[Will Brocklebank]

Time Capsule is no doubt a great addition for the ease-of-use brigade but there are two small philosophical difficulties for the home network:

1. If the internal drive (up to 1TB) is used solely for Time Machine backups then it is not a NAS. From the forum responses on Time Capsule it seems many people are interested in using this as a NAS device. Can it be partitioned to allow for a NAS volume and still maintaining room for the Time Machine backups?

2. If it is used as a NAS (either in its entirety or a partition of it) then isn't it a little bit of a concern that in effect Apple are encouraging people to store vital household files centrally on a single disk with no RAID protection? It will be a significant single point of failure which could potentially wipe out a household's crucial files.

I am not suggesting that Apple should have offered RAID in the device as that would have increased cost and caused design issues but maybe they could solve these problems by allowing the external USB slot to be used for adding a second USB HD in the same manner as the original AirDisk was planned and have this as a RAID drive to protect the internal HD or, if people aren't fussed about RAID, optionally turning it into more storage in JBOD fashion.

[OreoCookie]

If it behaves like an ordinary Time Machine drive, you can read from and write to it at your leisure.

[Will Brocklebank]

I was under the (erroneous) impression that it was better not to write other files to a Time Machine drive. Thanks for clarifying that. But I think the RAID point still stands.

Thanks for correcting me.

[OreoCookie]

Well, you should never ever mess with the backup directories in the Finder (you can delete files that are backupped in the Time Machine interface, so you don't need to do it by hand), but other than that, you can use it as an external harddrive. I have a second Aperture vault on my Time Machine drive and it works just fine. But I try not to use that drive as anything but a backup drive. If Aperture and Time Machine would play nice with each other, I wouldn't even need the second Aperture vault.

[Eriamjh]

Originally Posted by Will Brocklebank 

I was under the (erroneous) impression that it was better not to write other files to a Time Machine drive. Thanks for clarifying that. But I think the RAID point still stands.

Thanks for correcting me.

The RAID point holds no merit if used exclusively as a backup. If one uses it for central storage AND has alternate backup system, then RAID still holds no merit.

[DarkStarRed]

Has I read it, on Apples site on Time Capsule is that if your running Leopard it will only backup!
They go on to say that you'll be able to run App's & open files or folders super fast, but if your running Tiger or on a PC you can use it has a wireless HD.
Looking at the details you don't have to use it for Time Machine! Since you decide by selecting it in System Preferences, so also with the USB you can daisy-chain RAID the HD.
What I don't know is that if you have two Time Capsules emitting wireless signal back to the same computer, their must be a way of controlling this but I couldn't find the manual at Apple.

[RQuarters]

RAID isn't really needed in a drive dedicated to backup - if it fails, replace and start over - hoping nothing happens during that replacement period.

BUT, if you get a 1TB version, and want to use a portion of that drive for real data use - then you need to worry about data loss.

The Drobo folks have released a new product that allows you to network attach your Drobo. So, rather than cludge together a Drobo into an AirPort, you can just plug it into the Ethernet port now and utilize the Drobo across your network. I see it as a much more elegant solution personally, at least a lot more functional and you get your "RAID" like capability for a partition utilized for real data.

Rob

[Will Brocklebank]

Originally Posted by RQuarters 

RAID isn't really needed in a drive dedicated to backup - if it fails, replace and start over - hoping nothing happens during that replacement period.

and further to Eriamjh's "The RAID point holds no merit if used exclusively as a backup."

I would agree with a straight daily over-written backup but that's not what Time Machine is... for many people a good deal of the attraction of Time Machine is the sense that they have a history of file changes over a long period. It is a (weak) sort of versioning. Given that this is therefore an archive over months (and that maybe almost a year or more with a 1TB version) a disk failure would wipe out more than a simple "replace and start over" would regain.

For this reason, and the fact that other storage on other partitions would also be protected, I believe that RAID on the Extreme would still be a neat feature.

[mduell]

Buy a ReadyNAS Duo and use one of the hacks to make it your Time Machine target.

What if the RAID controller goes loopy and corrupts your volume? Better to have two devices; buy two Time Capsules and rsync them frequently.