Can Drobo off Airport Extreme be used as time Machine disk?

I have my Drobo hung off my Airport extreme so both my powerbook and iMac can access files off it. I would like to choose it as my backup disc for Time Machine but it is not seeing it when I try and point it at it.

backups to NAS devices are not officially supported. the only exception is Time Capsule and it also works with drives directly attached (via USB) to AEBS. anything else is unsupported. you can try the following hack but you do it at your own risk and with no guarantees of success or assurance that this ability will not be broken by some future update from apple
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137&query=time%2Bmach ine%2BNAS

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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.

Airport Extreme USB Hard Drive & Time Machine?

For my iMac I have a FW800 external drive set to perform Time Machine backups.
My question though, is for my Macbook Pro. If I get a USB drive, can it be set and operate as a Time Machine backup through the Airport Extreme? I thought this was a possibility, but have not seen anything addressing this.
Thank you!

As Tesserax says, backing-up to a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme is not reliable.
You do have a wireless option, though: back up via your network to a "shared" drive connected to the iMac. If it's large enough, you can use the same one the iMac is backing-up to. See #22 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum) for details.

Can't update, HD is being used by Time Machine

I get the message that the Hard Drive can't be used because it's being used by Time Machine. Time Machine is turned off. Following advice on another thread I deleted a TM pref file, restarted, and selected none (which wasn't there previously). I have repaired permissions as well. Any ideas? Thanks.

progmanjum wrote:
I have a folder by that name. There is another folder within that and that is empty. Delete and restart?
yes.

Can't change Airport Extreme settings using WPA2 Enterprise

I have a 4th Gen Airport Extreme Base Station that is running 7.6.1 firmware and I've updated the Airport Utility to 6.0 and OS X Server to 10.7.3
I use WPA2 Enterprise using the Radius Server set up from the Server admin tools in Lion Server. I am using my CA signed certificate for the server as my server-side cert. I can connect fine to the wireless network with all my idevices and my MacBook Pro, but whenever I use Airport Utility to amend settings of the Base Station e.g. Back to my Mac, I cannot make updates.
Whenever I click 'Update' I get the following error - 'Invalid value' The value for "Password" is invalid. When I click Review Settings, it takes me to the Shared Secret settings for the connection, but as far as I'm concerned this never needs to be known or changed.
Any ideas?

I have the same problem.. Airport utility 6.0 on 4th gen airport extreme and server 10.7.4.
DNS, Radius and Open Directory.
Any update on Airport Util results in "'Invalid value' The value for "Password" is invalid"
Only work around I've found like above is to set network mode to "off" under wireless tab. Update Airport Utility ... then remove/add my base station in Server admin under 'radius' 'base stations' ..
Really very annoying because what I actually want to change is the WPA/WPA2 to WPA2 ONLY.
By default when the base station is added in 'server admin' it sets it as WPA/WPA2 and there is no option to change or control this in 'server admin'... so basically I can not change this option.
I thought maybe that 'invalid' characters (for the airport) where being used by server admin when it generates the 'shared secret' .. so have tried changing to a very simple shared secret in 'airport utility' ... but I still get the same error - "The value for "Password" is invalid"
I will try downgrading to 5.6 but this really is very annoying especially as its a fault that has been allowed to rollover into 10.7.4 !!!!
Sort it out Apple!

AirPort Extreme & USB Hard Drive Time Machine Backups

Hi everyone. I'm a brand spanking new MacBook Pro owner and am looking at ways to backup my machine and to save my films, photos and files on a wireless network that is available to everyone in my home.
I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most computer savvy person but I'm okay with the basics. I've read through a lot of forum sites and the community pages on here and most seem to recommend Synology products. They do seem very good but are a good price too once you've bought the hard drives to go with it. I already own an external hard drive so I thought that maybe the AirPort Extreme would be the ideal choice as I know that it can be connected and files can be saved wirelessly. I did read tonight however that you cant backup your macbook using time capsule which is a little bit annoying.
I have two questions really, firstly is it the case that time machine won't backup to an external hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and secondly, how important is it to back up through time machine? I'm what you could describe as a low level user and will only be using it for simple tasks such as watching/saving films, storing and editing photographs, surfing the web and saving the odd pages and numbers document.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Simon

I have two questions really, firstly is it the case that time machine won't backup to an external hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and secondly, how important is it to back up through time machine?
The very latest 802.11ac version of the AirPort Extreme DOES support Time Machine backups to attached external USB HDDs. All other 802.11n models are not supported by Apple for these types of backups. A number of folks have been successful doing so, but most typically post here about data corruption issues.
Time Machine is not the only backup strategy, but it is very convienent. I would recommend that your overall backup strategy includes at least two types of backups: 1) Incremental ... like the ones Time Machine supports, and 2) Disk cloning. The latter is very effective for quickly getting you back up and running if your Mac suffers an internal HDD loss.

I cannot get the external hard drive on Airport to be used for Time Machine

I have an Airport Extreme (latest edition I believe) with all updates. I hooked up a powered hard drive to it via usb. When I go into the Airport Utility, I can see the disk (kind of grayed out) under disks. It even says the right size of space remaining. But I can't see how to choose it or do anything with it. I want to be able to do Time Machine backups with it. Any help would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, what you are trying to do is not supported by Apple, so you'll have to keep an open mind about all of this if you want to try it anyway.
It does seem to work for some users, it works for some other users some of the time, and some users have no success at all with this. I've tried this maybe 10-12 times over the past few years, and I remain in the "no success" category.
First, you need to make sure that the drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Second, you probably will need to use a powered USB hub even though your drive is powered
Then you have to set up Time Machine as follows:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Turn "ON" Time Machine
Click Select Disk
If your disk appears (it may not....remember this is not supported) click on it to highlight it
Click Use for Backup
if the backup is successful, please keep in mind that most problems tend to surface a few weeks to even a few months after you start the backups. They become corrupted and you usually have to erase the drive and start over again.
So, you would probably want to set up a secondary back up plan as well to keep your important data safe.

Terabyte USB drive connected to airport extreme not found by time machine

I attached a USB self powered hub to my airport extreme and attached to it my printer and 1 terabyte external drive.
The printer works fine.
Time machine cant find the 1 terabyte hard drive.
Please help. it has worked fine when I have directly connected it to my mac book.
Need step by step directions. Thanks in advance.

1. Open AirPort Utility (Applications-->Utilities)
2. Select your base station from the list on the left.
3. Click Manual Setup
4. Click the blue icon labeled "Disks" at the top of the utility screen.
5. Make sure your disk shows up, click "File Sharing".
6. Check "Enable File Sharing". Choose settings as desired. Restart base station.
Once the base station has restarted, from your Mac's Finder window:
1. Select "Go" --> "Network"
2. Your base station should show up under a "Shared" option.
3. Double click it and your hard drive should show up now and be recognized by your mac.
4. Open up Time Machine and "Choose Backup Disk". The wireless drive should now show up for you.
This is how I got it to work for me. Good luck!

Can I restore a complete system to a bare external drive using my Time Machine disk?

My iMac hard drive appears to have gone "belly up"... no system disk found on boot up. I have a current Time Machine external drive for this iMac. Can I use the TM Disk to clone my old system onto a new EXTERNAL Disk. (I have access to several other Apple computers that would allow me to boot an external disk... IF I can re-create the one that died.)
Thanks much for your thoughts and ideas.

You can use the TM backup to Restore it to another External drive.I wouldn't call it Cloning as that is something different than doing a Restore from TM backup. You'll ned to connect both drives to the system and boot the system from the original reinstall DVD that came with it. then there should be an option to restore your system from a TM backup and you would point it to the other external drive. You may want to use Disk utility first to partition and format that othr external Mac Extended (Journaled) before you try doing the restore.

I can't make a back up using Apple Time Machine

Hey,
I need to make a back up of my hard drive and I want to do that with Time Machine.
My mom has this 320GB hard disk and I made a partition on it (80GB) for my back up.
I started copying the files to my drive but it stopt at about 25GB (of 40GB) with this error:
I tried reformating repairing and anything else you could think of.
Hopefully someone knows how to fix this.
Greetings,
Roemer Bakker

You might want to start here:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
I don't use Time Machine, but what I've gathered from Pondini (our resident Time Machine 'guru') is that you should have a separate hard drive for it rather than a partition. Also, the space allowed for Time Machine is supposed to be at least two times of the size of your hard drive - that is because it will keep backing up copies of new content until it is full.
If that one partition on that hard drive is the only one you have, you might want to consider creating a bootable clone instead using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper - it'll be an exact copy (clone) of your hard drive and it will be bootable. You do have to format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and use the GUID partition scheme or it won't be bootable.

How can I clean virus infected files on my Time Machine disk?

I am running McAfee VirusScan and it locates and cleans virus infected files just fine on my computer, but when it finds infected files on my Time Machine backup drive it says "Repair Failed". Is there a way to clean infected files on my Time Machine backup drive?
Related question: Is this because the actual files are saved in a central hidden location and the files I see when I open the backup disk with finder are actually just alias links?

Schmactor,
First, it is unlikely that your software is actually finding a virus of any kind. Many supposed reports of a virus will, in fact, be perfectly legitimate (and harmless) files. While it is possible that you'll receive a virus, it is still unlikely. Most ISPs run anti-virus software on their email servers; if a virus is sent to you in an email, it is usually removed before you download it.
Even if you have downloaded an email, it is even less likely that you're going to send it to a Windows-using friend. Since any Windows virus is going to do absolutely nothing on your Mac, you most likely will just delete it. Are you in the habit of forwarding random emails that have unidentifiable attachments to your friends?
Keep in mind that it is always in the best interest of the developers of anti-virus software titles that the software constantly "finds" things, even when nothing exists. If you were to purchase anti-virus software, only to find that it does absolutely nothing for months at a time, you will not pay for further updates. I have been using a Mac for many, many years, and I have never run any kind of anti-virus software. I have also never sent a virus to someone else.
Scott

Hooking up external hd to airport express to use with Time Machine

Hello, I would like to hook up my external HD to my airport Express and wirelessly still be able to use it for backing up and additional storage. Is this possible?? It will be hooked up via USB. It currently is sitting behind my iMac (2009) and hooked up to it via USB. I don't like how it is noisy and how it pauses my tasks sometimes while the external starts up every half hour or everytime I open certain applications.

it's possible (even though not officially supported by apple) but you'll have to restart your TM backups from scratch. remote backups are stored inside sparse bundles while directly attached ones are stored directly in a folder on the drive.
so you might want to erase your current TM backups first to free up space on the drive. but don't delete them from finder. erase the drive from disk utility.

Can external disk added to time capsule be used with time machine?

I have a 2011 Apple Time Capsule with 2 TB of storage, which I use for Time Machine backups. I would like to add storage, or alternately just use a higher capacity hard drive for Time Machine backups. Can I attach a 3 TB external backup drive to the Time Capsule's USB port, for example, and use that for my backups instead of the internal hard drive? Apple says you can't do this with the Airport Extreme, but doesn't say whether it will work with the Time Capsule.

"OS X Time Machine supports compatible unencrypted USB disks connected to AirPort Time Capsule (802.11n and 802.11ac), and AirPort Extreme (802.11ac).": Meaning All Time Capsule Support it.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
AirPort base stations: About USB disks - Apple Support
Time Machine backups are supported via USB hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme"ac" version.
Time Machine backups were not supported via USB hard drive connected to earlier versions of the AirPort Extreme.
Some users who tried this on earlier version AirPort Extremes seemed to have some success with Time Machine backups....some had moderate success and some had no success with this.

Migration Assistant fails to recognize a Time Machine disk (itself migrated using Disk Utility)

So I outgrow my Time Machine disk. I listen to the advice (repeated in multiple places) that one can simply use Disk Utility's Restore tab, select the old time machine disk as source and the new one as destination, and click restore to copy block-by-block, then rename the disk.
This works very well. I have indeed been able to use Time Machine on the new disk without losing any of the history.
But now I am in trouble. I am also outgrowing my MacBook disk. I put a larger disk in and install Snow Leopard from scratch. Now Migration Assistant does not recognize the new Time Machine disk (perpetually spinning wheel). Renaming the disk to the old name does not help. M.A. does recognize the old Time Machine disk, but that means manually managing the changes (and giving up on the larger TM disk). I reinstall Snow Leopard and do not miss that time the option to restore from Time Machine, but it still does not see the new Time Machine disk.
How does one convince Migration Assistant to use a Time Machine disk that duly has Backups.backupdb as a root folder and where "ignore ownership on this volume" is not set?

Thanks, Pondini, but the Time Machine disk passes the Disk Utility repairs and only the spinning wheel was visible under both the Setup Assistant and the Migration Assistant.
I now have some good news, and some bad.
First the good news: Lion's Migration Assistant offers the option to copy user (and other) files from the previous OSX disk, not just the Time Machine disk. If this option was already in Snow Leopard, then I missed it.
Now the bad news..
I spent several hours reading (Pondini's and others') suggestions to ensure that my Time Machine is as seamless as possible, namely, for the next backup to be incremental. No luck: all user data are copied. Until the interface of Time Machine stops trying so hard to shield us naive users from making decisions on our own, one idea is to keep the iPod and pictures/video collection backed-up by the straight-forward rsync. Then whether Time Machine is really incremental will not matter, and in any case a spare copy of the documents you wrote by hand is nice in case the some blocks of the disk fail.
But I may have been the one who messed it. In Preferrences \ Time Machine \ Options... I excluded all users except the user "Admin" who restored the user accounts. The idea was to test first whether the mildest user will get a full backup. It may be that Time Machine does not look in the history to see if a given file or set of files already have some copy in the past. If a file does not exist in the very last backup, it is saved to the Time Machine disk.
If you're reading this and are keen on an incremental backup, try this: restore your user accounts using a user Admin, but do not start to backup until after the accounts are restored. Will the backup afterwards be incremental?

Can I connect a 4 TB USB drive to the airport extreme and use it as a network drive for Time Machine

Can I connect a 4 TB USB drive to the airport extreme and use it as a network drive for Time Machine

Yes, if the drive is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
The USB port on the Time Capsule is under powered, so you may need use a powered USB hub with the 4 TB drive...even if it has its own power supply.

Can Drobo off Airport Extreme be used as time Machine disk?

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