Info Share: Hardware solutions for Apples Time Machine software

Question

Inspired by user Pondini, I wrote up a blog post on Hardware solutions for Apples Time Machine software.
I hope it proves useful to some
Feel free to cite it or reuse the content or make suggestions to make it better.
Cheers
Message was edited by: kyle0r

Answer 1

Very good! Kudos!
Comments:
in *Open Questions*, yes, you can use a TC as a shared drive in addition to TM backups. Because of the way TM will use up all the space it can before beginning to delete old backups, and since you can't partition a TC (bizarre, but true), a poster here suggested putting a Disk Image of sufficient size on it to be used for the sharing. Sounds workable to me.
One caution: You may need to find some way to back-up that data. The Airport utility has a feature allowing you to "archive" the TC's disk to a USB disk plugged-in to the TC, but it's the whole disk -- you can't pick and choose.
And yes, you can connect your Mac to a TC via Ethernet and do backups. We often recommend that for the initial backup (it will run 40% or more faster, depending on how good/bad the wireless connection is). Then incrementals can be done wirelessly to the same sparse bundle.
That's also a good idea when doing a large or full-system restore.
*Other options:*
If you have multiple Macs and your TC is too small for all of them, you can attach a USB drive to the TC and back some of them up to it. (Why Apple doesn't "officially" support that on an AEBS, which many of us are doing anyway, I cannot figure out).
A shared drive on a Leopard or Snow Leopard Mac on the same local network.
And, of course, a Mac Leopard or Snow Leopard Server on the same local network.
Good job!