[Scott_Gardner]

I'm planning on getting a Time Capsule, setting it up for 5 GHz operation and only allowing wireless-N connections to it. I'll use my current AEBS for 802.11 b/g connections.

My question is, will the computers that connect to my home LAN using the AEBS still be able to use the hard drive in the Time Capsule both for Time Machine backups and as a network shared drive for drag-and-drop transfers?

Likewise, if I have a USB printer connected to my AEBS, will the computers that connect through the TC be able to see/use it?

[kevinv]

It's a bad idea to copy the backups.backupdb to another disk. I'm not sure it will let you for one thing.

The backups are created using UNIX hardlinks for files that haven't changed. This is why I can have 56 backups of 40GB in only 60GB (most of the growth came from moving from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2). Additionally the backups use extended attributes and Access Control Lists for security. Unless the copy program knows how to handle these moving the folders to another disk (pretty sure the Finder doesn't) you may end up taking up far more space, and having time machine unable to properly identify files, than on the original disk.

My personal preference for moving to a new disk for Time Machine is to start it fresh on the new disk and let it run. After you have a satisficatory wait to ensure your new drive is working, reformat the old one.

If you think TM is making archives for you, you're wrong and you'll find that out when it randomly deletes one of the daily backups with the version of the file you really wanted.

[kevinv]

I'm not sure a lawsuit is possible on the Extreme - USB drive Time Machine issue. Did Apple ever state in the advertising or on the box for the Extreme Base Station or OS X 10.5 that Time Machine backups t the Base Station would be possible?

Lots of articles covered the feature that was in the 10.5 beta and lots of people may have bought off those articles, but beta products are not promises of available features. A beta feature is a feature in test and for whatever reason Apple pulled that feature. They are under no obligation to provide the feature just because it was in a beta.

My guess is apple will release a firmware upgrade for the ABES charge $5 for it because it adds "new functionatlity" and that will enable the feature.

[kevinv]

hillstones said:

I wouldn't want to back up using Wireless or Ethernet, too slow. I gave Time Machine a try with my FireWire drive. I didn't like the fact that it filled my external drive to full capacity. I don't need hourly backups. They should offer more settings for maybe weekly or monthly, and just update the existing backup without duplicating it over time. I have gone back to my previous routine of backing up my Home directory whenever I want it backed up...every few weeks or so. I also back it up to my laptop and 2nd Mac as well as my FireWire drive.

Not sure what was wrong with your setup. I backup 40GB to my fireware drive. I put time machine on a 200GB partition. I excluded my Movies folder from the backup because it usually contains a lot of files transferred from my Tivo going to
iTunes and will have 10-20 GB of files change ever few days. Other than that I backup everything.

Currently Time Machine has 56 backups in it. It occupies a grand total of 63GB of disk space. Obviously it doesn't make a full backup every hour. Instead Time Machine backs up every file once, then while the file remains unchanged merely hardlinks the file to a later backup. Only when the file changes does it make a new copy.

In addition to time machine I use .Mac backup to make backups to a server in the basement (also incremental in nature), and Amazon S3 to store offsite backups of really important files.

[Felix001]

Glenn_Fleishman said:

Time Capsule as well as networked Leopard AFP shares used for Time Machine (essentially the same thing) use sparse disk images, which are a kind of bundle, and aren't organized in the same precise way as a local Time Machine backup--one made through a physically connected drive.

So if my initial backup to Time Capsule is via a physically-connected Ethernet cable (to save time), does Time Machine automatically save that as a sparse disk image instead of as a .backupdb file (which is what I have now using Time Machine backing up to an external Firewire drive)?

And as a follow-on, what's the recommended way to move an existing Time Machine file to Time Capsule since these files are apparently saved in different formats? I know Apple's Disk Utility (and SuperDuper 2.5) can move a Time Machine .backupdb file from one hard-wired drive to another but how do I move and convert that file to a Time Capsule sparse disk image?

[ChopinBlues]

Hey Glenn, I think you need to check your watch -- sounds like it's running a bit slow. I did my first backup last night, connected to TC via a 100 mb switch. Backed up 81 GB in about 3 hours, which I believe works out to about 60 Mbps, which interestingly, is the same speed you got testing AFP. I suspect it would have been even faster, had I been directly connected to TC with gigabit.

[awinkler]

I am particularly interested in how the time capsule will work as the backup for multiple machines. My impression is that a few macs are supposed to easily use a single time capsule for their backups, disk space permitting.
Does this turn out to be true in practice?
Thanks,
~ Adam

[yans2276]

umm, you needed tech support to tell you to powercycle your router? maybe you shouldn't be so critical of TC's "flaws".

[Glenn_Fleishman]

ChopinBlues said:

Hey Glenn, I think you need to check your watch -- sounds like it's running a bit slow. I did my first backup last night, connected to TC via a 100 mb switch. Backed up 81 GB in about 3 hours, which I believe works out to about 60 Mbps, which interestingly, is the same speed you got testing AFP. I suspect it would have been even faster, had I been directly connected to TC with gigabit.

What's your host system? I've initially tested from PowerPC G4s; moving up to Intels. I've tested on several networks with several machines, and gotten the same or slightly better or worse performance.

[ChopinBlues]

The mac I'm backing up is a 2.16 GHz MBP. Here's how it's connected:

MBP -> gigabit switch -> AEBS (100 mbit) -> TC

Note that in this configuration, the AEBS is the DHCP server, and the TC is in bridge mode -- perhaps that's the difference.

[gpasq]

While Time Capsule works well as a network disk (I have one and have been playing with it for 2 days), I can't imagine it as a very good backup device unless you need to restore just a file or two at a time.
Everyone is talking about how long it takes to do the initial backup. Who cares, it's a one time thing. The question should be, how long does it take to RESTORE an entire system, and that is where the Time Capsule completely fails. Restoring your entire system, even if wired up, takes WAY too long to bother with.
Your best bet is to get a directly connected USB drive and use Time Machine to backup to that. Use the Time Capsule as a network drive to share photos, music, etc. And if you already have an Airport Express, don't even bother, just hook a USB drive to that and away you go.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

Scott_Gardner said:

I'm planning on getting a Time Capsule, setting it up for 5 GHz operation and only allowing wireless-N connections to it. I'll use my current AEBS for 802.11 b/g connections.

My question is, will the computers that connect to my home LAN using the AEBS still be able to use the hard drive in the Time Capsule both for Time Machine backups and as a network shared drive for drag-and-drop transfers?

Likewise, if I have a USB printer connected to my AEBS, will the computers that connect through the TC be able to see/use it?

The thread has bcome so long, I'm not sure if this has been answered.

You can see Time Capsule internal and USB drives as backup options from Time Machine even if it's connected via an AirPort Extreme Base Station. It has to be on the same subnet, though, which you probably need connection sharing set to Off (Bridging) in AirPort Utility's Internet pane. If you leave that on, you will likely need to enable Share Disks over Ethernet WAN Port in the Disks pane's Disks tab.

Same is true for printers. If it's set to bridging, the printers are advertised over Bonjour to the local network, which is the same local network for the AxBS and the Time Capsule. If you're set to share, then you need to share the printers over the Ethernet WAN port, too.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

ChopinBlues said:

The mac I'm backing up is a 2.16 GHz MBP. Here's how it's connected:

MBP -> gigabit switch -> AEBS (100 mbit) -> TC

Note that in this configuration, the AEBS is the DHCP server, and the TC is in bridge mode -- perhaps that's the difference.In all my testing so far, I have the devices directly connected to the TC via Ethernet to a LAN port. This should deliver the performance. Consistently, it is not, which is disappointing.

I'm currently testing a Mac Pro connected on a gig Ethernet port on the Time Capsule. I'm seeing 40 Mbps, but it's possible it's writing many tens of thousands of tiny files. I'll be doing some "long range" tests, too, to see how data speeds over an entire backup. I have 1.1 million files on my Mac that it's backing up. The other machines tested had more like 800,000.

[domcm]

As a point of reference, I did a full backup from scratch last night using SuperDuper! and it backed up 123GB of data from my iMac to my external LaCie d2 Quadra Firewire 800 drive in about 1 hour - 30 minutes. Note, in addition to being fast, another advantage of using this method is that the backup is fully bootable. That said, I am still trying to figure out whether I should consider the Time Capsule. Using Time Machine would allow me a more hands-free backup solution but I am very concerned about some of the slow backup times reported here and how much the backup network traffic will slow down my home network. I have 4 computers in my home that may be trying to access the Time Capsule for backups. I hope your review will address this network traffic issue.