Backing up to AirPort Disks (via AirPort Extreme Base Station)
 

Hi,

The new Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n claims to have a network disk sharing feature called AirPort Disk.

Could SuperDuper! be used to make bootable partitions on such a disk? If not, could Sparse Image backups be used like with other kinds of network fileshares?

Thanks!

I've got mine on order and it hasn't arrived, so I can't confirm from direct testing, but I'm certain that it'll work with sparse images.

I've just got my Airport Extreme and I can't figure out how to do this sparse image thingie. I want to have all my external disks plugged into the AE. They show up fine in the finder and for general use it's fantastic, but the disks are nowhere to be seen in SD.

I have one disk to backup my laptop's internal drive and one disk to back up the remaining usb disk.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've not found any options at all that I can edit until I've selected two volumes.

I can see how I'd make a backup of my laptop using disk image (are they bootable?), but am I going to be stuffed in making a backup of a network disk onto another network disk?

Cheers for any light you may shed onto this problem

See the User's Guide, Graham -- "Backing up over a network" gives all the details you need.

(I've done my initial tests, by the way, and things seem to work fine to the drive, although it's not super fast. The base station also crashes badly if the attached drive fills, so be careful!)

Yeah, I've got my laptop's internal drive backing up to a disk image (I am right in thinking that these are bootable?), but I was wondering how to back up one usb disk onto another when both are plugged into the airport extreme. If it's not possible, then maybe this would be a good feature to think about for a future release? The new AE is going to take NAS to the masses.

It's not directly bootable, but you'll be able to boot from it once restored to a supported startup device.

NAS -> NAS copying is not currently possible, except as mounted image -> mounted image.

Good stuff. Cheers for the help. Just hope that NAS to NAS is considered for a future release.

NAS BAckup on New Airport Base Station Does Not Work
 

The SuperDuper user guide states that it does not work with NAS or a FAT 32 drive. The new Airport Base Station requires FAT32. I tried doing a backup and SuperDuper crashes shortly into the backup.

The Airport Base Station does not require FAT32; it works great with HFS+ volumes, Whippy.

Assuming you are correct, although Apple support staed that most people have problems with the router if the attached storage device is not FAT32, why then does SuperDuper crash when attempting to backup to the NAS drive connected to the Base Station?
Thanks

My AirPort Extreme works fine with HFS+ volumes. Unfortunately superduper doesn't work, but I've found no other problems with it.

Whippy -- I'd need to see the crash. My guess is that you got to 4GB maximum size and then the OS crashed because -- as documented in the User's Guide -- it doesn't deal with this case very well.

Graham -- SD! certainly does work with the AirPort Extreme. See "Backing up over a network" in the user's guide.

Ok then, it doesn't work in the way I want to. I've had bad experiences backing up to disk images before, and as noted in the user guide, it is slower (i.e. too slow).

Ah! Different issue entirely... :)

Yes, that is in fact what occurred. The 4GB size and then the application quits. Any fix for this?
Thank you

You bet: format the disk as HFS+ or something else that'll support large files...

The limit is with fat32. You'll have to use hfs+.

It's a pitty, because the Apple tech insisted that the AE needed FAT32.

The Apple Tech you spoke to is entirely wrong. I've been doing tests with the AE all week, and HFS+ works just fine.

How about copying from Airport Disk to local disk?
 

What I need to be able to do is to copy FROM an Airport Disk to a local external firewire drive. Is this something that might be forthcoming?

Deja Vu seems to be able to do this, but I'll only purchase it if I have to. I'd prefer to wait for SuperDuper to support this, if that's going to happen. I really love using SuperDuper. :)

Thanks - Jessi

It's not something we can do at this time.

Thanks for letting me know. Actually Deja Vu didn't work either; it copied my folders from the Airport Disk but not the files within.

I guess for now I'll just have to unplug the drive from the Airport and hook it up directly. Darn.

Thanks for your prompt reply, anyway!

Jessi