Mac Mini + MacBook + wireless internet/router: Time Machine on external HD?

Hi all,
In theory, this is possible (I think) but I wanted to see if anyone had tried it because the guys in the Apple shop gave me crazy eyes when I suggested it.
I have a Mini that's being used as my multimedia hub. I also have a MacBook that talks quite nicely to my Mini over my wireless internet gateway (modem+router in one). I was going to buy a Time Capsule as I recently suffered some serious data loss after my Macbook power supply caught on fire (yes, you did read that correctly) and damaged my HD.
My question is, rather than buy a Time Capsule and suffer all the NAT/networking/bridge issues that other people are struggling with - can I just connect a 2TB external Firewire HD to my Mini and use Time Machine to back up from my MacBook and my Mini to the external HD?
If you can explain why this is a good/bad idea, I'll be really grateful!

Personally, I wouldn't attempt doing all that over a wireless network. You'll be pushing the bandwidth limits of wireless. Not to mention it's not the most reliable of network methods, so entrusting it to backups is also something I wouldn't recommend if possible.
I'd just get an external drive (FireWire preferably) and connect it to the Mini. If possible, bold the drive down to some permanent fixture in your place. External drives have a nasty habit of dying after about a year, because they usually take a lot of abuse in the form of little bumps and jolts. You bolt it down, so that it has to move in relation to some permanent fixture with considerably more mass, and it won't be AS likely to die early on you.

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Restore items backed up with Time Machine
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Use the arrows and timeline to browse the snapshots and backups.White tick marks represent snapshots stored on your internal drive (portable computers only). Pink tick marks represent backups stored on your backup disk. If a tick mark appears dimmed or grayed, there’s no backup available or the backup disk is not connected.
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nachdenki wrote:
strange, my external HDs were added to the exception list automatically. maybe because they wouldn't fit on the time machine volume.
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Mac Mini + MacBook + wireless internet/router: Time Machine on external HD?

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