Woo hoo!!! That was such a major downside to the Airport Extreme. Going to test it now!

Sweet!

what about the airport express?

Nice. I won't have to connect the HD to my MBP every 10 days.

Airport express doesn't support Hard Drives... only the new Airport Extreme base stations support an airdisk

so THATS what it did?? shweet!

Works like a charm! Thanks Apple!

awesome, i thought for sure that apple was going to screw over the airport extreme users. i'm really happy i was wrong. now i just need a new (larger) external hard drive... (i'm open to suggestions hint hint).

buying a time capsule on monday = damn it. i did need the extra space, so i guess it's better to have it wrapped up in one package instead of another external hd laying around. it still stings a little.

could you plug a drobo into this for 4tb of time machine goodness?

Great, when will it come in black?

@glaeven: I'm pretty sure that the Airport Express doesn't support USB connected HDD, only printers.

So will you now also be able to plug and external into Time Capsule and add storage space?

@PollockRoc: The Time Capsule has always allowed you to add extra volumes and use them with Time Machine (but not extend the Time Capsule volume itself if that's what you are asking).

@brianhatch: The formatted capacity of a Drobo with 4 single TB drives in it is actually only 3TB. But yes, you can plug it in, and have your Time Machine backups on a drive with automated redundancy for probably the most kick-ass backup system on your block.

:-)

@PollockRoc: this has nothing to do with time capsule and everything to do with time machine.

@Adrian Covert: I understand that. What I meant was, since Time Capsule is essentially an AEBS with an HDD inside, is it also receiving the software update, allowing you to connect an additional HDD for use with Time Machine? Or could you do that already? I know you could connect an external for use with AirDisk, but would Time Machine recognize the additional storage space?

@PollockRoc: you could already connect additional hdds to the capsule, however you can't do a raid type setup via usb to expand your time machine back up space.

Has anyone tested the resulting backups to make sure they are good?

I ask because there was a hack to force it to work a couple months ago, but it wasn't recommended because the backups could not be successfully restored.

About time...

Seriously... about time Apple kept its promise on this. Now if only they'll fix my MBP so it wakes up.

All seems to be working OK for me:

Pros:
* Works wirelessly - so if you're on your network your Mac just goes on its merry way backing itself up. Note Time Machine it does differential backups - so just backs up the changes every 20 mins or so
* Can connect your existing USB drives to an Airport extreme. This becomes a shared drive that you can then use for Time Machine on each of your Macs
* Can connect multiple USB drives to the Airport Extreme
* New Macs will backup using Wireless 802.11.n (draft) - basically it much faster than a traditional wireless 802.11.g network
* If backup hard drive crashes it can easily replaced

Cons:
* Wireless connection will be slower than a wired connection
* Was a bit tricky to setup (see below for some tips)
* If you deal with a lot of large files (eg Video) this may be too slow for your network
* Initial backup may be very slow - it's worth connecting via ethernet cable directly to your Airport Extreme
* Only works with Aiport Extrem or Time Capsule, so you need to think about replacing your exisiting router.

Going to try and keep this blog article up to date with info: [www.999reasons.com]