Rather than connect it directly to the iMac, however, I thought I would see about connecting it to the AirPort Extreme’s built-in USB port, making what sometimes is referred to as an AirDisk.Īpple describes what it calls AirPort Disk as “a simple and convenient way to share files among everyone in your family, office, or class”, claiming “just connect the external hard drive to. Dell Canada, however, had an external 1.5 GB drive on sale for C$150 (about US$130), which seemed like a nice price for quite a bit more storage space. (See my article Time Machine Can Now Backup to a Shared Hard Drive.)īut backing up two Macs to that 500 GB drive, I’d started to run low on drive space. I have an AirPort Extreme until recently, I’d been connecting a generic 500 GB external USB drive to my iMac and using it to back up both the iMac and my MacBook using OS X 10.5’s Time Machine backup software. A Time Capsule with a 500 GB drive boosts the price to $299 the 1 TB model jumps to $499. And Time Capsule is a relatively expensive way to add storage, even when added to the price of Apple’s high-end AirPort Extreme.Īpple’s US online store lists the AirPort Extreme base station (with no built-in storage) for $179. However, many users already have either a wireless base station (also referred to as a wireless router) or an external hard drive – or both.
Apple’s Time Capsule, building the equivalents of an AirPort Extreme router and either a 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive into a single unit, is a space-saving and easy-to-use way for users to combine a wireless base station and storage accessible over a home or small business network – and even across the Internet.