Time Machine is an application in Leopard that will easily back up your Mac. It automatically does monthly full; weekly, daily, and hourly differentials. Originally, TM would only backup to an attached USB or Fire Wire drives. Of course there are hacks to get around this, but as we all know hacks usually work 90% of the time. Now with the addition of Time Capsule, you can back up to a networked drive.
With both Time Machine and Time Capsule, Apple users can now have a disaster recovery system that compares to most small business. However there is a bit of controversy surrounding these two systems, because of this I could not decide how I was going to stand on this issue.
The first issue was a rumor, that Apple did not use a server grade drive like they advertised. Someone cracked open a Time Capsule and found a Hitachi Deskstar 3.5” 7K1000. Now this drive is rated to be an internal or external storage for consumer computers. Of course this person did not read on to also find that this drive, is also rated to be in a networked storage server, extreme gaming, or video editing arrays.
That was not where my question comes into play. I am not using a Time Capsule at home, so the issue of a non-server drive was not an problem for me. I have an Airport Express with a USB drive attached to it. An Airport express is exactly like a Time Machine, expect it does not have a drive built in. Since the Airport was introduced a lone time again, it’s only fair to say that, Time Capsule is an Airport Express with a drive built in it. Any who….. I have the updated firmware on my AE, the update allows the AE to act like a Time Capsule, and I can backup all of my Macs at home to it. Some have suggested that this update was a mistake and wasn’t meant to really exist. They also say that this form of backup is not a foolproof system. This is where I do not have solid data to make my decision. I have not had it in place long enough to fully test it. Apple told a couple of customers, that this is not a supported solution, so if something breaks Apple will not support it.
I do however, for extra piece of mind, have my 2003 server at home doing weekly backups of my Time Machine backups, just in case something happens. I use TC because of how easy it is to restore a file, or go back a few versions earlier. Here is a brief video showing off the user interface.
I guess to get the support from Apple you should buy a Time Capsule, but if you already have an Airport Express, just hook a drive up to it. If you are looking for a cheap solution this is the best consumer product available.
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