HT3275 I have attached an external hard drive via usb to back up my OSX Snow Leopard.  When I open Time Machine and click set up time machine, I then click Select Disk but there is nothing to select. No information is in the box. I do have Airport Extreme

Not sure how this all works but my problem is this:  I have attached an external hard drive to my mac snow leopard 10.6 and am trying to back up my computer through Time Machine.  When asked to select the drive as part of the set up, there is nothing to select.  The box is empty. How do I set up Time Machine for back ups with an external drive? I am running Airport Extreme WI-FI (VERY confusing as I did not know the difference between Extreme and Capsule).  Now to add another component...how does Icloud figure into all of this if I want to back up my computer systems, documents, etc?  Is this a simplier way as long as I download Lion?  Help!!!

Hello,
Problem is likely the Format of the External drive, for TM it needs to be Mac OSX extended Journaled & GUID Partition scheme for Intel based Macs...
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting,  Partitioning, Verifying,  and  Repairing  Disks...
http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html
There are other free options for backing up if interested!

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