Can an external Mac/Time Machine hard drive be connected with Airpot thru USB for wireless backup

I purchased a seagate 3 tb hard drive and planned on connecting it to my airport via usb. I setup the drive and did the full time machine back up of my imac. I then powered down the airport and the hard drive. I then plugged in the drive and airport and then powered them up. The airport lite up green then went yellow and stopped broadcasting.
Can these two work together like Time Capsule does?

I was sort of in the same boat. I ended up getting a 4th generation TC about six months ago. I only got the 2 TB model as I have a number of those WD My Passports laying around. I decided to use the TC's internal HDD as a NAS and use a powered USB hub with two My Passports attached to them for Time Machine backups. I use the 500 GB for my Mac mini backups and the 750 GB for my two other Mac laptops.
I could have just as easily switched to using the intenal HDD for Time Machine and the My Passports for the NAS. However, I wanted better to use the better transfer rates of the internal drive for my NAS.

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Can I clone my Time Machine hard drive, to another HD, and store Off Site?

Good day All, I love my new Macbook, but am trying to come up with a foolproof method of backing up all my data, documents, and business.
I have become very nervous about BACKUPS, and want to have an OFF-SITE week old backup done on a external Hard Drive?
I presently have a 200 gig Time Machine backup/archive, and have a daily clone with Super Duper & Carbon Copy Clone. However these hard drives are at home, so should the building burn down, or should we get broken into, there goes my business and digital life.
My thought is to buy an external hard drive and clone my current Time Machine hard drive to the external on a weekly basis, and store it off-site or at a friends house.
Would I be able to do a clone of my TM HD archive, and have it still useable / bootable / recoverable should a tragedy happen?
I would like to upload it all up to Mozy, or BackBlaze, or similar offering, but 200 gig is way too big.
Is anybody cloning a Time Machine hard drive and able to restore from it?
Thanks for reading my post, and am lookin forward to all of your comments, IAN...

Hi Ian,
Sorry I missed the discussion last night. I'll tell you how I'm accomplishing the backup task and you can let me know if this is what you're trying to do.
I now have 2 external HDs. A 1TB Seagate and a 250 GB LaCie. The LaCie used to be my TM backup drive, but it was the same size as my internal iMac drive. I knew I'd eventually need a bigger drive so I bought the 1TB Seagate yesterday and cloned the LaCie drive onto it using SuperDuper. The only thing on the LaCie drive was TM backups. Now the TM backup are on the Seagate. I unmounted the old TM drive and changed the name of the new drive to "Time Machine". I activated TM and it picked right up where it left off. I did test it by restoring an old file. I also changed a current file and made sure TM was still operating as advertised. Everything worked as expected.
Now I simply used the 250 GB drive to clone my system HD using CCC. It is a bootable backup and can be used to run the system should my internal drive become unusable. I will update this drive once a month with any changes to the system drive using CCC and keep it off-site in a safe deposit box in the meantime. Using this methodology, I don't see why you'd want to swap the drives weekly/monthly. Just let TM run on the large drive and keep the other drive as current as you like. I've decided monthly is good for me. I'm mostly worried about photos, but I keep them on the camera longer than a month, so there's my cover for the month.
Nano

Can I use my time machine hard drive to transfer files to a pc?

Hello everyone.
I recently broke my macbook, and had to replace it with a pc laptop. I have my data saved on a time machine enabled external hard drive.
How can I use that hard drive to put my files (music/word documents) to the pc?
Any information would be greatly appreciated.

YoHenYo wrote:
Hello everyone.
I recently broke my macbook, and had to replace it with a pc laptop. I have my data saved on a time machine enabled external hard drive.
How can I use that hard drive to put my files (music/word documents) to the pc?
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Sadly, in your case, the TM backup is practically useless. TM provides a backup primarily for the machine to which it is connected, and then, only through the TM interface engine, never directly.
The files are not stored in a linear manner as would be in a regular backup - they are linked to each other and each "file" only represents a "delta" or incremental backup unit. The TM engine knows how to reconnect all the links to create the proper file.
What you need to do is get another Macbook similar to yours, and see if you can connect to the TM backup with TM. If you can, then you can restore the files and them copy them onto a FAT32 formatted external HD.
If you network the borrowed Mac with the PC, you can transfer the files over the network, but in any case, you have to use the TM engine to do so.
The only files on the TM backup that are most likely "normal" would be the original files created during the first backup.

Can I get a time machine hard drive to restore onto Windows XP?

Yeah, I just bought an iMac and I figured why not sell my Mac Mini? So I have time machine on and I back up all my files to my external hard drive of course. Now, sense I am selling my Mac Mini, I need to use Windows XP on my old PC for a month cause I custom ordered an iMac and that takes 6 weeks. Will my external hard drive with time machine back ups work with Windows XP so I can restore all of my files from my hard drive to Windows XP? and than also, will I be able to put my files back onto the hard drive and than load them all up to my new iMac?

The external hard drive you have been using for Time Machine will most likely not be recognized by Windows XP. The external hard drive is formated as HPFS. You may be able to read files from it (not sure) but you won't be able to write anything new.
When you get your new iMac, however, you can plug in that external hard drive and tell Leopard to load your account, documents, bookmarks, contacts, applications, etc. It will make your new iMac look like and behave like your old mac mini. It's pretty cool.
I hope this helps,
Julian

Can I unplug my time machine hard drive from my airport extreme and plug it direcly on my MacBook pro without having to do a new back up?

I want to bring my back up hard drive on a trip, but now it's attahced to my Airport Extreame.
If I unplug it and plug it directly on my MacBook Pro, it'll keep updating or I'll lose all my back ups and have to restart again?

Leo666 wrote:
I want to bring my back up hard drive on a trip, but now it's attahced to my Airport Extreame.
If I unplug it and plug it directly on my MacBook Pro, it'll keep updating or I'll lose all my back ups and have to restart again?
Yes, but you'll probably have to manually "mount" the sparse bundle containing your backups. See the blue box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #17 for details.
Also, I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive. Help

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

Time Machine only shows the current copy of the file I am trying to restore. There is none of the time machine backup histories shown. I am running OSX 10.7.5. I see the backup files on my external Time Machine hard drive in the Backups.backupdb folder.
Time Machine does show the history of my Macintosh HD, but when I try to navigate to the folder I wish to restore the backup history disappears. I've been searching for answers and I have not found one that works for me.

If I add another profile, will that person's content automatically be saved to my Time Machine hard drive or do I need to take further action to ensure that this is saved?

If I add another profile, will that person's content automatically be saved to my Time Machine hard drive or do I need to take further action to ensure that this content is saved? Thanks for any and all help with this.
Dave N.
Holliston, MA

Time Machine creates a back up of the entire Hard Drive, with the exception of Boot Camp or exceptions you have created. So in other words after you create the profile run Time Machine, and a backup of the other user profile will be added to your Time Machine backups.

Time Machine, Hard Drive, AirPort Extreme, and possible damage?

I plugged in an external HD to my AirPort Extreme (gigabit) base station today and started a Time Machine backup to it. After about 8 hours, I had transferred only 12 gigs of my 46 and ended up stopping it. I realize only the initial backup should take forever, but I am afraid that running the MacBook Pro hard drive constantly for hours could damage it. Are the portable hard drives capable of running for hours on end? What's the risk of damaging it?
I didn't notice any major heat issues with the Penryn MacBook Pro while doing this, but I didn't want the hard drive to break either. Plus, the wireless backup just takes way too long. I can't run an N only network because I have older AirPort expresses (WDS), older G clients in the house, and some iPhones that need to get online. I understand that 802.11g is slower than N, but it's way too slow for wireless backups.

Connecting a USB HDD to an Extreme can be used for Time Machine backups, but it is not officially supported by Apple. You will have to start a new TM backup if you are using the Extreme as TM backups to a NAS (vs. local disks) will backup as a sparsebundle (vs. your current folder format). The same goes for backup to a Time Capsule.

Can Time Capsule hard drive be accessed with Disk Utility? I'm having issues...

How does one mount , inspect , verify , and possibly repair a Time Capsule hard drive with Disk Utility ?
My 500Gb 1st gen Time Capsule ( used wireless with Airport) has quit backing up new data . ( iMac Core2Duo, Snow Leopard) . TC says it needs 238 Gb of available space, but only has 35 Gb available. So it quit doing new incremental backup altogether. It's almost like it wants to start over.
Airport connection seems good. Time Capsule seems healthy enough ( for being 3.5 years old) . I really dont want to lose the data on the existing backup.
What is the nature of this glitch ?

I'm sorry , LaP , but " Time Capsule become too full " is not the cause of my problem .
In fact, I just got done pruning the iMac system hard drive a little to free up some 10 Gb of new space , yet created only maybe 1-2 Gb of new data to archive. The TC had been doing regular daily backups without issue and Time Machine was showing me stuff from about ten days back.
The TC informed me it needed 235 Gb of space but only had 34 Gb available. That 235 Gb needed is totally in error. My problem more resembles corrupt hard disk directories . Maybe Permissions ? which is why I asked about using Disk Utility.
Yes, I do need a newer larger TC, but pigs don't fly and money does not grow on trees to make tha happen. The backup I have now is fine and should work if I need to restore anything in the forseeable. New data will not be archived, alas.

How can I access the time capsule hard drive via ethernet?

I recently bought a new laptop, as my old one was sadly stolen. I'm trying to connect to my backed up time capsule hard drive via ethernet to retrieve my files, but it doesn't seem to work. Oddly enough I have no issues over wifi. When I switch from wifi to ethernet, it gives me an error message stating that the disk was not found in the network. I have a MacBook Air with an ethernet adapter if that makes any difference. I'm also running the latest OS X and firmware. Wifi is simply too slow for this restoration process, so any suggestions?
Could I possibly connect via USB? What kind of cable would that require? Is the ethernet issue a problem with my settings?
Help greatly appreciated

manzalawy7 wrote:
I'm trying to connect to my backed up time capsule hard drive via ethernet to retrieve my files, but it doesn't seem to work.
In the Network panel of System Preferences do you have an Ethernet connection item on the left? If not, authenticate if necessary by clicking on the lock, then click the plus sign at the bottom of that column and add an Ethernet item.
When I switch from wifi to ethernet, it gives me an error message stating that the disk was not found in the network.
How are you doing that switching? When you switch to Ethernet do you have connectivity to the Internet? If not, do you see a tiny green light on the Time Capsule next to the Ethernet socket you're using?
Could I possibly connect via USB?
No.

Can i upgrade the time capsule hard drive to 4 TB?

OK, so the Hard Drive that came with the Time Capsule is apparently failing. I never really worked right, but now it is definitely close to its impending doom. I have a 4th generation Time Capsule and wanted to know if it is possible to install a 4TB and what brand will work best without a lot of hoops to jump through.

Yes a 4TB will work.. You want a Green drive ie a low consumption one.. the speed of the drive is irrelevant as they are processor bound so any cheap green from any company should work.
Do a google search if you want a specific one. I have not used a 4TB but I have used lots of different 3TB and all work fine.. some may have spin down issues and it is hard to predict. ie one firmware revision might work and another not on the same brand.
Since Apple are not yet using 4TB drives.. there is no preferred one.
Some people are installing 4TB in their new Gen5.
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/AirPort_Time_Capsule_A1470

After installing mountain lion, can i back up all my files from external time machine hard drive if i did the back up under Lion?

Hi. Want to find out before installing new Mountain Lion if I will be able to restore all my files (music, documents....) from my external hird drive if the back up was done under Lion. Or it is better to simply copy everything, altough it would be good to keep iTunes, contacts etc as well as they are at the moment. Could someone please tell me how to do it so I can go on with it and will not have to struggle after the installation? Many thanks.

You can do this. If you did an OS X Mountain Lion clean install, it will ask you to restore a backup, so connect a Time Machine disk and restore that

Old Time Machine Hard Drive - Can't access files?

Hi
I have just put an external hard drive I have not used for a approx a year into a spare bay in my Mac Pro. It has HD video on it, but was surprised when I rebooted my machine to see it is a Time Machine drive (green and white desktop TM hard drive icon). There is just under 400GB free space of the total 1TB drive, but can only access approx 260GB of that free space.
So, I am wondering if the remainder of the drive - approx 140GB is an old Time Machine backup from either Lion or Snow Leopard.
Time Machine can not see the files nor can I access them via Finder. I only have Mountain Lion on my machine at present, but could partition my Boot SSD drive to add Lion or Snow Leopard on to it.
Is there any reason why I can't access these TM files if they do existing, or could there be other reasons why this is happening.
Thanks in advance.
Matt

Sorry, I think it's the way I replied to your last question.
TM remains switched off from doing last clean install and have not used it this time. I now use an SSD for my boot drive and all my important files I use as and when needed are stored on other hard drives.
TM at the moment is swtiched off, but with the paddlock open it is asking me to Select Backup Disk - is this what you meant in your last post? Just wanted to clarify - thanks

HT201250 I just had a new hard drive installed in my iMac. Migration manager cannot see my external Time Machine hard drive to restore the files and applications. The drive is operational in Finder

I cannot seem to migrate the full time machine backup from an external hard drive back to the new hard drive. Finder sees the drive and files. When I use Migration managers, it only sees the computer hard drive after I select the time machine option to restore the files.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
With what OS X version did you make the backup? If it was the same as the version you are using now, you don't have to use Migration Assistant to restore the backup. Instead, there's a safer and better method, but you will lose all the changes you have made since the last time you made the backup.
Just hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting to start into OS X Recovery. Then, select the option to restore a Time Machine backup, and follow its steps. Also, you will be able to select the backup you want to restore

Backup an external hard drive to a time machine hard drive

I know that in snow leopard a second hard drive that is connected to the computer was automatically excluded from the time machine backup. In order to included it you just removed it from the list.
How do you get your second hard drive to be backed up in time machine on lion?

As Link pointed out in that thread, there's a lot excluded:
Dec 26 12:29:11 Branch-iMac com.apple.backupd[3876]: Backup content size: 340.7 GB excluded items size: 256.3 GB for volume Media Server
Thus there should be about 80 GB that's included.
And part of it WAS backed-up:
Dec 26 15:43:56 Branch-iMac com.apple.backupd[3876]: Copied 3986 files (13.6 GB) from volume Media Server.
He's also shown some things that aren't being backed-up, and suggested a couple of things to do, but you haven't responded to his last post.

Can an external Mac/Time Machine hard drive be connected with Airpot thru USB for wireless backup

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