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TICKET ARCHIVE -> using aiport extreme as Time Capsule

tonykerr - May 5, 2008 - 2:28 pm

I have a MacBook connected by USB to an Airport Extreme base station. Time Machine works fine on this set-up. Can I now also use it to back up my desktop Intel iMac wirelessly?

Could I get a bigger USB disk, partition it, and use one partition to backup the Macbook and one for the desktop?

System Profiler for the MacBook:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB31.008E.B02
SMC Version: 1.24f2
Serial Number: W8743DKJZ64

And for the desktop:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM41.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.1f5
Serial Number: W86036E5U2P

vinko - May 5, 2008 - 11:20 pm

Dear Tony,

My name is Vinko and I will attempt to assist you.

Do you mean that you have connected an external hard drive via USB to your Airport Extreme Base Station? Rather than "... have a MacBook connected by USB to an Airport Extreme base station..."

TimeMachine allows the use of a single "backup" hard drive to backup multiple Macintoshes. You do not have to partition this "backup" drive. As you may notice TimeMachine creates a "growable" virtual disk when it backs up your Mac. So it is able to handle multiple Mac backups on a single partition hard drive.

Since TimeMachine does incremental backups over a period of time. The bigger the drive you use for TimeMachine the better; especially if you're going to use the same hard drive for multiple Macs. That capacity requirement will go up if you frequently changing files on these Macs you are backing up with TimeMachine.

BTW: note that TimeMachine does not work with individual emails in your Mail application.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

-- Vinko

Thank you for using MacOSX.Com's free Mac support.

tonykerr - May 6, 2008 - 4:06 pm

Hi Vinko and thanks.

I'll give this a try now but I may have to get back to you as I haven't managed to access the Time Machine disk wirelessly from the desktop because I can't understand all the different items in the Keychains.

Thanks for the warning about Time Machine not backing up individual mails - but mine seems to. Maybe that's be cause they've all been downloaded to the hard disk rather than left on a remote server?

Best wishes and thanks for the very quick response.

Tony

vinko - May 6, 2008 - 11:47 pm

Hi Tony,

Regarding TimeMachine backing up emails from Mail. Since Mail stores its local copies of emails within the MBOX files/databases, TimeMachine can only recognize the MBOX file as being changed and will backup the entire MBOX file/database. So I do not believe you can use the TimeMachine feature to go back on individual emails within a particular folder/mailbox inside Mail.

I am not at my TimeCapsule drive so I cannot confirm the above.

-- Vinko