Time Machine, Airport Extreme, External USB Drive

Having some challenges using Time Machine on an external drive connected to my Airport Extreme. I've tried several configurations all of which started with formatting the drive with a single partition Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID.
The first configuration was where I did a 100GB Time Machine Backup to the drive while it was connected (so I wouldn't have to deal with a slow first backup over wireless, because my MacBook Pro is of the older 802.11G wireless versus N). Then moved the drive over to my Airport Extreme, mounted the drive and started the backup. It failed with the following error message "The backup volume is not in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, which is required."
The second configuration was where, after reformatting to single partition to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID, I connected the drive directly to the Airport Extreme without having done a Time Machine Backup. After mounting the drive, I started Time Machine and it began to run. I left it over nite to back-up and, while it got started, it did not make it past about 9GB after over 6 hours.
Any help here would be most appreciated...
Happy New Year

See solution in this thread.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8742787

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Opened my big mouth.
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I will post another picture in an hour and probably kill it then before I die of watching paint dry.

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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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Walter Goodman wrote:
Time Machine says my external hard drive does not have enough space for the current backup. It needs 34 G out of a 250G hard drive. All that is on the drive is earlier backups.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
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Hi there,
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mattschenker wrote:
Pondini,
Actually, I wasn't thinking about theft. I was just thinking that for security in a possible data-loss "event," it was better to have the backup drive physically separated from the main computer. But maybe that's not necessary.
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Yes, I could hook something up to my Mac Mini. Good point! And that would really keep it separated, since it would be in an entirely different floor. But then again, Time Machine backups done wirelessly would probably take forever.
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Yes.
I do wish Apple would solve the problem of Time Machine working via the Airport Extreme. That would be my favorite option.
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Time Machine, Airport Extreme, External USB Drive

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