HT204057 is there a way to use time machine with a backup drive connected to my AirPort?

is there a way to use time machine with a backup drive connected to my AirPort Extreme?

Unfortunately, this is not officially supported by Apple......if you still have the 4th Gen AirPort Extreme that you list in your equipment profile.
However, the new "tower" shaped version of the AirPort Extreme does now officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the device.

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Using Time MACHINE with a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme

Disclaimer: Apple does not necessarily endorse any suggestions, solutions, or third-party software products that may be mentioned in the topic below. Apple encourages you to first seek a solution at Apple Support. The following links are provided as is, with no guarantee of the effectiveness or reliability of the information. Apple does not guarantee that these links will be maintained or functional at any given time. Use the information below at your own discretion.
Please click here:
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Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme AirDisk
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Note: If you got here by clicking a link that looks like this:
_. . . discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2299608#Q1_
Note the number at the end, after the +*pound sign,+* (#) and click the corresponding item below:
Please pardon the inconvenience.
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QUESTIONS
*Q1. Can I use the USB drive(s) for Time Machine backups AND other data?*
*Q2. How do I set up Time Machine to back up to a USB drive connected to my Airport Extreme?*
*Q3. How do I delete backups?*
*Q4. How do I back-up my backups?*
If you don't see your question here, try Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
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PROBLEMS
*P1. The Backup disk image could not be created.*
*P2. Time Machine could not complete the backup . . sparsebundle could not be accessed. (Error 109).*
If you don't see your problem here, try Time Machine - Troubleshooting
This is the 3rd version of this tip. It was submitted on May 16, 2010 by Pondini.
Do you want to provide feedback on this User Contributed Tip or contribute your own? If you have achieved Level 2 status, visit the User Tips Library Contributions forum for more information.

Hi, Nubz!
Yes, I just saw that, and am still chuckling.
Maybe that will mollify the Jive gods?
Thanks again,
Jim

Can i use time machine with a hard drive connected to the airport extreme?

Just wondering if there is any news on this since the last post was in 2008.
The Apple website info regarding the Airport Extreme mentions attaching a hard drive to the Airport Extreme, but I can't see whether that could be used for a Mac using Time Machine.

You can attach a hard drive, but Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port at the AirPort Extreme are not supported by Apple, so it's not possible to say what your actual results might be.
If you decide to try this, it would be wise to have a secondary backup plan in place as well.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html

I am trying to get an answer to whether or not I can successfully use Time Machine with an external HDD connected to an airport extreme? Some forums say yes, some say no.

I am trying to get an answer to whether or not I can successfuly use Time Machine with an external HDD connected to an airport extreme. Some forums say yes, some say no. I'm also curious about formatting the hard drive to work both on my wife's MacBook Pro and my PC. Any help would definitely be appreciated.

You may be going on a recollection, that I share, that at one time Apple stated this would be possible:
In fact, Apple’s Time Machine Web page touted this very capability as recently as last Tuesday, as you can see from Google’s October 16 cache of the page
Effortless meets wireless. With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine.
But if you look at the current Time Machine page on Apple’s Web site, that text is nowhere to be found.
That was a long time ago, it has never been officially implemented, and at present they specifically say it cannot be done.
In summary, it may work, but probably won't, and even if it does it may not be reliable.
Reference:
Disks that can be used with Time Machine
Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk connected to an AirPort Extreme, or...
and
Mac OS X v10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks

I can't use Time Machine with a USB drive plugged into an Airport Extreme.

I connected an external drive to the USB port of an Airport Extreme, intending to use it with Time Machine and one of the laptops in the Wi-Fi network (call it Laptop). The drive is visible from the Disks tab of each computer’s Airport Utility but from nowhere else, in particular not to Laptop’s Time Machine preference.
Laptop is relatively new and arrived with Mavericks. Time Machine used to work on Laptop before I upgraded the rest of the network (a desktop Mac Pro and another laptop) from OS X 10.6 to Mavericks.
The drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I have tried other external hard drives, with the same behavior. The desktop correctly use Time Machine to back up its internal drive to another internal drive. Another possibly relevant factor is that our DSL connection has recently been upgraded, and now uses a 2Wire modem that provides its own router, so Airport Utility’s Network Router Mode is set to “Off (Bridge Mode)”.
I would be grateful for suggestions of what to try next.

Here is one from Pondini, who was the foremost Time Machine expert in the world.
http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html
And another from Apple. Info near the bottom.
AirPort base stations: About USB disks
And another miscellaneous from Apple:
AirPort base stations: Time Machine hard drive compatibility

Using Time Machine with 3rd party drive connected to Airport Extreme

In Snow Leopard, I connected a G-Tech drive to my Airport Extreme via USB and used that with Time Machine for backups. It worked flawlessly most of the time, although my understanding is that this technique has not been supported by Apple since Snow Leopard was released. Is anybody using this method in Lion? If so, does it work OK?
I got a little worried reading about the issues some folks have had doing Time Machine backups in Lion so instead of trying that method, I got another drive and connected it via FireWire to my MacBook Pro for backing up in Time Machine. The first backup took a little over an hour. The second one took just a few moments. I do notice that my hard drive stays mounted on my desk top even when Time Machine is inactive. Is this normal?

Lots of people do this, but it is not supported and there have been reports of data corruption even if things appeared to be working for quite some time. The question you have to ask yourself is whether it is worth the risk. This is a backup, after all. An unreliable backup is worse than no backup (because you think you have one when you may not).
What you have experienced with your external drive is all normal. The first backup takes quite a while because it is both large and there are lots of small files to copy. (Copying lots of small files is slower than copying a few large ones.) Subsequent backups will usually be much faster. One hour for the initial backup is actually very fast. Finally, external drives remain mounted even when Time Machine is not using them, unlike network drives which are only kept mounted while the backup is active.

Is there a way to install the server on an external drive connected to an airport extreme?

Is there a way to install the server on an external drive connected to an airport extreme?

If you want a small (comparatively) cheap server along the lines of the AirPort Extreme the nearest thing is a Mac mini.
You can use the AirPort Extreme as a very basic file server, and (unofficially) a Time Machine server. A Time Capsule has a built-in hard disk and officially supports being a Time Machine server.

How to use Time Machine with an external drive?

Hi…I’m new to this, I hope someone can help me=)
I’m trying to back up my Macbook Pro 10.6.8 using Time Machine with an external drive Seagate Backplus Slim. I’ve tried several solutions that I’ve found through different forums but still wouldn’t work.
Every time I opened Time Machine, it has this appearance:
Then when I click “Select backup Disk”, it goes on like this:
And after I click “Set Up Time Capsule”, it has this:
It keeps saying that it couldn’t find AirPort wireless, even though I have good WIFI connection.
Anyone know what I should do? Please help….Thanks everyone

Ayuphie ~ In your Time Machine Preferences panel, slide the OFF-ON switch to the ON position:

Problem using Time Machine with Seagate BackUp Plus Pls HELP!!

I have a late 2006 iMac (running OS 10.5.8) & am trying to back up using Time Machine with a new Seagate BackUp Plus drive. When I select the Seagate drive in Time Machine it tells me I msut first erase the (Seagate) disk. When I hit ERASE, I get a Time Machine error : COULD NOT UNMOUNT DISK. I see from various posts that 10,5 & 10,6 have issues with some external drives so want to upgrade to Mavericks (to get around this incompatibility issue): HOwever apparently my iMac is too old (by 1 year) to allow this. Can anyone give me any advice on how to get my iMac content backed up via Time Machine using the Seagate BackUP PLus drive I bought (becasue it is supposedly "compatible with PCs & Macs".
Thank you!!
Wendy

Your Seagate drive should work just fine. If it doesn't have any important data on it, try re-formatting it with Disk Utility to blank it out. Or run the Disk verify/repair and see if you can get it to fix any problems.
I have a Drobo FS too. You probably need a firmware update, they issued one a while back to fix problems with Time Machine. Use the Dashboard or download it from their support site, http://www.drobo.com/support/updates.php
Just curious how long you let it run after it "stalled". If it is a big file it could just be taking a while to copy over, do you see activity lights on the USB drive? The first time you use time machine let it run overnight, it's going to take a while, after that it will update quickly.
While you're at it, you might want to verify your start-up disk too with Disk Utility.

Is there a way to use Time Machine to backup my Macbook Pro to an external drive connected to my iMac?

I recently purchased a Seagate Goflex Desk 2TB and I've already used Time Machine to backup my iMac running 10.5.8 to the drive. Is there a way to backup my Macbook Pro running 10.6.8 to the drive using Time Machine while the drive is still connected to my iMac? Any help is appreciated!

Choose Connect to Server from the Finder's Go menu, provide the first computer's IP address, log in, and set it up in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences.
(59008)

Can I use Time Machine as a backup drive for my Vista 32 PC?

I cannot see any of my Mac computers or Time Machine on my network through my Vista PC, even though I have a wireless card in the PC which can connect wirelessly. I have my PC sitting next to my Time Machine that is the hub for my network. I am connected to the internet via ethernet connection daisy chained through my Time Machine which is connected to my cable router.
I cannot figure out why my PC cannot "see" my Imac, emac, Time Machine, and macbook that are all connected to my wireless network. The PC and Time machine are the only devices with an ethernet wired connection.
I would like to use the Time Machine's 1 terabyte drive to back-up my Vista PC.

I would first set up my mac and vista to do simple file sharing and then work my way from there. If you are unable to figure out simple fire sharing i would go look on other forums or advice. Its rather simple to do but it can also cause a lot of headaches. I have wanted to connect my mac and windows server to my network for a while and just recently figured it out.

Using Time Machine with a network Drive

I recently bought a WD My Book Live network drive to use as my Time Machine backup. I was previously using a USB external HD for Time Machine with no problems. I have set up the new network drive but when I go in to Time Machine to select it as the drive to back up to, it is not showing up. The only drive I see is my old USB external HD. I have the latest firmware for the network drive and I am running Mac OSX10.5.8. Any suggestions?

If you bought the WD in a USB enclosure it probably came formatted with NTFS (Windows). Time Machine can't use NTFS drives or SMB (Windows) network shares as a backup destination because that format does not allow the proper permissions to be set. If this is the case with your drive, open Disk Utility and reformat your new drive (NOT you system drive!!) with HFS+ aka 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' and then the drive should show up as a target selection in Time Machine.

Is there a way to monitor Time Machine's current backup task?

I started a second Time Machine backup to a NAS yesterday (in addition to my local TM Backup, which will now be taken offsite). It took a good 24hrs to finish, which was expected over WiFi. Since the initial backup, all the hourly backups have seemed normal...20-80 MB or so. Then all of a sudden this morning, I noticed the backup was taking longer than usual. I think it was indicating something around "1.09 GB of 1.09 GB", which seemed like a lot. I checked again, and the latter number had increased...something like "2.10 GB of 2.10 GB". I'm not running a VM, and there are no other obvious reasons the backup would be so big. I figured I'd let it go. I checked back again 30mins later and it was up to 69.1 GB of 69.1 GB.
So what's going on here? TM typically knows exactly how much it needs to backup before it starts copying files. Why would the latter number continue to go up, particularly when there's no obvious reason for the extra data to backup?
I tried opening the .inprogress pkg, but the folder size calcs weren't nearly fast enough for me to see where the backup was going. I tried the fseventer app, but it didn't seem very clear where files were being copied from; I could see where they were being placed, but since the backup is encrypted, backupd was writing to slices in the sparseimage, rather than an obvious hiearchy.
Is there a way to monitor the files that TM is currently backing up...say in real time? Is there a debug logging mode for the backupd? Or is there a log of the files that were copied in the last backup? I'd prefer to see this in real time, so that last option would be least useful.
I've poked through the great resources over at pondini.org, but nothing seems to really cover a backup that's in progress.
Thanks in advance for any tips or ideas.
p.s. I finally ended up stopping the really long backup; rebooted; restarted the backup manually, and this time it was a much more managable 500 MB. Additionally, I could see that during the final "cleaing up" stage, it removed the huge .inprogress file.

Choose Connect to Server from the Finder's Go menu, provide the first computer's IP address, log in, and set it up in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences.
(59008)

Using Time Machine with External Hard Drive

Hey everyone,
I had a few questions about Time Machine that I hope someone could answer for me.
I bought my first external hard drive in August, the 1 TB WD My Book for Mac and when I set it up, I configured it to Time Machine, and not the WD software.
I have an extensive music collection, which was my main reason for buying the external hard drive in the first place.
Anyway, when I plug in the hard drive and let Time Machine do the back up, I've noticed that it's backing up the same files every single time, and is eating up a lot of space on the hard drive.
Since I am mainly using this drive to store my music, I was wondering if there was an easier way to do things:
-Is there a way to not back up my documents, photos, applications, etc, every single time I plug in my HD?
-Is there an easy way to find my music on the drive? For example, some Time Machine back-ups have different files on them... i.e. my back up from August 10th has certain music files that do not exist on my backup from November 10th, as I deleted them from my computer after they were backed up to the external HD. I'd love to be able to see all of my music in one place, rather different versions of my music folder on different days.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

Hi,
1. Your Time Machine should should do the full backup of your computer just once and then only diffrences between backups - whenever you plug in the drive.
If that's not the case something is misconfigured.
2. You can exclude folders (documents, pictures etc) from being backed up. This is in in Time Machine Options (right bottom corner.
3. The drive is (most likely) indexed by Spotlight. However, provided those are backup files I would advise against browsing and searching them directly. This can damage the backup itself.
4. I cannot work out the exact scenario you are using - but the ideal (proper one) would be to have all your music library on your computer and only backup on your external drive. This you should not have to browse and use until you need to restore files.
5. If you keep your music library solely on the external drive - it should be not in the backup files.
Also such practice is risky as all drives crash sooner or later and you will lose your music.
Best would be to keep all music on the computer and backup onto your external drive.
Or
if the music library is too big for your computer you may keep it externally - but Isuggest you get one of the external hard dirves with RAID1 or higher. This will keep your music safer lest one of the drives packs up.
Let me know if you want me to elaborate on any of the aforementioned.
TZ

CAN I USE TIME MACHINE WITH A NETWORK HD CONNECTED TO MY ROUTER?

I have a 500gb hard drive connected to my wrt350n router usb port, can i use it with time machine? how can i do it?
do i need to format it for mac?
ones i format my hd would i be able to access from window?

You do not need to reformat the drive - it doesn't matter what format the drive is, as long as you can mount it via AFP, TM will create an image to write to.
See http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5653763#5653763 for more details.
Bear in mind that this is not supported, so if anything goes wrong - you're on your own as far as Apple is concerned... furthermore, there is always the possibility that a future update will break the existing functionality.

HT204057 is there a way to use time machine with a backup drive connected to my AirPort?

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