Can external drive connected to TC be used for Time Machine?

My 1 TB TC is running out of space and I can't afford the 2TB version. It's much cheaper to buy a 2 TB drive and plug it into the USB port on the TC, but before I do so, can someone savvy tell me if I will be able to select the drive connected to the TC as a Time Machine backup drive?

disconnekt wrote:
Thank you for this answer, and for that very helpful link. I can see that the Archive feature will not be practical for everyday backups,
Right.
so I'll have to find another solution...
See Kappy's post on Basic Backup, complete with links to the web sites of each product. You might also want to investigate Chrnosync: I've seen some posts that it can back up a network drive, but don't know if that's true.
Basically, if you run out of space on the TC's internal drive and decide to repurpose it for storing data, you have to be OK with not having that data backed up. I don't get this decision on the part of Apple—maybe they want me to shell out $400+ for a new 2TB TC?
Doubtful. Backing-up network drives, especially to another network drive, would be even slower and less reliable, and not something most Mac users would want to do. And even if you got a 2 TB, Time Machine still couldn't back up a network drive.
And they won't let you use a hard drive connected to Airport Extreme for TM backups either, which I'm guessing is another ploy to pry more dollars from our hands.
Now, don't be paranoid! They don't prevent it, but they don't support it, either. Some of us do it anyway, but it's generally not especially reliable, so we make sure to always have secondary backups. Nobody here can say why they don't support it, but unreliability sounds like a pretty good reason.

Similar Messages

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    Jim

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    Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

  • HT4848 Is it possible to partition an external hard drive that is already being used for Time Machine backups without it being erased?

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    Maybe this http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2986 can help you.
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    Alexander Chan1 wrote:
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