Is an external drive attached to a Time Capsule supported for Time Machine?

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Is an external drive attached to a Time Capsule supported for Time Machine?

I want to have two time machine backups - one on the internal drive of a Time Capsule, and one on an external USB drive attached to the Time Capsule. Is backing up to an external drive officially supported?

I know backing up to an external drive attached to an Airport Extreme is not supported, and know from experience this ends up corrupting your data quite often. The documentation isn't clear about whether Time Capsule's external drive is supported as a Time Machine backup disk.

Thanks in advance. 😀

Posted on Jan 23, 2014 3:41 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jan 23, 2014 3:44 PM in response to lowbatteries

Uses for the USB port of AirPort Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express

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Answer 2

Jan 23, 2014 3:46 PM in response to lowbatteries

It has always been supported on a TC.. and is now also supported on the latest Airport Extreme.

The drive must be Mac formatted.. this is essential part of how TM works.

I know backing up to an external drive attached to an Airport Extreme is not supported,

It is now..

See the details here.

http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html

What was different about a TC and an extreme on the earlier versions was never made clear.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jan 23, 2014 3:51 PM in response to LaPastenague

Let's be sure to stress this caveat from Pondini:

But it's not reliable and not supported by Apple on the older, flat models. They have different hardware. If there's trouble with it, you won't get much, if any, help from Apple.

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Answer 4

lowbatteries Author

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8 points

Jan 23, 2014 4:00 PM in response to LaPastenague

Thanks LaPastenague! Good to know this was always supported on Time Capsule – I suspected as much, since the wording was specific that it wasn't supported on the Airport Extreme, but just wanted to make sure.

Great that they've added this to the newest tall Airport Extreme - to corrobate this, I looked at the user Q&A in the Apple Store and some helpful people there referenced the exact place it says this in the new AE manual. Hooray!

Now my choice is whether to buy an old refurbished Time Capsule or a new Airport Extreme.

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Answer 5

lowbatteries Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 23, 2014 4:02 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy wrote:

Let's be sure to stress this caveat from Pondini:

But it's not reliable and not supported by Apple on the older, flat models. They have different hardware. If there's trouble with it, you won't get much, if any, help from Apple.

Yes, I know this all too well - my current setup is an old (flat) Airport Extreme with an external drive, and my backups get corrupted constantly. I always figured it was OK since they were just backups, but its become too much of a hassle to start over every month or so.

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