AirPort Extreme not seeing USB HD, time machine failure

I can't see my USB HD that I have connected to my base station. It works fine if I connect the HD directly to my computer. I have the drive sectioned into 2 partitions. One is formatted as MacOSX Extended (Journaled) for backing up my MacBook Pro via Time Machine, and the other is formatted at MS-DOS FAT32 so I can use it to transfer files between my Macs and my Windows machine. Everything was working fine for a while. Then my MacBook Pro couldn't find the HD connected to the base station. The only drive that would come up was the MS-DOS partition. I get a blinking amber light on my base station now with an alert that the disk needs repair and to connect it directly to the computer to repair it. If I disconnect the HD the light turn back to green. I re-partitioned the external hard drive and re-connected it to my base station. Now my Airport icon doesn't appear at all in the left sidebar. I re-formatted and re-connected the drive a couple different times. I tried formatting the drives differently, not partitioning the drive, etc. and nothing seems to work. I can't get the HD to show up again if it's connected to the base station, although if I connect it directly to my computer everything is fine. Therefore, I'm guessing it's not actually a problem with the HD, it's a problem with the base station reading the HD. I really want to set this up with 2 partitions so I can use part of it to back up my laptop via time machine. That was actually the whole point of purchasing the 500GB HD. The HD is a 500GB SimpleTech. Does anyone out there have any help or suggestions????? :-S

Oh cool. That's interesting. I'm going to reformat my entire external HD as MacOS Extended and use it all as extra storage then.
One more question. If I got a time capsule, then I actually wouldn't need my Airport Extreme base station right? So I could set up a time capsule in place of the Extreme and still attach my 500GB external to the Capsule as a network storage device. Correct? So it's another thing to buy, but I would gain a lot of extra storage space and I would have something I could rely on for backup.

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Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

Does the new airport extreme support backing up via time machine to an external hard drive pluged into the usb port

Yes, but you might want to note that the port on the AirPort Extreme is only USB 2.0, and that it runs at about half the speed of the USB 2.0 port on a computer, so things are going to be quite SLOW as far as backups are concerned, or anything else for that matter.

Snow Leopard OS will not "see" older Leopard Time Machine back-ups

I upgraded to OSX Snow Leopard from Leopard using a new hard drive (I wanted a bigger drive so it was actually a fresh install rather than an upgrade). OSX SL could see Time Machine back-ups from the Leopard system initially (before performing an OSX SL back-up). Now that the OSX TL back-up is completed, the previous Leopard back-ups cannot be seen by Time Machine. Any ideas on how/if I can get it to see them (as I could before I did a full back-up)?
I can see them on the drive, but just can't get to them via Time Machine.
Thanks!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Yes, Time Machine normally only shows you the backups for the Mac you're on.
You need the +*Browse . . .+* option. See #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Using airport extreme, an external HD and time machine for wireless backups

Hey All,
The whole reason I bought my airport extreme was to plug an external HD into and use it for backups. Then came time machine and Leopard, and now time capsule!!!
Does anyone know if you can use your airport extreme with an external HD attached and time machine in the same way as time capsule for wireless backups!??? The guy in the Apple store I spoke to says you should be able to if you mount the HD (a little cumbersome); I used to be able to mount the HD in Tiger, but cant in Leopard!!
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Fleery

Fleery wrote:
Does anyone know if you can use your airport extreme with an external HD attached and time machine in the same way as time capsule for wireless backups!???
No. Time Machine is supported in 3 configurations:
1. a directly attached HD
2. Time Capsule
3. A HD connected to a Mac with OS X 1.5 Server
I tried both 1 & 3 and they work perfectly.
The guy in the Apple store I spoke to says you should be able to if you mount the HD (a little cumbersome); I used to be able to mount the HD in Tiger, but cant in Leopard!!
Bogus. That is NOT a supported configuration. It will work for a while and you will eventually start to get errors when Time machine backs up, and they are not recoverable.

Ich habe eine externe festplatte an meinen airport extreme angeschlossen welche ich über time machine laufen lassen möchte, jedoch funktioniert dies nicht..? beim ersten update geht es meistens, jedoch springt es danach aus.?

hilfe?

Leider ist dies nicht eine unterstützte Konfiguration. Time Machine erfordert eine lokal angeschlossenen Volumen oder Time Capsule.
Ihre Konfiguration mit einem AirPort Extreme wird berichtet unzuverlässig zu sein:
Hinweis: ... Time Machine kann keine Backups auf eine an AirPort Extreme angeschlossene externe Festplatte, Time Capsule oder eine für Microsoft Windows formatierte Festplatte ...
Mac-Grundkurs: Time Machine

Migration assistant will not see my old Time Machine Disk

Just in the process of abandoning our trusty old G5 running Leopard for a new iMac with Lion.
I have everything backed up on Time Machine from the G5 and need to migrate iTunes as it is the sync center for a family of iPhones, iPods and iPads. So has all of the things bought from the iTunes store.
Migration Assistant refuses to see the Time Machine disk. It shows up on the desktop, so I know it is connected.
Any clues?
Everything I am reading in the threads does not give me confidence that the files on Time Machine will be able to be moved.
thanks
Terri

Diana Stephens wrote:
Migration Assistant thinks my "macintosh HD" system disk is the only disk available as the time machine backup.
Those are your backups. Migration Assistant shows the name of the disk and system that were backed-up, not the disk they're on. It will not show the disk you're running from.
See the tan box in Using Migration Assistant on Lion.

Can I connect a Drobo or synology RAID to airport extreme to use as my time machine backup?

I was wondering if there was any issue of using a raid box and connecting it via gigabit ethernet instead of USB? Would the airport extreme treat it the same way as with USB?

There is a significant difference depending on the way the HDD is connected to the AirPort. When connected via the AirPort's USB port, the AirPort will perform as the file server. When connected via Ethernet or wireless, the HDD will perform this function.

Airport Extreme Not Seeing Hard Drives

When I first installed Leopard, everything worked great, no issues with APEn connection or with my USB drive attached to it. Because transfer speeds are terribly slow to the hard drive (only 0.5-1 MBps when 802.11n should theoretically be getting me up to 16MBps - another issue entirely that I've yet to fix), I decided to unplug the network drive and simply plug it into my MBP to transfer things from it to a new hard drive I've got.
The problems only started the next day, when I went to plug the network drive back into the APEn, and it didn't show up. Figuring some settings just got a little mixed up, I went into Airport Utility, and saw that the APEn no longer even recognizes that the drive is plugged into it, it doesn't show up in the list of drives at all.
I figured it was a drive issue, so I plugged it back into my MBP, repaired the drive so it came out clean, and tried again, but still nothing showing on the APEn (even though the drive was spinning away as usual).
I then figured it must be a USB problem on the APEn, but when I plugged in my printer as a test, it worked flawlessly. My last idea was a problem with the USB cable itself, but the cable works fine using the drive with my laptop, so that's a no go too.
I keep the other drive at work during the week, but I want to bring it home tomorrow to test it out, see if it's the APEn or the drive that isn't playing nice. However, just to be sure, I tested 2 different USB flash drives, neither of which was reported as seen by the APEn.
Is anybody else seeing this problem, where the APEn simply isn't even recognizing hard drives plugged into it?

I admit... this one has me baffled... Like I have done numerous times, I restarted the base station with the hard drive plugged in, and all the sudden it showed up! I didn't have to touch the firmware as others recommended, it simply just started to work again.
The only thing that I can think of is that when I'd restarted in the past, it must have always been the choice of the APEn, when it had crashed for one reason or another, never me telling it to restart on my own with nothing otherwise going wrong (It even took my MBP down with it with kernel panics 4 times in one night... yet only when using torrents, though I'd never had any issues previously).
Even my speed issue was fixed, giving me up to 3 MBps by my calculations... for about 30 seconds... For some reason as soon as I hit a corrupted part of one file (transferring from APEn HD to MBP), it brought down the entire network, being unable to copy that single file. Now after restarting everything, I'm back to getting wimpy sub-1 MBps speeds... On that front, or on keeping this whole affair from starting over, has anybody got any recommendations for good "housekeeping"?

Time Machine with 2T drive connected to Airport Extreme base via USB

I got this to work - Time machine recognizing the drive in its "choose backup disk" menu.
I used it to store Apple Lossless audio on a big iTunes library, as well as for my Time Machine backups.
Whole system ran fine for 4 months until last week: while I was using iTunes with that remote library, adding audio to it... "Airport has detected a disk error"... My 2TB of disk turned into a very expensive brick.
The disk had to be recovered with Disk Warrior, detecting "19,753 directory entries with incorrect text encoding value" as part of a nice one-page-long list of other errors.
SINCE THEN: no matter what I do, the disk does not show up in Time Machine, even though I can access it via the network exactly as before.
Any ideas are welcome!

Apple does not support Time Machine backups to an AirPort disk (a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS)). (ref: Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks) Although folks, like yourself, have gotten this to work initially, the long-term stability of the TM backups is highly suspect and why Apple doesn't support it. Sorry!

Nas on airport extreme not recognized by time machine. same nas was previously used as time machine backup on different airport extreme. are there any configuration files that i can delete to fix this problem ?

nas on airport extreme not recognized by time machine. same nas was previously used as time machine backup on different airport extreme. are there any configuration files that i can delete to fix this problem ?

Time Machine has been working just fine, but in the last week or two it has given up the ghost. I reset the connections to the drive, and it will basically save a few bytes of data and then hang.
Although Apple originally announced, prior to the release of the first 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Stations (AEBSn), that it would support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks, they removed that option before they did finally release the base station for sale.
Since then, Apple has posted (as you have noted) that they DO NOT support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks. As far as I know, they have not changed from that position and those who do these backups find that they become corrupted over time. Sorry, but it sounds like you just confirmed that for yourself.
1) Has one of the recent updates either on the AE (firmware) or OSX disabled this function?
No. Again, this feature has never been supported by Apple for every generation of AEBSn released.
2) Are there any changes I can make to get this working again?
If your data backups are critical to you, then you will want to use a different solution for your Time Machine backup destination drive strategy. I would suggest that you connect your WD My Book directly to your Mac in the mean time.
Your other options would be to either use a Time Capsule (which interestingly does support TM backups to AirPort Disks) or a non-Apple solution like the Drobo FS or HP MediaSmart server.

Cannot see backups with Time Machine and Aiport Extreme

My MacBook Pro is backing up to to an Airport Extreme with a USB drive attached to it. The backing up seems to be working. ie time machine say's it backed up my machine.. eg at 1.57.pm today.
When I enter time machine to try and get a backup, it's not there... it has one finder window for "Now" (1st April) and then the next one in the list is 23rd of March. SO I cannot see any of today, yesterday or another other recent backups.
BTW, I had originally made a backup directly to the USB drive. I am not sure of the date but it could have been 23rd of March.
Any ideas?

Hey
I have the exact same problem. I have just switched from direct firewire-based Time Machine backup to an external drive, to said drive now connected to my Airport Extreme. I knew that it wouldn't accept the old TM backups, so I started up: Started the initial backup wirelessly, the unplugged it, and finished it via firewire. All worked fine, and the sparseimage was recognized and so on. After it was done, I attached the drive to the AE again, and it backup up as it was supposed to 3-4 times a day.
That was 3 days ago. But when I checked my TM yesterday, there was just the "today" window, and I couldn't browse anything. Today it's the same story. What gives?
Now, I opened the sparseimage on the TM drive to see if the incremental backups were there, and they were all there, but somehow TM doesn't read them. Can anybody who has a working TM wireless backup tell me if TM mounts the sparseimage to when launched and unmounts it afterwards?
TM worked great before when connected directly – never had a problem before and something tells me it's a problem with the sparseimage...Nevertheless, if it can't be fixed, I am back to friewire-based TM backup ;-<
Message was edited by: Hedemann

I would like to use time Machine to back up to a network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it

I currently have a mini server (OSX10.8.5, server 2.2.2) that I am using Time Machine to back up 4 external drives that are connected to the server via firewire 800. I would like to use Time Machine to back up to a windows network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it for use.
Can this be done
Thanks for any and all help

The supported targets for Time Machine backups are local (direct-connected) disks, and network targets include Time Capsule, a disk hanging off the current-generation AirPort (though not earlier AirPort devices), and OS X Server systems.
The Time Machine storage is based on the HFS+ file system, so I would not expect TM to work with SMB file services.
While there are hacks to allow Time Machine to access network drives, I would not consider those to be reliable. Skim the forum and the 'net for related details, and for previous discussions of setting this up and the related issues that can arise.
Remember to test the recovery with whatever you decide to use; whole point of backups is the ability to restore the data, after all.
If you want to learn more about Time Machine, Pondini is an excellent resource.

Can Time Capsule backup an Airport Extreme's attached USB hard drive?

Can Time Capsule backup an Airport Extreme's attached USB hard drive (without currently being attached to a MAC OSX LION system)?

No, sorry.. there is no way for the TC to see the files.. and even if you plug the hard disk into the TC there is no mechanism in the TC to drag the files to itself.. The TC is absolutely a dumb network attached drive.. everything you want to do must be done from a computer.

How do I configure my Airport Extreme to see the printer I have plugged into the USB port?

How do I configure my Airport Extreme to see the printer I have plugged into the USB port?

OK. The 6.0 version no longer has a printer configuration that I could find. You might try Printer Sharing in the Sharing preferences.
I would also check the printer's user manual for help with the setup, and that failing check the manufacturer's website and/or tech support.

I just purchased Time Capsule today. I ONLY want to use it as an external drive. I do not need it for Time Machine. I can see the TC in my finder, but when I click on a file or video to drag and drop, I get message that TC can't be modified. Help please

I just purchased Time Capsule today. I ONLY want to use it as an external drive. I do not need it for Time Machine. I need to free up room on my computer. As of now, I can't even load updates. I can see the TC in my finder, but when I click on a file or video to drag and drop, I get message that TC can't be modified. Help please!

I agree with Kappy.. passing files and especially via wireless is slow as slow.
Just need to be sure your TC is the new AC model??
And the OS on the computer is Lion?
Have you completed the setup of the TC via the utility? You do still need to get internet via the TC so it has to be plugged into the main router..
Give us the full picture of the network.
Then we can help you get into it.. whether you should put your files on it is another question.

AirPort Extreme not seeing USB HD, time machine failure

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