How do I set up Time Machine to backup to an external hard drive on my wireless router?

I have just set up an external hard drive to my wireless router and am now wanting to set up Time Machine to back up to the hard drive. I can see the hard drive in Finder and can even send files to it manually. I just don't see in setting up Time Machine any option to backup to that hard drive. Is it even possible?

Well, I figured out a way around it that works for me but may not be suitable for everyone. Instead of connecting the external hard drive to the router I tried connecting it directly to my computer. I then right-clicked the hard drive's folder on my desktop, clicked "Get Info" and checked the box that says "Shared Folder". I then went to the bottom of that window and under "Sharing & Permissions" and next to "Everyone" checked that they could all "Read and Write".
The hard drive is now shared over my network, so when I got on one of my other Mac's that I was wanting to set up Time Machine with, the Time Machine Application had no problem finding the hard drive and backing up to it.
I have all computer's setup for file sharing too, so that may need to be checked as well.
This was a simple enough fix but the reason I said that it may not be suitable for everyone is that the other computer's backing up to this hard drive via Time Machine is now reliant on my computer being turned on. I'm okay with that though.

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How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme

How do I use time machine to backup to an external hard drive plugged into my airport extreme? I used to be able to but now time machine will not recognize my hard drive to select as a backup when plugged into my airport extreme. I'm not sure what happened or changed. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

First thing to do is go to the Pondini tips page, then follow the link to his full TM site for all the details.

Time Machine incomplete backup on new External Hard Drive

I have a LaCie 2TB firewire external hard drive I bought 2 years ago. I made 3 partitions, one called "Time Machine" for TM backups of my iMac HD, one called "Video" for video files, and one called "HD2" that I used to install new programs and store edited photos and img files. I ran TM onto this HD for the last 2 yrs with no problems. I recently decided that I needed to have a backup of my iMac HD --- AND the 2 partitions (Video and HD2) on my LaCie. So I bought a Seagate 2TB external USB HD that I planned to use ONLY for Time Machine.
So I hooked it up and formatted it (no partitions), then went to TM options and selected the new Seagate Hard Drive to backup to, and in the options I excluded the Seagate (by default) and the Time Machine partition on my LaCie. Nothing else was excluded. In other words, I wanted to backup my entire iMac HD, and my Lacie Video and HD2 partitions.
My internal iMac HD has 116 GB used, my Lacie Video partition has 355 GB used, and my Lacie HD2 partition has 175 GB used. So I was expecting the Seagate to backup 646 GB.
When my Time Machine backup started at 1 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed "Backing up 1 GB of 646 GB." When I woke up at 8 AM, I was happy to see that the status box showed
"Backing up 536 GB of 646 GB."
But it stayed stuck on 536 GB until 12 Noon, then started slowly working again. By 7 PM, the status showed "Backing up 623 GB of 646 GB." Then at 8 PM, the status box disappeared and it seemed like everything was backed up. But my Seagate HD shows only 629 GB of used space. So I decided to check the backup in Finder to see what went wrong.
In the Seagate backups folder, I have three folders - one named "Macintosh HD" which shows 112 GB on disk, one named "Video" with 341 GB on disk, and one named "HD2" with 175 GB on disk.
So it appears that my iMac HD was only backed up 112 GB out of 116GB, my Video partition was only backed up 341 GB out of 355 GB, but my HD2 partition backed up the entire 175 GB out of 175 GB.
So my question is - is this normal, or is my backup really missing 4 GB of files from my iMac hard drive and 14 GB of files from my video partition? I started to look at them file by file to see if they matched, but there are so many files, so I thought I would ask in case any of you might have heard of this before. If your answer is that my backups are corrupt or incomplete, should I reformat the Seagate and start over?
Also, is it safe for me to manually delete all the files in my time Machine partition on my LaCie hard drive, since I won't be using that anymore for Time Machine backups? Or is there a process I must follow to delete those older backups?
Thanks for reading this far and for any advice you can shoot my way.

Thank you for your well thought out response. It was really helpful by showing me where to look at things more closely.
Time Machine automatically excludes some things that aren't necessary for a restore, such as system work files, most caches and logs, and trash.
This is good to know. Although I didn't have anything in the trash, I have no idea how much is in the various caches and logs. I'd be surprised if they totaled 4GB, though. I'm still worried about this backup, as explained below after doing a Console log check.
If any files were open, they may not have been backed-up (a partial file wouldn't be of much use). I don't know of any special exclusions for video files or apps, but there may be some. You might want to try the Terminal command in the yellow box of #11.
I didn't have anything else running except TM, so no files were open. I checked the exclusions in the yellow box #11, the Terminal Command, and /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.pl ist, but nothing seemed to point to the video files I have saved. So I'm still at a loss with this part of the backup.
You might want to look at the log of that backup
I looked at the log - thank you for the link on how to see it - but the entries show that the size of the backup was even less than I thought - It seems I am actually missing 0.2 GB from the HD2 partition, 6 GB from the iMac HD, and 14.4 GB from the Video partition. And since it shows the exclusion amounts, I'm really at a loss for the iMac HD now. Here's what the Console listed for this backup:
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 174.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume HD2
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 355.7 GB excluded items size: 0 bytes for volume Video
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Backup content size: 116.3 GB excluded items size: 30.5 MB for volume Macintosh HD
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 776.02 GB requested (including padding), 1.82 TB available
Aug 29 00:55:54 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Waiting for index to be ready (909 > 0)
Aug 29 02:37:30 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 3275 files (174.5 GB) from volume HD2.
Aug 29 05:49:40 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 5412 files (515.9 GB) from volume Video.
Aug 29 19:18:46 paul-imac-5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[567]: Copied 146976 files (626.2 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Is it possible to see how many files are in each drive that I was backing up? If I could match the file count, it might give me a better idea. I used Finder, but it only gives me the GB Capacity, Used and Free. For example, if I could see if the LaCie Video partition has exactly 5412 files (or 2137, if the file count above is a running total), I will believe that all the files backed up but may have been truncated. If the partition shows more than 5412 files, then I'll know that not all files were backed up. So at least I can start looking manually.
It will be much faster and easier to erase the partition with Disk Utility.
Thank you for this advice. This should save lots of time. I won't erase my other partitions when I do this, right? Also, will it leave a blank partition there so I regain my space?
I'm really bummed out by this backup. I haven't used my iMac for anything except Safari since this happened, because I do not want to start working again until I know that I have a safe backup, and I don't want to make any new files until I can resolve this. I thought of just reformatting the Seagate and starting over, but I have a feeling it may do the same thing. So at this point, I don't know if the Seagate is faulty, if the TM is not working properly, if I am making a dumb user error, or if this is perfectly normal. The worst thing that could happen is that my iMac HD or Lacie HD fails and I try to restore from my Seagate TM backup, only to find out that my TM backup is incomplete or corrupt.
So I really do appreciate your help and any additional insight you or anyone else might have. Thanks.

HT201250 Time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme

How can I setup a time machine back up using a external hard drive connected to the Airport extreme? Even better for time managment purposes I want to use the Eithernet Thunderbolt connection for the first back up and then through the wifi there after for daily routine Time Machine back ups.

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

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

How can I get Time Machine to back up an external hard drive (iPhotos) that is attached to airport extreme base station. Note: Time machine is usb to macbook pro and external drive with iphotos is usb to airport extreme base station. Help please. Thanks!

Once you have the drive connected to your Mac, click System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock
Click Time Machine
Click Options
Be default, the hard drive will be Excluded from backups. Click the drive to highlight it, then click the "-" (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the drive from Excluded items.
The drive will be backed up on the next Time Machine pass
Everything above assumes that the hard drive has been formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Time Machine will only backup drives in that format.

Time Machine not backing up other external hard drive

Hi,
I recently upgraded to Leopard and am trying to use Time Machine. I have one external hard drive that is used specifically for the Time Machine Backup, it's called "Backup Drive". The other hard drive is called "Captured Memories" and is used to store my graphic design files. Time Machine seems to backup my iMac because there is a folder called iMac and it contains the files, but the folder for Captured Memories is blank. I was getting errors saying that the backup failed but when I clicked the "Back Up Now" option on Time Machine, it doesn't list the error - but the Captured Memories folder is still blank so it didn't back up that external drive. I also changed the Spotlight preferences so that it does not search the Backup Drive.
Both the Backup Drive and the Captured Memories drives are the same, they're both Seagate Free Agent Pro drives, 1TB each.
The Free Agent Pro drives both have a sleep timer that I cannot adjust, does that have anything to do with why Time Machine won't backup the Captured Memories drive? If that is the case, what other software can I use to backup the Captured Memories external drive? I want it to sync to the Backup Drive because I am constantly saving and moving files around on the Captured Memories drive.
I was using a Memeo backup software that came with the Free Agent Pro drives but the problem I was having is it would make copies of files rather than move them. For example, I have a folder on the Captured Memories drive that is called, In Progress and one that is called In Proofing. So once a project is complete, I move the file to the In Proofing folder. The Memeo software would copy the file to the In Proofing folder rather than move it. So I'd end up with 2 copies of the file, one in the In Progress folder and one in the In Proofing folder.
Does anyone know how I can simply have the drive backed up like that?
What do I do?
Please help! I really need to make sure that the Captured Memories external drive is being backed up!

I am having a similar problem. I initially set it up 3 days ago and had it back up just the iMac to Time Capsule (about 120 GB) which it did no problem (I initially had my LaCie drive excluded). I then un-excluded my other drive, where all my photos and music reside (about 130 GB). Since then, it keeps trying to back up about 102 GB each time. Looking at the list of backups it does not appear that it has ever successfully backed up the LaCie. I am not aware of any error messages, but I have not been home much. I normally shut down the computer at night but I have been leaving it on trying to let Time Machine do its thing. All I can say is that every time I am at the computer TM is running and it always looks like it is in the middle of backing up 102 GB (usually seems to be near the beginning, never seem to see it more than halfway done). Looking at the TM panel it says the latest backup was 2 days ago. I'd appreciate any advice!

Time Machine says both of my external hard drives require reformatting to case insensitive. What do I do?

I have been successfuly using Time Machine to back my iMac to an external hard drive (via usb) and everything has been fine for the last year. I have been using TM to back up to a HD called Terra LaCie via usb.
A week ago, my iMac hard drive was full--so I spulrged and bought a 6 TB external hard drive (Western Digital My Book-Thunderbolt). I set up the new Thunderbold HD to use RAID 1 (mirror) and copied most of my iMac hard drive over to the Thunderbolt HD.
I kept my working photographs (most recent) on my iMac and felt good to know my older photographs are on my new Thunderbolt hard drive.
For a few days, Time Machine seemed to work fine (backing up my iMac to Terra LaCie HD. I haven't been concerned with backing up the Thunderbolt drive (as I feel that mirroring is same as backing up).
Yesterday, Time Machine indicated the lastest back-up failed (for the HD called Terra LaCie). Now, when I go into Time Machine, the dialog box indicates the following message:
"Are you sure you want to erase the backup disk “Terra Lacie”? Erasing will destroy all information on the disk and can’t be undone.
The disk must be erased before it can be used for Time Machine backups because a disk you are backing up is case sensitive, but the backup disk is not."
When I open Time Machine to look at my external hard drives (I also have a third usb portable drive); two of the three drives indicate the following:
"reformat required; case insensitive disk".
The small, portable hard drive (that I'm also using) doesn't say it needs to be reformated (but my new Thunderbolt and my old usb HD both indicate the same message (above).
What should I do? I just spent days transferring my photographs from my iMac to my new Thunderbolt. Should I just not use Time Machine any longer and work from my Thunderbolt drive?
Am I to understand that my iMac suddenly become case sensitive? Sorry if this was too much information about my hard-ware set-up.
Any help someone can provide me would be greatly appreciated. I suppose I need to understand Time Machine and perhaps my Thunderbolt better.

Hi BDAqua,
Bravo, you helped me solve my problem.
The Case Sensitive Disk was the small portable hard drive that I was using termporarily.
I just disconnected it and I started TM machine and everything seems to be working just fine.
Thank you very much!!!!

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard

If i have Time Machine backed up on an external hard drive, do i just plug the drive into another macbook pro and all my stuff is in the new computer? Also, does it matter if the new computer is running Lion when the backed up info came from Snow Leopard 10.6.8?

No and Yes
Don't use TM for this purpose, clone your drive to an external, plug the external into another MBP and reboot from it. Please note that booting a machine that came with Lion may not be possible from a drive with Snow Leopard.

HT201250 I have thousands of pictures on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac I don't want them lost. I do time machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough for making sure my pictures don't ever get lost?

I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?

tgs6164 wrote:
I have thousands of photos on my Mac. If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos. I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week. Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?
Purchase a couple of these when they go on sale.
Start burning all the photos onto DVDs.
At least you'll have all your photos if your computer, time machine or any other backup you use goes bonkers.

Can Time Machine back up a second external hard drive that is attached via usb to a Time Capsule?

Can Time Machine back up a second external hard drive that is attached via usb to a Time Capsule?
I have a iMac with 10.7.4

I want to back up the data on the external Hard Drive that is attached to the Time Capsule to the Tim Capsule using Time Machine.
Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, that will not work. You will need to connect the drive directly to your Mac if you want Time Machine to backup the drive to the Time Capsule.

I am having trouble installing. downloaded Mavericks but it will not let me install to hard drive, says that is reserved for Time Machine. I have an external hard drive, but disconnected that before download.

I downloaded Mavericks but can't get past the install; it thinks my hard drive is reserved for Time Machine. I have an external hard drive but dis-connected that before download.
I have Time Machine turned off.

Check to see if you have a file name Backups.backupdb on the disk drive.
If the installer sees such a file it assumes that the disk drive is being used by Time Machine.
Allan

Time Machine does not start after external hard drive is connected

Time Machine does not start after external hard drive is connected

These are the iCloud storage options: http://www.apple.com/icloud/includes/lightbox-storage.html
Also bear in mind that:
1. restoring data over icloud takes time
2. iCloud is not designed as a replacement to Time Machine.

How Do I Stop Time Machine From Filling Up My External Hard Drive?

Hi all -
I have a 750GB OWC external hard drive on which I back up about 100GB of data from my MacBook using Time Machine, and also store a bunch of media files for work. Currently about 650GB of that is full, and that is mostly because of two Time Machine-related files: The "Backups.backupdb" folder, which is 135.15GB, and "MacBook_001b63336000.sparsebundle," which is 233.71 GB. That means that in the nine months since I bought the drive, about 370GB, or half its available space, has been eaten by Time Machine backups.
I only back up so I have a bootable copy of all my current (not past) MacBook data if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged. I am now very concerned that, if left unchecked, Time Machine will eat into the remaining 100GB of empty space. And my old external hard drive died precisely because it ran out of empty space. Some of my critical files were lost forever, and others I got back in pieces after several weeks of anguish and quite a bit of cash.
Apple's support page addresses this concern (incredibly) by instructing me to buy another external hard drive. That solution is expensive for me, and what's the point, when Time Machine will eventually fill that one up too?
So, my questions are:
1. Is there any point at which Time Machine recognizes it's nearly out of hard drive space, and either stops backing up, or deletes old backups, or sends me a warning, or something?
2. If not, is there a way I could designate a maximum size for Time Machine backups to take, such as 150 GB, that it cannot exceed?
3. Partitioning has been suggested, but I don't know how. Any instructions?
4. The OWC hard drive came with its own backup software. Should I just use that and shut up?
It would be mighty ironic if the software I use to save all my data got so fat, it sacrificed all my data....
Thanks in advance -

Andrew Saks wrote:
Hi all -
I have a 750GB OWC external hard drive on which I back up about 100GB of data from my MacBook using Time Machine, and also store a bunch of media files for work. Currently about 650GB of that is full, and that is mostly because of two Time Machine-related files: The "Backups.backupdb" folder, which is 135.15GB, and "MacBook_001b63336000.sparsebundle," which is 233.71 GB. That means that in the nine months since I bought the drive, about 370GB, or half its available space, has been eaten by Time Machine backups.
this is pretty confusing. have you been using it for both wireless and wired backups? the sparse bundle would only be created if you've used it for network backups. directly attached TM drives don't use a sparse bundle so it looks like you've got two separate backup lines. you should get rid of one as using both is very space inefficient.
I only back up so I have a bootable copy of all my current (not past) MacBook data if my MacBook is ever lost, stolen, or damaged.
FYI, TM backups are not bootable themselves. You can use the "full system restore from TM" utility on the leopard install DVd to restore your system from backups. That restored system will, of course be bootable.
I am now very concerned that, if left unchecked, Time Machine will eat into the remaining 100GB of empty space. And my old external hard drive died precisely because it ran out of empty space. Some of my critical files were lost forever, and others I got back in pieces after several weeks of anguish and quite a bit of cash.
Apple's support page addresses this concern (incredibly) by instructing me to buy another external hard drive. That solution is expensive for me, and what's the point, when Time Machine will eventually fill that one up too?
So, my questions are:
1. Is there any point at which Time Machine recognizes it's nearly out of hard drive space, and either stops backing up, or deletes old backups, or sends me a warning, or something?
I'm not sure of the precise point (TM need some free space on the backup drive to operate) but yes, this will eventually happen. when it does, TM will inform you of this and will give you an option of either stopping TM backups and changing the TM drive or starting to delete old backups. If you choose the latter it will start deleting old backups to create space for new ones. this is done automatically.
2. If not, is there a way I could designate a maximum size for Time Machine backups to take, such as 150 GB, that it cannot exceed?
not unless you partition the drive.
3. Partitioning has been suggested, but I don't know how.
it's an option but not right now. you have too little free space left for a successful partitioning process. If you try, the process is sure to fail due to disk fragmentation.
You need to get rid of A LOT of data if you want to try partitioning. also, fort the future, it's a very good idea to keep one partition entirely for TM and another for data. You'll avoid some of the problems you are having now.
Any instructions?
type "creating new volumes" in disk utility help.
4. The OWC hard drive came with its own backup software. Should I just use that and shut up?
don't. besides TM there are much better options out there. CCCloner and Superduper! are better than anything that OWC software has to offer.
It would be mighty ironic if the software I use to save all my data got so fat, it sacrificed all my data....
Thanks in advance -

Time Machine doesn't recognise Seagate external hard drive

Forgive my ignorance, but I can't figure out how to connect Time Machine with my new hard drive. I've clicked on "select back up disk" but my external hard drive doesn't appear. I've looked at a lot of similar support online, but everything tells me to click the button and select the drive, but not what to do if there is no drive to select. Can anyone help me? Am I missing something obvious?

mel_hann wrote:
I found this:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/217131en
This tells me it can be done and that it's quite simple. It's all fine until step 4. When I click on Time Machine Backup Configuration it just connects to the Apple support page for how to set up Time Machine. Nowhere to input my details. Grrrrr.... This shouldn't be this hard!
In theory, I agree that it ought to be simple, but that's Seagate's programming, not Apple's. Few folks here, and none at Apple, are familiar with it.
Do you have the current version? Does it claim to be compatible with the version of OSX you're on (is that Snow Leopard 10.6.8, per your profile)? Not all NASs are compatible with all versions of OSX. You need to contact Seagate (or return the NAS).
Again, I'd strongly recommend reconsidering. I just spent the better part of a couple of days helping a user of a GoFlex Home who replaced her internal HD, then found her backups were corrupted, piece her system back together. Not for the faint of heart.
Take a look for yourself: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5061341
There's a lot of chaff there -- she's not an experienced Mac user (she is now!), but was very determined to get her stuff back.

How do I set up Time Machine to backup to an external hard drive on my wireless router?

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