Excuse me for butting in but:- Remember that Time Capsule is a single point of failure. The odds your system would go down with the Time Capsule are not great but if it was a massive power spike, that your surge protector could not handle, then you are toast. A storage vault with two physical drives, one to mirror the other and removable (hot swap) is a good alternative but expensive ad probably not recognized by Time Machine. It may work with some other backup program. The backup program is an individual choice but, (my 2 cents) I feel a network storage, with two physical drives, with mirror capability is probably the least risky option. Remember the lower the risk, the higher the cost. Currently I use HP network storage, 2 500 Gb drives one mirroring the other for my PCs. Unfortunately OSX does not recognize the unit for backup. I use a 500 gb LaCie for my MacBook, and a MYBook for the Imac. Not the best solution, however I do copy my important files from the Imac and Macbook manually to the storage unit. (the file formats are compatible). Possibly a good topic for face-to-face discussion in the near future. Regards frank On 11-10-31 12:24 PM, "Dave Knight" <dave@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 2011-10-30, at 10:33 PM, Paul Tucknott wrote: > >> In use, either option is the same. Time Machine works equally well with with >> setup. >> >> Logistically the Time Capsule is easier as the router and backup drive are in >> a single enclosure - less cables and power supplies to deal with. > > Agree with that, until it breaks and taking it offline for repair also robs > you of your router. > >> The Time Capsule option uses a server-grade hard drive. > > Apple marketing may say so, but it's not actually true > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Time_Capsule#Hard_drive > >> Most people looking to buy a drive to add to an Airport Extreme are usually >> going to go with the cheapest option. > > Which for this application doesn't seem like a bad idea, a drive used for > backup is going to be mostly asleep, spinning up a few times a day to get a > bunch of writes done to it, then back to sleep. The 'green' disks you get > these days seem ideal for the purpose (and in fact it seems that that's what > Time Capsules actually ship with these days). > > dave--- > Manage your account options at //www.freelists.org/list/muglo --- Manage your account options at //www.freelists.org/list/muglo