HT204057 Time Machine back up via ethernet on airport extreme

Forgive me if this is answered elsewhere, i just can seem to find the exact answer.
Can i plug an external hard drive into my airport extreme (4th/5th Gen) with ethernet and carry out Time machine back ups wirelessly? I've tried with USB connection to it and it takes far too long - overnight and its still not finished. also i'd like to be able to transfer / store independent files on the hard drive in addition to the back ups, via wireless?
the other option is via USB 3 directly into my rMBP to do the initial back up and then plug this into the AP extreme, will it do top-up back ups from here which i guess will only be things i've changed since the last back up - will this work and if so which option would be best.
Truly i'd love to buy a new time capsule but after upgrading to my rMBP, i'm low on funds for a while..
thanks,

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?
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. Count me in the "no success" category.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5924?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

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HT204057 Time machine back up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme.

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme? It worked very well.

Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?
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. Count me in the "no success" category.
See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5924?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Time Machine back-up (via a Time Capsule) on a MacBook Pro

Can I create a Time Machine back-up (via a Time Capsule) on a MacBook Pro using Snow Leopard as the OS and then upgrade my OS to Mountain Lion (a few days later) to continue using Time Machine?

then upgrade my OS to Mountain Lion (a few days later) to continue using Time Machine?
I am not sure what you mean by "to continue"
You can continue.. but upgrading is not required "to continue"
Often you will have issues though. It will create a very large backup, due to the new OS. And going back to Snow Leopard might become impossible.
I think personally it is better to have a backup of your machine before upgrade .. and keep it separate to later backup after the upgrade.
You can also do a disk image of the computer running SL to external drive just using free edition of superduper or even disk utility.
Upgrade installs are never as good as a clean install btw.. !!

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!

Time machine backing up my HD on Airport but does not show when I open time machine

Good day all,
I have been playing with this forever.
I have a HD on my Airport Extreme which I keep my Itunes library and I have a stand alone external HD which I connect directly to my machines about once a week which is used exclusively for time machine. Time Machine does it's thing when it comes to backing up the internal HD on my MacBook and the HD that is shared on the Airport but once I open Time machine to see the time line, I cannot see the HD hanging from the Airport.
My question is, why does it back it up but at the same time when I want to check it out on the Time machine time line, I can't see it.
Thanks

Time Machine (like most backup apps) cannot back up from a network disk.
Either connect the drive to your Mac occasionally, so Time Machine can back it up (remove it from the exclusion list in TM Prefs > Options), or try a 3rd-party app. Chronosync may be a good alternative.

Time Machine fails with drive connected to Airport Extreme

First of all, I've had myriad problems with Time Machine, even when it was connected directly to my MBP. But after the recent updates, I installed them and hoped it would work wirelessly. I re-formatted my 120GB OWC drive (my MBP has 30GB available of 120GB). I have already been down the road of making sure I've formatted the drive correctly.
I excluded my system folder, my entourage identity, downloads, and my Parallels Windows XP file from the backup. I connected the drive to my Airport Extreme (not the gigabit version) and started the backup. Basically, it gets about 5 GB into the backup, moving very slowly, and then fails, saying that it couldn't locate the drive. And that part is true--I can't seem to locate the drive on my network anymore either. And eventually, after another hour or so, my Airport Extreme drops as well, and isn't even available. Even when I unplug the AE, and plug it back in, it still doesn't show up...but after about an hour or so...it pops back up and is available, working fine. My iPhone sees the same problem with AE dropping and then coming back. When the wireless service drops, I can plug an ethernet cable into the AE and I can access the internet fine, so it's not the cable modem (Time Warner).
Is anyone else seeing this problem? I'm no guru and appreciate that Macs just seem to work correctly. But Time Machine is making me pull my hair out. It's been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.
Appreciate any help!

This is probably the most sensible post I've read on the issue. I've spent the last 2 days trying to get my 500GB LaCie Quadra hard drive to work with my Airport Extreme (the square one, yes .
I've formatted it correctly with the Disk Utility (multiple times!).
Airport Utility sees it just fine. I can back up to it when it is connected directly to my MacBook via USB.
But when the drive is connected via USB to the Airport Extreme, Time Machine doesn't see it -- unless I turn on file sharing with guest access read and write. That seems less-than-secure to me even if my network is protected.
Without guest access the drive appears in the shared section of the Finder, but I can't connect to it. I've tried all three combinations under "Secure Shared Disks" but none of them work.
Seems like its just too flaky to use an external disk connected to the Airport Extreme.
Happy to be pointed in the right direction... are there specific file permissions I should be setting my external drive to?
Thanks,
Rich

Time machine not recognising external disk on airport extreme

Hi
I have connected a LaCie d2 Quadra disk to the usb port on my airport extreme.
The disk is formatted as HFS+
If I look in Finder (with Bonjour computers enabled as displayed) I can see the external disk through the airport extreme. I can enter the disk and see the drive (it is connected), but I cannot add files to the disk.
If I open Time Machine setup, I cannot see any external disk at all.
If I look in Airport utility, I can see the d2 Quadra listed as an external disk on the extreme, and I have set it up for File Sharing (using the device password)
Can anyone advise why Time Machine (OS-X Yosemite 10.10.1 on iMac) cannot see it?
And what to do to get it connected please to allow backups from any mac user's machine?
Thanks
Andy

So, LaCie advised to connect direct to Mac to check all ok. It was.
As soon as the HD was plugged in directly, TM recognised it and asked if I want to use it for backup. In Finder, the d2 Quadra appears, I can open it, and transfer files directly to and from it.
For reference, the Airport Extreme is connected via Ethernet to the iMac I am using (so no WiFi in this particular chain of connectivity), and the Extreme firmware is the latest (7.6.4) for the model (802.11n)
The issue is that connecting to the USB port on the Extreme, I cannot get the HD to operate like this!
LaCie now state that they cannot help further!!!
Does anyone have any idea why the Extreme is not sharing the HD as it is meant to?
Thanks
Andy

Can Time Machine backup USB Drive connected to Airport Extreme Base Station

I need a new N based wireless router. I would prefer to get just the $179 Base Station and not the $299 Time Capsule. I already have a nice external USB 500GB drive that I would connect to the AEBS. So, once I have this new wireless router/base station installed at home and I have the external USB drive connected to it, can my new Macbook Air with a USB connected 400GB drive be used to backup what is on the Macbook Air and also backup the 500GB USB drive info that is connected to the extreme base station?
Thanks
tj

I found this when searching Apple's web site but it is old, October 2007, and said it could not be done. Has this changed since then?
Here is what I found.
Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Disks
* Last Modified on: October 26, 2007
* Article: 306833
Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard can be used to back up to many kinds of Mac OS Extended-formatted drives, but it does not support AirPort Extreme's AirPort Disk feature.
Time Machine can back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, or to a Leopard Server volume, or an Xsan storage device.

Using time machine backup on disk connected to airport extreme router?

So I've read a number of articles about using an external hard drive connected to the airport extreme base station as a time machine backup. The thing is that I'm writing this in august 09, most of the articles (which say the feature is officially unsupported) date about a year and a half ago. I'm wondering if there have been any developments since then.

I also have this problem -- it started about 2 weeks ago (around July 20?), possibly at the time the new Airport Extreme firmware went into effect. I have two separate Mac laptops that each use Time Machine to back up to different disks that are attached to the Airport Extreme (i.e., each laptop has its own backup-destination disk). Both were working flawlessly before (for more than 6 months); now, each one reliably drops the connection to the disk (produces an error message, and thereafter cannot re-connect to the destination disk until I cycle the Airport Extreme with power-off/on). I had hoped that 10.5.8 would help (the release notes talked about improved stability with Airport connections), but not so.

Time Machine Error after moving disk to Airport Extreme

I have been using Time machine with a 1 TB, WD MyBook hard drive for the past 2 weeks with no problem. The drive had been connected directly to my Macbook Pro, via the Firewire 800 cable.
Today, I moved the drive and connected it via USB to my Airport Extreme Base Station version 7.3.1.
When Time Machine tried to create the next scheduled backup, I got the following error:
*Time Machine Error*
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 159.8 GB but only 159.1 GB are available.
To select a larger volume, or make the backup smaller by excluding files, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine"
It seems to me that Time machine is trying to do a brand new backup instead of the incremental one its supposed to do.
How can I fix this and have TM recognize that there is already a backup sequence in the disk?
Thanks for your help.

Time Machine uses a different method for creating its archive, depending on how the backup disk is connected. When using a directly connected drive, it uses a time-stamped folder structure. When using a networked disk, it uses a sparse disk image format. Therefore, when you connected that drive to the base station, Time Machine was trying to create a new sparse image archive with the leftover space. It did not find enough space, since your direct connect Time Machine archive was taking up too much space already.
If you want to use it over the network, you'll have to erase the drive and start over with Time Machine.

Leon and I installed the Time Machine does not work. to the Airport Extreme is connected MyBookWorld II. Snow leopard with everything working. Leon sees the drive, but you can not connect to it. can not be seen in disk utility. Thank you for your help or

Leon a Já instalované Time Machine nefunguje. na Letiště Extrémní je připojen MyBookWorld II. Sníh leopard s vše pracovat. Leon vidí pohonu, ale nemůžete se k němu připojit. nemůže být viděn v disk utility.
Děkuji za Vaši pomoc nebo rady
Petr

Here's how you can potentially use your AirDisk with TimeMachine (beware that YMMV), but it should work as it works with every other "unsupported" device.
1) Mount your AirDisk so it appears on your Mac
2) Open Terminal.app
3) change directories to the AirDisk's root folder located in "/Volumes"
ie: cd "/Volumes/AirDisk Name"
4) execute this command to "bless" the drive to be used with time machine:
touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported
5) Start TimeMachine and if all went well, it should recognize your AirDisk drive and use it for TM.
This should also work on NFS shares, SMB shares, AFP shares, basically anything. It has worked up until the last developer seed, so unless they yanked this at the last minute, it should still work.
Now, the reason why Apple removed this feature may be due to the unreliability of the AirDisk, so be cautious.

Time machine backing up when pref is turned off

I noticed yesterday and today, after replacing my TimeMachine with a new one, that even though I had temporarily turned off the Time Machine backup in my system prefs because I didn't want it running while I was editing a video, it will still backing up. And backing up a huge amount of data. A Google search using "time machine backs up when turned off" as the search phrase led me to: <http://toti.posterous.com/hidden-local-backups-with-mac-os-x-lion-filli> in which I learned that TM is doing local backups to my laptops' hard drive. Don't want this, but as usual Apple is assuming most people would welcome this safety feature and so don't offer (a) information on it or (b) the option in system prefs to turn it off. Anyway, on that page there is a command for the Terminal which will turn off this feature:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
One could easily be fooled into thinking your computer had less disc space than you actually have due to this feature. Pretty well everytime there is a "smart" application within the ever expanding OS, there is a downside to it. If only there was an "I'm no dummy" mode which would allow users to tailor various features without mucking about in the Terminal, which I know little about and try to stay away from, except for the occasional "fsck -fy" command at startup.

john2b_75 wrote:
My MacBook does this too. No amount of turning on and off the Time Machine in Preferences has any impact on its behaviour.
Have you ever used a 3rd-party utility, such as Time Machine Editor, Time Machine Scheduler, or the like, to alter Time Machine's behavior? If so, that's the problem -- those set up a completely separate schedule. Use the same app to set it back to the defaults or OFF.
If that doesn't help, it's possible the preferences file (where the ON/OFF switch, among other things, is stored), is damaged. Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
My Time Capsule drive is stuffed (indexed to death) and even Disk Warrior can't fix it,
If your backups are corrupted beyond Disk Utility and Disk Warrior's ability to repair, nothing can. Erase the disk via the Disks tab of Airport Utility, and let Time Machine start fresh (via Ethernet cable if at all possible).
Actually, take the time to select a Zero-Out, not the quick erase -- if that fails, you know the TC's HD is failing. If not, it's probably ok.
But the disk being full and/or corrupted has nothing to do with Time Machine starting backups.
after 24 hours of grinding away it fails only halfway through.
With what message?

Time Machine back-up/restore after hard drive failure - lost data

Our iMac was subject to a hard drive recall. So before getting the hard drive replaced, I did a full Time Machine backup (over wifi to a HD connected to Airport Extreme). Once done, I took the iMac to the Genius Bar and they sent me home with a machine with a new copy of the OS installed.
Came home and upon setting up OSX, I selected something like "restore from Time Machine backup." Told it where the drive was.
I now realize that the most recent back-up that is on that drive is from January 2012. So I lost ten months of data. When I look at Finder at the external drive, in the Backups.backupdb folder, all of the dates there are 2012-01-10-XXXXXXX. There is also a "latest" folder in there, but that also looks old.
So first, does anyone have any suggestions on where to look for this full backup I did? When I enter Time Machine, the time bar on the right only shows "latest" and "January 2012." Interestingly, it does not have older backups either.
Note - the backup I did was a manual one. I stopped having Time Machine do automatic backups because they took way too long over the air. So I would start manual backups about once per month. I never thought to check the hard drive to see if they were there.
Thanks for any help.

I think I have solved half of this. Upon starting the Mac after the disk swap, when I went to restore from Time Machine, I disconnected the drive from Airport Extreme and connected it directly to the Mac via USB. Apparently, this is not ok.
I reconnected the drive to Airport Extreme and now can see all of the backups.
So my question now is whether (1) do I revert to the week-old Time Machine (I want to do this) and (2) do I have to do it over wifi or is there a way for me to access this backup via a direct connection? I'm worried that over wifi, it will take days to restore (it's only 100 GB, but it seems to take forever).
Thanks in advance.

Attach printer using ethernet on airport extreme

How do I connect a printer via ethernet to airport extreme?

Airport Express is not a TIme Capsule, only ONE Ethernet port on it
Please read the initial post again. The question was....
How do I connect a printer via ethernet to airport extreme?
As you know, the AirPort Extreme has 3 Ethernet LAN ports, as does the Time Capsule.

Time machine back up to G-Tech G-RAID Gen4 4TB via USB

I've purchased a second G-Tech G-Raid 4TB external hard drive to use to back up my iMac using time machine.
But I can't get it to back up via USB, I already have the same device which I use to store all my media iTunes, movies etc & this uses the only Firewire (FW800) port. As my iMac only has one firewire port (is there such thing as an FW800 adapter / hub that will allow me to conntct two devices to the single port?)
I have got time machine working via firewire which I used the first time as its suposed to be quicker, after all the data has backed up for the first time I tried swapping to the USB2 cable provided but time machine doest seem to see the drive & comes up with an error. If I swap back to firewire it works fine.
There is also an SATA cable that came with the drive but I don't know what this & there oisn't a port om my iMac that will fit it.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
JPGUK

iunlock wrote:
Open Time Machine Preferences... ->Add Back Up Disk (Encrypt Backups "unchecked.") ->Select, TimeMachineBackup (on "WDMyCloudDL4100_AFP_TimeMachineBackup.") ->Select, "Use Disk."Connect as: GuestThen I get this error message: "Time Machine can't access the backup disk "TimeMachineBackup". The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error 2.)I've just got off the phone with WD Tech support, ran a bunch of commands, troubleshooted everything from reboot to directly connecting the Ethernet cable from computer to NAS etc....did it all. They've concluded that it may be a faulty device and to do an exchange under warrenty and/or contact the store for a replacement. The strange thing is that everything else seems to work fine. Here is my set up in case you're wondering: Mac Book Pro -> [Ethernet + USB 3.0] Adapter connected in the Thunderbolt slot => Gigabit Switch <= NAS directly connected to Gigabit swtich. Gigabit Switch => connected directly to the Router. I was maybe thinking that the Adapter may be the culprit, however, I've ran a successfull Time Machine Back up by plugging my external hard drive directly into the Adapter via USB 3.0 as the Adapater is a: [Ethernet + USB 3.0 -> Thunderbolt Port on the Mac.] Any ideas?Since you try to backup to TMB using Guest, that is why you get that error (OSStatus error 2.). Go the your NAS dashboard --> Share and make sure TMB is turn on for PUBLIC share. Unless you don't want TMB sahre to be public then next time backup your data to TMB using a credential account that your have allow to access the TMB share.

HT204057 Time Machine back up via ethernet on airport extreme

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