Time Capsule or Western Digital Passport in Airport Extreme

[ks-man]

I posted this in a different thread, but I think it is important enough for its own thread.

I was planning on getting a time capsule, but do you guys think a better way to go would be to get the Airport Extreme + that Western Digital Passport 320 (net $359) instead of the 500 GB time capsule ($299).

I'm assuming you could hook up the Western Digital to Airport Extreme and then you can still then take the HD with you or hook it straight to the MBA if you want a quicker transfer. I don't need the extra 180GB and the extra $60 might be well worth it.

I guess the main question is for people using USB hard drives in the Airport Extreme. Does that work really well? At first I thought it made sense to just build a hard drive into it, but seeing how small and portable this one is, now I'm wondering if that is really the case.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136211

 

[MazingerZ]

I posted this in a different thread, but I think it is important enough for its own thread.

I was planning on getting a time capsule, but do you guys think a better way to go would be to get the Airport Extreme + that Western Digital Passport 320 (net $359) instead of the 500 GB time capsule ($299).

I'm assuming you could hook up the Western Digital to Airport Extreme and then you can still then take the HD with you or hook it straight to the MBA if you want a quicker transfer. I don't need the extra 180GB and the extra $60 might be well worth it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136211

Well, you can't use time machine (not without a hack and its slow) with an airport extreme + USB Hard drive.

 

[ks-man]

Well, you can't use time machine (not without a hack and its slow) with an airport extreme + USB Hard drive.

What kind of a hack? Would it work differently with Time Capsule or do you think 10.5.2 has a new feature?

It doesn't make sense that it would work with Time Capsule but not with extreme + USB HD unless Apple is purposely disabling it which I don't think they would.

 

[fauxdustin]

it worked in early builds of 10.5, but then apple removed it towards the end.

the only reason i could imagine they did this was to force time capsule on people.

 

[ks-man]

it worked in early builds of 10.5, but then apple removed it towards the end.

the only reason i could imagine they did this was to force time capsule on people.

That really would suck. Has anybody with 10.5.2 tried it? You would think there would be a lot of backlash towards Apple if it works with Time Capsule but not with extreme + usb HD. Apple would have no defense other than we want people who already bought extreme to have to buy time capsule.

we shall see.

 

[iCheddar]

Purportedly, the reason Time Machine doesn't work with AirDisk is because the USB port on AEBS isn't fast enough and is too laggy for it to work correctly.

This lagginess was solved by building a SATA hard drive right onto the AEBS, thus Time Capsule.

 

[ddd269]

When I had the USB drive working on my airport extreme (for a short time), I didn't really care for it because it was sooooo slow. Trying to backup my MBP's 60GB/80GB of storage estimated something crazy around 20 hours or so! Don't remember the exact time, but it was stupid slow.

Since then, I just plug in my portable WD once a week and I'm good.