Use the 2TB Time Capsule as NAS instead of Backup?

[Shadrack]

Hi! - I'm considering the new 2TB Time Capsule.  Can the 2TB can be used for anything other than Time Machine backups?  I see that the Time Capsule allows external USB drives to be connected and used as NAS but I'm unsure about the stock storage HDD.

 

Right now, between my Wife's MBA and my MBP we really only need about 500GB of backup space.  2TB seems like way more backup storage than we need.  It would be nice to allocate 500 - 1000 GB to backup and have the other 1000+ GB for just general storage.

 

Thanks

[threetonesun]

I believe so, however I think an Airport Extreme + any external hard drive is a much better idea, for a number of reasons.

[Shadrack]

I believe so, however I think an Airport Extreme + any external hard drive is a much better idea, for a number of reasons.

 

I noticed that with the Airport Extreme is the same chassis as the Time Capsule.  Can an HDD be added internally to an Airport Extreme or is that locked down?

 

One thing I dislike about Time Capsule is that I like to rotate my backups to my safe deposit box at my bank.  Can a Time Capsule be dumped to an external drive so that I can keep doing this?

 

I am currently using an old 1st generation PPC Mac Mini with an external USB HDD for my Time Machine backups on my wife's MBA and my MBP.  I just have two "sparse images" on the external drive that Time Machine write to.  This works reasonably well, but there are no boot from Time Machine options.

[threetonesun]

I noticed that with the Airport Extreme is the same chassis as the Time Capsule.  Can an HDD be added internally to an Airport Extreme or is that locked down?

 

One thing I dislike about Time Capsule is that I like to rotate my backups to my safe deposit box at my bank.  Can a Time Capsule be dumped to an external drive so that I can keep doing this?

 

I am currently using an old 1st generation PPC Mac Mini with an external USB HDD for my Time Machine backups on my wife's MBA and my MBP.  I just have two "sparse images" on the external drive that Time Machine write to.  This works reasonably well, but there are no boot from Time Machine options.

 

Not internally, no, but it has USB ports on it that will accept any number of external drives.

 

Also, be aware that unless things have changed, there's no way to turn a wireless time machine backup into a local backup connected directly to the computer except to rewrite the entire backup. If you want to move things around and be able to connect to them wirelessly, locally, and take them away and use them elsewhere as a boot drive, a straight clone of your drive might be a better solution.

[Shadrack]

Yeah, thanks.  Thats one reason why I'm leaning towards getting a Time Capsule.

 

Using this "sparse image" on a network share "hack" does have some limitations to it.  The biggest being that you can't boot from it like you could an external Time Machine disk or a Time Capsule.  From what I read, however, doing a complete restore from the backup isn't that big of an issue provided you get can OS X reinstalled.

 

If I add an external disk to an Airport Extreme, would I have to use this same "sparse image"-hack in order to use Time Machine with it?