Is your Airport Extreme suddenly Time Machine-happy?
Update 9 pm ET: Our comrade David Chartier from Ars Technica points out that the 7.1.3 firmware itself may not be necessary for the new functionality to work; he says he tested a 7.1 AEBS with a machine running Time Capsule & Airport 1.0, and Time Machine was able to see the remote disk. Other readers have reminded us that the disk must be formatted as HFS+ with journaling, and you may have to mount it in the Finder before Time Machine sees it. The freeware TimeMachineScheduler is disabled by this update, comments note.Update 6:45 am Thursday: More comments point out that if you take a locally-connected Time Machine drive and attach it to an AEBS, you will be starting over with new backups (because the remote backups are stored on sparseimages, not as folders). Something to keep in mind if you already have a long backup history -- you might want to use a different drive.
Sometimes the fixes are subtle and quiet. Once TUAW reader Peder downloaded today's Airport updates and ran the utility, he noticed a new version of the Airport Extreme firmware queued up and ready (v7.3.1). When he installed and rebooted his AEBS -- which happened to have a USB hard drive hanging off of it... well, let him tell you:
If this is a reproducible result -- this means you, everyone, go ahead and start testing this firmware! -- that means that the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't Time Machine to AirDisk feature of Leopard has finally arrived. Sure, the Time Capsule is a one-piece solution and quite economical, but for all the AEBS owners out there who have been waiting patiently, this would be a very nice bit of March madness indeed. [Response to "just-a-guy" below: Remember, this is the Airport EXTREME only; the Express doesn't support AirDisk at all.]
Seeing the same results as Peder? By all means let us know. He was kind enough to send us a few screenshots, see below.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
Just_a_guy said 6:50PM on 3-19-2008
does this work with the airport express?
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starkruzr said 7:00PM on 3-19-2008
How do I readed blog post?
Michael Rose said 7:02PM on 3-19-2008
In fairness, I added the note about the Express after the comment showed up.
Cycomachead said 7:44PM on 3-19-2008
but there is an update for express users too... unless the 'n' ones are shipping w/ 7.3.1 already. Don't know what the update does for the express though.
Eddie said 7:02PM on 3-19-2008
Same result - backing up my iMac and MacBook (simultaneously - bad idea? probably) right now. Very happy.
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Russell Stuever said 7:04PM on 3-19-2008
I have indeed duplicated the results. I am also able to select the AirPort Disk within Time Machine setup.
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Lee Lusk said 10:42PM on 3-19-2008
yep this works for me on a gigabit ethernet airport extreme.
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webmacster87 said 7:06PM on 3-19-2008
This is awesome and a good move for Apple. I don't think this will cut into Time Capsule sales very significantly--after all, when you consider that Time Capsule gives you an AirPort Extreme ($179 value) PLUS a 500 GB or terabyte hard drive just $120 or $220 more, that's an excellent value. However, this definitely makes life much more flexible for current AirPort Extreme/external hard drive owners. Way to go Apple (albeit somewhat belated).
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Jack said 10:41AM on 3-23-2008
But Time Capsule does not allow us to partition the internal HD, right?
Eric Lawton said 7:11PM on 3-19-2008
Does anyone know if Apple plans to allow SMB connections to Time Machine?
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trippy said 7:31PM on 3-19-2008
The reason that the airport doesn't work with time machine is because it has an smb server. What time machine works with is an AFP server. Your can turn any machine into a time machine time capsule by sharing your drives or folders in a drive IF you are running AFP.
So no you won't see an smb time machine server. I suspect that this is due to the hard links that time machine is making along with other differences. Just a guess though. But seriously try the AFP share. You can already have a time capsule.
Jimbo said 7:53PM on 3-19-2008
trippy - Tell us more about this solution.
Zack Mahdavi said 9:23PM on 3-19-2008
I have been happily using Time Machine to back up to a SMB mount for several months now. You just need to get "iTimeMachine".
This setup has been working great. Backups and restores occur without a hitch.
http://lifehacker.com/341704/time-machine-over-the-network-with-itimemachine
Rae Whitlock said 7:10PM on 3-19-2008
Apple finally delivered. Kudos.
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Phil J Leitch said 7:13PM on 3-19-2008
No luck here...boo hoo.
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newsray said 11:46PM on 3-19-2008
One point not mentioned in the article is that you have to manually mount the disk that is connected to your Airport Extreme, at least the first time.
After I did that, I was able to start using Time Machine with two different Macs that had formerly been using Time Machine only when the drive was directly connected to them.
Phil J Leitch said 12:15AM on 3-20-2008
That worked. Mounting the disk and then going to Time Machine and it shows up. This is most excellent. Time to get a larger drive.
Mark said 7:14PM on 3-19-2008
Also there appears to be a new feature under the Disks section of the APU.
There is an Archive button, the description says
"Select Archive to transfer the data from your Time Capsule disk to an AirPort disk connected via USB."
This potentially solves my one major gripe with TC and TM. The lack of off-site back ups.
Can I now take a TC backup (archive) and store at my brothers house?
www.metphoto.net
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Dave said 7:20PM on 3-19-2008
doesn't work for me. Strange.
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iGO said 7:28PM on 3-19-2008
Works !!....Make sure youare doing the AEBS Firmware update to 7.3.1
It shoudd show up in your software update after the other updates AND a reboot.