# Looking for a Time capsule alternative



## jmlachance (Nov 6, 2005)

I've been thinking of getting the Time Capsule to do my automatic back-ups, but wondering instead if OS X have a feature that will do so to an external HD. I have 2 Macs in one room where my 2 500gig external drives are,my son's Emac is downstairs and a Macbook that gets used where-ever we happen to be at the time. To do our back-ups now we take the ext.-HD down to the basement then back upstairs again. With Airport Express could this be done wirelessy. It would also get rid of a few Firewire cables from the 2 upstairs computers to the external hard drives. To back up the Macbook we have to disconnect one of the other Macs and connect it to the hard drive, so I'm trying to eliminate that process as well....


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## chimo (Jun 9, 2008)

You could also use an Airport Extreme with an external HDD plugged into it. That may give you more flexibility in the long run to upgrade to a larger drive.


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## Crunch (Jul 4, 2008)

You can hook up an external drive to one machine for Time Machine backups, share it out and have the other machines use that shared drive for their TM backups, couldn't you?


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## FlaminWiz (Feb 18, 2008)

If you have the money, go for the Time Capsule. But in my opinion, don't get it if you can't afford to because they are expensive compared to a seperate external hard drive.


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## Vexel (Jan 30, 2005)

Couldn't you just plug the drive into one of the stationary Macs and share the drive over the network?

AFAIK, this will work for Time Machine too.


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## FlaminWiz (Feb 18, 2008)

How much memory do you think you'll need? Do you want to upgrade later or stay ahead of the game by getting a big HD now rather than upgrading to a bigger one later?


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## harzack86 (Jan 30, 2005)

Vexel said:


> Couldn't you just plug the drive into one of the stationary Macs and share the drive over the network?
> 
> AFAIK, this will work for Time Machine too.


This is exactly what I do:
I have my old G4 headless tower running Leopard in the basement, with some shared hard drives inside it, and Time machine uses it through the network (wired) to backup the iMac and the Macbook. It works flawlessly and I don't need a time capsule or an Airport Extreme.


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## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

I use Super Duper on my external Firewire drive for backups.

I really never liked the Time Machine concept.

But that's just me.


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## Oakbridge (Mar 8, 2005)

chimo said:


> You could also use an Airport Extreme with an external HDD plugged into it. That may give you more flexibility in the long run to upgrade to a larger drive.


I'm currently using this option for 2 machines.


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## ifade (Oct 19, 2007)

I use WD (Western Digital) usb hard drive, it works very well with time machine.


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## jmlachance (Nov 6, 2005)

Thanks all.
Let me try some of these options,although I don't have the Airport Extreme yet.


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