thepescador wrote:
. . .
This set up was suggested to me by an Apple Store employee when I was shopping for my AirPort Extreme and that same employee seemed to indicate that this was how they actually performed their backups at the Apple Store, so obviosuly I was surprised to find information online that states it is not officially supported.
Yes, unfortunately we've had a number of reports of similar statements by folks at the Apple stores.
As Tesserax says, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's probably why Apple doesn't support it. See
Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
In my case, it worked flawlessly for about 3 months, then every couple of days the backups would come up corrupted. Once, +Disk Utility+ was able to fix it; another time, +Disk Warrior+ could. The other times, the only solution was to erase and start over. Since then, it's worked well, although very slowly on occasion. And that's all with exactly the same hardware, in exactly the same locations. (And the disk is a Seagate Free Agent Pro, too.)
This forum, and the Time Machine forums, have any number of similar reports.
I'd
strongly suggest you either:
- Return the Airport (and perhaps the disk) to the store. Insist on a full refund because of bad advice, and refer them to the Apple article.
- Take your chances, but by all means keep some sort of secondary backups. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum), for some recommendations.