Q: Airport Disk: speed and Time Machine questions
Hi, my Time Machine volume has always been a USB-connected external drive. I recently purchased the latest Airport Extreme, partly because of its ability to use an Airport Disk as a wireless Time Machine drive. When I connected the drive to AE, it tried to perform a backup (as a sparse bundle?) as if it were a new backup and not incremental to what was already on the drive. So I gave up and reconnected it via USB, and even then I had to delete the half-created sparse bundle before my machine backed up incrementally again. Here are my questions:
1) Is there a way for Time Machine to recognize that the drive is the same regardless of whether it is connected via USB or Airport Extreme? I hoped that TM would be smart enough to do this. It's the same drive, just connected in a different way!
2) I noticed the speed of reading files off an Airport Disk was slow, even the latest generation. Is this expected? Of course I don't expect it to be as fast as USB, but this was noticeably slow. Any way it can be improved?
3) Finally, a more theoretical question taking into account the first two questions. As Apple does away with ports on its MacBooks, I would assume the need to wirelessly connect to external drives with decent performance becomes essential (for Time Machine, but also for basic data storage). Time Capsule is not a portable device, so I think using a portable external HD as your TM backup has its advantages over Time Capsule. Am I missing something? I find it strange that a "port-less" laptop can only backup via a non-portable Time Capsule or a very slow and unintelligent Airport Disk. Is iCloud supposed to be the eventual answer for all of this, making Time Machine irrelevant in the near future?
Thanks
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)
Posted on Oct 26, 2015 9:16 AM
If I used the Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet option on my Airport Extreme+Airport Disk setup, would I be able to go back and forth from wireless to ethernet without Time Machine thinking it was a new backup each time?
Yes
Also, would Airport Extreme+Airport Disk see the same improvement in speed that you mention above when using Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet on Time Capsule?
No, for the reasons that we already detailed above.
The USB port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0 and the USB processing in the AirPort Extreme further limits that to half speed. In non-technical terms, USB on the AirPort Extreme is a huge bottleneck.
Sorry to be blunt, but if backup speed is important to you, then the AirPort Extreme and an attached USB drive would not be for you.
Posted on Oct 26, 2015 12:08 PM