about the word "supported".
They probably mean they won't provide support for Time Machine backup on Airport Disk, but it's great if it works for you.
Apple will never make it work. It's cheaper for many to buy a Airport Extreme and an external HDD. Apple wants your money so they will force you buy a time machine.
Time Machine is actually included with the OS. You don't have to buy it.
I suspect he means the Time Capsule.
No, he means a real time machine, you dolts.
'if you though'
I judge you when you use poor grammar
I judge you when you can't tell the difference between grammar and spelling.
Looking back at the article:
"Seriously, IF YOU THOUGHT AirPort Extreme owners were pissed off about Time Capsule, just wait until backups start failing."
Looks like proper grammar to me.
Seriously? Come on. This is why I bought an Airport Extreme 2 days ago. The dude at the Apple Store even acknowledged it worked with Time Machine.
The Apple Store only hires the best graduates of your local non-accredited technical school.
I suspect Apple will only officially support it when they come out with their own line of external hard drives.
What are they talking about? It works fine for me. I back up wirelessly using my AEBS and Time Machine
What they mean is that if you encounter problems either backing up or restoring from the wireless backup that Apple won't help you resolve the situation officially. You may get lucky and get in touch with someone from Apple who will help you unofficially because they can but there is no obligation. However, as far as I am concerned I believe that there is an obligation on Apple to either sort this situation out such that support is officially provided (i.e. it works as expected) or offer refunds to those who bought an AEBS originally because they advertised that you could use it with Time Machine.
Apple needs to shove all the bullshit, and not force us to all become Apple-sheeple.
This is apple we are talking about...
works fine for me.... I don't know why apple doesn't support it. what a bunch of crap!
Just remember.
Apple Knows Best
"Not a lot of options left, Apple -- better get this feature up and running ASAP."
Whipcrack!
I thought macs JUST WORKED, right?? And I would associate that slogan with Apple products, correct?? I guess they're slogan is wrong then.
Who said it didn't work? ;)
Who said it didn't work? ;)
How does that even apply? It's not a supported feature - that's the whole point of the article. By the same logic, I tried to plug my toaster into my Mac, it didn't even recognize it. I thought Macs just worked?!
Sorry for the double post guys, it accidently hit the "Add Your Comments" button twice.
@ Derek
No!! You shouldn't have corrected yourself. I thought that was part of the schtick. "Who said it didn't work" and then you posted twice, implying it was coming from a Mac that didn't "just work". I'm a Mac guy, and I thought it was funny.
Oh well...
Apology accepted Derek. :)
My toaster works with my PC.... sounds like you got screwed when you bought your mac.
Hah you're still using a Toaster for your Windows PC?
I upgraded to the ATI Toaster 5650XT. It burns bread at faster than 40 Toasts Per Second!
@catachip
Your right, why should apple say "It doesn't work" when they can hold on to their old slogan and say it doesn't work. That is pretty much the only reason for them to say it is unsupported. I propose a new slogan to them:
"Apple, iT works when we want iT to."
But really to me it seems like they rushed a unfinished product through the door (unfortunately leaving debug code in there) and now they are buying their time until they can say "It works" proceeded by much rejoicing from apple uses who immediately forget that they were screwed.
Hey guys, this Time Capsule product you guys just designed, it seems we already made a product that does this in the form of the AirPort Extreme with an external HDD. What do we do?
What do you mean, "what do we do"? We are Apple. We control all the options, we pull all the strings. All we have to do is make our new backup software not work with the AirPort Extreme, and we force them to buy our new product!
So that's right. That's a very good plan.
Two words: Quicktime fullscreen
Apple will nickel and dime with ferocity, I bet they turn it off.
1. I love apple products.
2. I feel like apple is screwing with the consumer here. It's in the beta. It's disabled for production. They release time capsule. Consumers scramble to get that. They enable it in a firmware update. They later state it's not supported. (Bad form Apple. Seriously bad form.)
3. Time Machine needs to work with a disk attached to AE.
4. If it's not supported by Apple, when trying to set up Time Machine via a wireless AE harddrive, it should warn the consumer that this isn't supported by Apple though the feature will still work in most cases.
When Time Machine was announced, I figured it would be supported. I mean... it IS an apple product. I also figured it would work with a NAS. My linux & Windows boxes have no issues backing up there...
Long story short - I told multiple people to get Airport Extremes, cause Time Machine would 'certainly' be supported by an Apple app. Thanks for making me look like an a$$ Apple :)
So what, exactly, does Ron Paul have to say about this?
Probably something along the lines of 'What's techno-ma-loligy?' And the 'I'm old!' Something like that.
Seriously, Apple, the hell? THE HELL? Just kidding. I have a Time Capsule.
I pretty sure Apple said it would be supported when they where showing Leopard. Was part of the reason I snagged an Extreme Base Station to replace my existing Airport Base Station before leopard shipped. Now come to find out it isn't supported based on what they originally marketed, but retracted when leopard shipped, but Apple has a product that is essentially the same exact thing rubs me the wrong way, even for apple. If they couldn't make it work, and didn't have the time capsule I would be less annoyed. Since it could be, well we really wanted to make this work, but you know shit happens, marketing/sales promised something engineering couldn't deliver, etc... But if they are doing it to sell more of their Time capsules, then that is a different story. If people can have a class action suit against them based on # of colors in the LCD screen, then one for anti-competitive practices/false advertising should be a no brainer (IANAL and I don't even pretend to play one on the Interwebs).
ITS TEH BIASZ!!1
oh...wait, it's not a positive article. ahem. carry on.
This basically means that they didn't fix that bug that caused total data loss in the event of lost power to the AirPort. They undid the coverup feature that stopped users from doing it and are saying it's unsupported so they don't have to deal with the consequences.
Forgot the rest: This is well and fine, I see it as a meet-in-the-middle situation. That is only if Apple had acknowledged this when the AirPorts first became able to use this feature.
This absolutely infuriates me. I'm an Apple lover through and through, but I have to admit that the company is definitely on a downturn. It's sad.
And, the stock is up $35 in the past few weeks. If that is a downturn, bring in on, pal!
Yeah, which means it's down $43 since the beginning of the year. I guess you must be trading short. If that's the case, well done!
To the folks losing important data when their drive goes south:
Remember that you backup is supposed to be the 2nd copy of your important files, not the only copy of those files.
I think there's some confusion about my article, which I'm not sure how many folks posting here have read.
Supported = tech support, official updates, concern about failure.
Unsupported = whatever
Unsupported != doesn't work at all.
Apple told me that it's unsupported. This doesn't mean that they plan to break it, that it doesn't work, or you're voiding your warranty. It means that if you go to an Apple Store or you call Apple support, they will not give you any help with this feature.
"Not a lot of options left, Apple -- better get this feature up and running ASAP."
Or what?
All the Apple fanboys will stop buying Mac?
What universe are you from?
They'll just go get whatever hardware Apple says they should and then rationalise why this is the Good Thing (tm).
I mean seriously - or else what?
Meany face, gah!
I think we're getting caught up on the difference between "supported" and "works, and will continue to work". Using APEBS & TM means you need something that can do reliable, sustained writes. If you call up Apple's Tech Support line, and tell them you're having trouble getting some janky USB 2.0 Harddrive working with your APEBS, they're not going to support it. There's just too many unknown in the that scenario: is the drive bad, is the controller crap, is it not hooked up right, etc.
some janky USB drive... I love it!
Seriously, I suppose they won't support using a janky USB drive for anything!
Personally I use a Drobo connected to my airport extreme. If that method fails, I can always connect via USB on a fixed mac. The backup files should still be fine. Really important files get backed up to .mac though.
Oliver
Apple bias!
@phanbouy
Online storage for anything more important than lolcat pictures is just silly. Who's to say the hosting company will be there tomorrow, next week, or next year? Unless by online storage you mean sending encrypted backups to an off-site facility that you control...
a
shortest post ever?
I stopped using the time machine. All it was doing in my case was causing wear and tear on my external HD and slowing down my mac every hour. I used it to recover a file maybe once or twice, and even then it was more out of boredom than real necessity.
I could hear my hard drive's lifespan shortening every time the thing ran, so I turned off the service rather than risk losing my backup due to frequent backups.
ohh well...20 bucks for support please?
Here is the solution for those of us who want Time Machine to work over the network:
1) set up a Linux or FreeBSD server somewhere with a lot of storage.
2) install an iSCSI target server on it.
3) install globalSAN's iSCSI initiator software on your Mac.
4) set up the iSCSI target server to serve a nice large .dmg as its volume. there are walkthroughs online for doing this.
5) use iSCSI initiator to connect the iSCSI volume.
6) tell Time Machine to use that iSCSI volume as its backup drive.
7) there is no step 7.
The reason this works is because the Mac thinks the iSCSI volume is a physical disk formatted as HFS+ rather than a network drive.
Sorry it's a PITA. Thanks, Apple!
It's if they are trying to hard not to sell this damn thing. No Windows support even thought I'd buy in a heartbeat if it did. It doesn't bridge if you hook into an existing WiFi network. Now this? I can't see any reason to spend $500 for this paperweight.
Who cares, really. I back-up OTA to my Air Disk and I never experienced any problems.
Mine is working just fine. MBP and 1TB Time Capsule. hourly and full backups for the past fiew weeks no problem.
sorry, got it mixed up. airport vs timecapsule. to note tho the timecapsule is a server grade hard disk and the controller seems to have error checking of some sort. if you connect just any hard drive to a NAS that doesnt have the same type of firmware you are bound to have some glitches.
yeah you have no idea. i was so pissed off when i found out an external drive was unsupported with time machine when it is plugged into the airport extreme. And of course 1 week after i bought the airport and the drive Apple comes out with Timecapsle. Sometimes i just can't win with these guys!
60 days till my iPhone because obsolete...
Now if Apple turns off AEBS Time Machine functionality in a future software update, I might have to go postal.
After adding a 1TB disk to my Airport Extreme and having it backing up nicely for a few days I upgraded my wife's iMac to 10.52 today and can't see the drive. Has Apple changed the software I downloaded today from what I downloaded a week ago? I may have to go to hardwire.
Apple's will-they-won't-they routine means lots of people now have an unsupported backup solution that works "erratically." ---
"unsupported backup solution that works "erratically"? - HELLO!? Is there, so what. why do you have to go use it, trust it with your backups and then sob when it doesn't work? UNSUPPORTED. Does that mean anything to you?
If anyone has kept on with the reasons why Wireless Time Machine was not being released.. you know what is going on, I would think. if you did not you will find out when you begin to use this "unsupported backup solution"that of course it works erratically because they are not making it official yet. We need you, our guinea pigs, to be unable to resist temptation, to fall in the trap trying to eat the cheese, and SNAP!
You will whine, you will twist, you will try to run, you will sob but you will open your big mouth and we will listen and go: AHHH OHHH! and go and take our time polishing it, and finally ta'da! but by then your precious data will be long gone, kiss your data goodbye you BEEP BEEP
Backup solution my BEEP that is just wrong... WHO IN THE BEEP WORLD said it was a solution!?
If your BEEP mind wants to believe that well let it but do not pin it down on us.
Get a life, NP.