Apple: Fix AirDisk Backups. Now
After a recent Firmware Update causing Time Machine preferences to see Hard Disks attached to Airport Extreme Base Stations, many AEBS owners were ecstatic over the Time Capsule-like ability to do wireless backups. But as I personally found out when the Disk refused to mount on the fifth backup, this solution is not fully baked and Apple recently announced that it is not supported at all.
With the announcement of Leopard, Apple said that backing up to AirDisks was supported. Then they pulled the feature, leaving those who had bought External Drives solely for this purpose in the lurch. Then they introduced Time Capsule, severely hindering hope of having the AirDisk feature replaced. This increased the anger, many feeling that Apple was trying to make a fast dollar off of them by forcing them to buy the new product. When Apple released the Update allowing Time Machine to see AirDisks, many thought Apple had listened to it’s customers. As backups start failing all over the place though, anger will grow.
A word to Apple: you need to get this fixed. It is already overdue, and you have many seething customers over this issue. While it may result in some loss in Time Capsule sales, those who want a seamless integrated backup will still buy Time Capsule, and you will retain your current Airport Extreme customers. You’re working on borrowed time here.
Sound off in the comments below if you are one of these customers, or you have had your backups fail.
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I agree that this is a problem, but it’s currently working OK on my system. Still, it seems risk enough that I just bought a real NAS server (QNAP TS-409).
One thing that would be helpful would be a listing of which disks seem to work and which ones are problems. That wouldn’t guarantee that it would work, but might help some people to buy the right disks.
on April 8, 2008 at 03:29 PM - LINKI agree totally. Apple needs to at least release some sort of statement regarding this, rather than allowing people to risk their backups.
on April 8, 2008 at 03:32 PM - LINKThat’s weird, my Airport Extreme together with my Western Digital 500 gig drive has been wirelessly backing up my mac book pro and and my wife’s mac book flawlessly since the update. The disk is in two partitions, one for each computer. The initial format and system back ups were done plugged in to USB. After that, the incremental back ups (and several file restorations) have been flawless. Slow, but flawless.
on April 10, 2008 at 10:44 PM - LINKNo doubt it works… but for how long is anybody’s guess. My time seems to have been uncharacteristically short, other report a week or more, some like yourself seem to have no trouble.
on April 10, 2008 at 10:49 PM - LINKI am one of those who bought the AEBS and external drives when I heard about the TM feature in Leopard. I made this decision based on Apple’s announcement. I will never trust apple again.
I have only just today managed to get my TM working with the Airdisk. But it frequently loses the signal and corrupts the disk.
Also, more importantly, I have done four backups over the air, and I can’t see any one of them in TM. It only has the most recent image of my disk. This is a significant since not having a back up of the disk means this is all just a wasted effort. Won’t be trusting the integrity of the data.
Apple is becoming another Microsoft. They are forgetting about how important it is to not exploit your customers and to make sure the software you are releasing is not buggy.
What happened to the days when no self-respecting coder would release a buggy app? I miss those days...sigh. :)
on June 9, 2008 at 08:03 PM - LINK