Help - Apple Airport Extreme Time Capsule Back ups

[PrancingHorses]

I've recently had a home extension and time has come to upgrade my wifi network in the home. Been using 2 Apple Airport towers and 1 Apple Airport extreme (1TB) almost like a those new mesh systems and need to move to something new. They have been great but are now not effective due to the home extension.

Issue is that all our Macbooks in the house are backed up via Time Machine to the 1TB Airport Extreme. If I bought and set up a new mesh system like the google mesh nest or orbi that leaves the Time Machine back ups redundant as the airport extreme will no longer be in use?

Is anyone on here local to Uxbridge / Slough that can help me get this set up without losing the back ups - would be happy to pay for your time / beers as I have no idea how to do this.

[robbieduncan]

You can leave the time capsule on your network. Just plug it in via Ethernet and turn off the WiFi: https://support.plume.com/hc/en-gb/articles/230087...

[sjg]

Yep, we did that for a bit too.

Good going that it’s still running, if power supplies don’t fail then hard drives do on them.

If you have one Mac that’s usually on then it’s easy to share an external hard drive from that to use for Time Machine. Or remember you can do multiple Time Machine backups - get a portable drive or two to plug in so you have another backup in case the Time Capsule goes bang.

[PrancingHorses]

robbieduncan said:

You can leave the time capsule on your network. Just plug it in via Ethernet and turn off the WiFi: https://support.plume.com/hc/en-gb/articles/230087...

Thanks - does this mean everytime I need to back up I need to connect via an ethernet cable? As for now it all just happens seemlessly in the background via wifi? If I turn off wifi I guess this will no longer happen until I physically plug it in to the Macbook/Mac and I presume I will have to do this for the entire family - not ideal

[robbieduncan]

PrancingHorses said:

Thanks - does this mean everytime I need to back up I need to connect via an ethernet cable? As for now it all just happens seemlessly in the background via wifi? If I turn off wifi I guess this will no longer happen until I physically plug it in to the Macbook/Mac and I presume I will have to do this for the entire family - not ideal

No it will still be via WiFi via your new Mesh network.

[PrancingHorses]

Ah awesome! Thanks a ton will give this a go this weekend :-)