Time Machine Harddrive not recognized from Airport Extreme anymore

I've recently updated my Mac Book Pro (Mid 2010m 8GB) to OS X Mountain Lion. Already before I used an external Harddrive attached to Airport Extreme (Airport Utility 7.6.1) for Time Machine Backups. The Backups worked well, even after Migration to OS X Mountain Lion (10.8).
The Haddisk had always been visible from the finder and even an jailbreaked Apple TV. But this changed just yesterday with Finder and Airport Utility just not able to recognize the Harddisc anymore. I tried several things including:
- unplug the Airport Extreme for 1 hour from AC
- Reset/Restart Airport Extreme via Airport Utility App
- Reset Airport Extreme to factory settings and starting over with configuring the network again
- Turn off/on the respective Harddisk
Neither action was successful so far - while the drive can be accessed via direct USB connection still. The respective drive is Mac formatted (journaled) and - as already mentioned - had been working in this setup all the time (1 year at least).
Thank you very much for any hint/tip helping me to solve the problem!
Robert

Almigurt wrote:
Hi Pondini,
I've seen this before - but TM used to work for me this way very well.
That's kinda the point -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
However with my question it is not about Time Machine - it is about why my Harddisc is not anymore recognized by my Airport Extreme base station. It had been working since more than one year now - and then all of a sudden Airport Extreme stopped to show me the drive.
Try repairing it, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. Note that you have to repair both the disk and the sparse bundle the backups are in, separately.

Similar Messages

Time Machine will NOT work with Airport Disks!

It looks like Time Machine will not work with Airport Disks after all. All references to Airport have been removed from the Time Machine page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
It also specifically says: "You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices."
Surely, they would have included the Airport Extreme Base Station in this list if it was supported.
I really hope there will be another firmware update for the AEBS which will bring compatibility with Time Machine, because Time Machine was the only reason for me to buy an AEBS. (I only use it as a small backup server, I don't even have wireless networking enabled. There were other solutions, e.g. from Synology, which are faster and more reliable than AEBS disk sharing, but Synology stated their network drives would not be compatible with Time Machine.)

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.

IPhone 4S not recognizing my Airport Extreme

My new iPhone 4S is not recognizing my Airport Extreme while my iPad2, Macbook, Mac desktop and Apple TV all are able to see and successfully utilize my network. My iPhone 4s is able to see other networks and successfully connect with them, but just not the network associated with my Airport Extreme. Can anybody help me fix this problem?

Im having exactly the same problem.
Every laptop in the house and my ipad will conenct to my airport, but my iphone doesnt... in fact my iphone wont conenct even to another router in the house. Outside, on my work network, it works fine.
It displays the phones client number in the airport utility, but no data is transfered nor does it ever connect - just the scrolling circle continuously.
Reset the router, restored my iphone. I've done everything...
Anyone? Its doing my head in.
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Time Machine creates multiple sparsebundles on Airport Extreme

I recently started using a new hard drive for Time Machine, attached to my Airport Extreme (previous 250GB WD portable, now 1.5TB Seagate Freeagent). I never had any issues with the old drive, but have noticed a very weird problem on the new drive, and despite a lot of searching online I can't find anyone with the same issue.
What I've noticed is that on occasion, Time Machine decides not to use the existing sparsebunle on my drive, and instead creates a brand new sparsebundle and starts to backup my entire system from scratch. The new sparsebundle has the same name as previously, just with " 1" added to the end of the name. E.g.:
Original - "Peter's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle"
New - "Peter's MacBook Pro 1.sparsebundle"
If I delete the new sparsebundle from the drive and get Time Machine to "Back Up Now", it seems to find the original sparsebundle again, and will do an incremental backup like nothing ever happened.
Two possible leads on why it might be happening:
1 - I've noticed in the last two days that this has happened on the first backup after I get home from work. I.e., Time Machine fails to backup all day while I'm at work (cause it can't access the drive) then when I get home and connect back to the Airport, the first backup creates the new sparsebundle. Only noticed this the last two days, so it's not a long-running pattern.
2 - The new drive does make a lot of loud "clicking" noises (apparently a running problem with Seagate's 1.5TB Freeagent drives, relted to power-management of the drive).
Either of these sound like a possible lead on the issue? Anyone have ideas on a possible fix?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Peter

Denis77 wrote:
One evening about 8 I came to the the computer to find a dialog box indicating that it was backing up something over 800,000 files, about 60 GB and counting; Time Machine indicated a Latest Backup at 3:30 that afternoon. No unusual events that afternoon to set things off track, as far as I know. It was creating a new sparsebundle as Pete A indicated, same name with a <space> "1" added. Unlike his experience, however, deleting the newer sparsebundle does not provide access to the older one.
Any ideas how to redesignate the older sparsebundle as the real backup? The Mac is not seeing it now, which is why it keeps starting a new one. Since this is apparently a baseline snapshot, I would like to get my backup history back.
Most likely, the old sparse bundle is corrupted, and Time Machine can't use it. Try repairing it, per #A5 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If it can be repaired successfully, Time Machine may continue using it.
If it can't be repaired, or TM won't continue using it, there's not much you can do. Keep the old sparse bundle for a while (you may be able to browse and restore from it, per #E2 in the Troubleshooting Tip. Once you're sure you don't need the old set (or Time Machine runs out of room and has to start deleting backups from the new set), delete the old sparse bundle via the Finder.

Time machine with USB drive on Airport Extreme

For 2+ years I used a USB hard drive shared off my Airport Extreme to host time machine backups. I just switched internet providers solely so that i could go back to using my airport extreme and sharing a backup disk. But time machine no longer shows it as an available drive...and I found this
AirPort base stations: Time Machine hard drive compatibility - Apple Support
which states: Time Machine is not supported with USB hard drives that are connected to an AirPort Express or AirPort Extreme device.
This is a pretty big step backwards as far as I'm concerned.....are there are any ways around it?

There is a way around it: buy the latest type of the Airport Extreme (the tall one). But even that solution isn't considered reliable: http://pondini.org/TM/AEQ2.html

Time Machine Backup not only from boot volume

hello
As far as I know, Time Machine, makes a backup from a boot volume to a second volume.
Is their a way to include a second or third volume in this backup. What i want is the following. On the boot volume is a normal OS X, we have a iSCSI-RAID connected with 4 1Tb Harddisk in RAID5. This give us high-speed access over the 1Gb/s Ethernet. We a looking to save this RAID to a external SATA HD using Time Machine, to take this home in case the RAID is lost by fire or theft.
Is this possible with Time Machine?
Who has a solution
Regards
Gérard

time machine will back up all directly attached disks not just the boot one provided they are formatted mac os extended. you have to remove the disks you want to be backed up from the TM exclusion list in TM system preferences. However, TM can only have one backup drive and will back up all the disks to the same disk. if you want different backup disks for different drives you need to use a different backup solution.
see this post for a list of options
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7495315#7495315

Time Machine Backups Not Recognized When Drive Added to Airport Extreme

Since January, I have been taking backups of my Mac Pro with Time Machine and a SimpleTech external drive plugged into a USB port.
Recently, I purchased an Airport Extreme router and decided that plugging the SimpeTech drive into the router would provide access all the times. After plugging the drive into the router and providing the correct password, Voila!, instant access.
Later, when it became time for the next scheduled backup, initially TM could not find the drive. No problem... in TM preferences, the SimpleTech drive was listed as available, and so it was a simple matter to telling TM to use that drive.
So far, so good... but now the issue.
Instead of creating the next incremental backup in the set, Time Machine created a new folder and started taking a full backup of the entire HD as if it were the first backup being taken. Incidentally, the name of the computer in the original backup set was "Ron's Computer". Now, TM says that it is backing up "Ron's Computer 78989018975923789637289795278957928". Obviously, I would like TM to continue taking backups of "Ron's Computer" using the original set of incremental backups.
Have I incorrectly added the drive to the network?
Was there something I failed to do in the TM setup?
I interrupted the full backup assuming that (a) it could not be merged with the original set of incrementals and (b) I would not/should not do so anyway.
Anyone else have this issue? Resolution?

I commented on another thread and came to a surprising revelation:
Time Machine backups are created differently depending on if the target drive is connected locally or if it is connected as a network attached storage (NAS) device.
Your initial backup was via a local HDD. Once connected to your AXBS, TM treats your external HDD as a NAS. Now TM will create a sparsebundle backup which is DIFFERENT than your initial local backup. It cannot add to your first backup even though it's right there on the drive. I believe you can still access the backups (ctrl-click the TM icon -> Browse other TM disks). If the old backup doesn't have too much important info, just continue with the new backup as the wireless backup option is functional. I don't know if the old backup will be deleted without warning if space starts to run out, though.
If you are intent on continuing with the old backup (January is a long time), check out these links (not really for the faint of heart):
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7860904&#7860904
http://rolf.haynberg.de/?p=83
Good luck and welcome to Apple Discussions!

Time capsule not recognized by airport extreme - first time setup challenge

Air port utility not recognizing time capsule. We have airport extreme and time capsule (recent purchase to back up 2 wireless mac laptops and the G5 which is connected to the modem). Modem is conected to airport extreme and I connected the Time capsule via ethernet as I thought the speed would be 1GB and faster than wireless "n." Somehow now the airport extreme does not recognize the time capsule. In the network utility, airport is not listed, only ethernet and firewire. What steps should I take to enable time capsule to back up the laptops wirelessly as well as the G5 (non-wireless.) Thanks!

I would hold the reset button on the back of the Time Capsule for 5-10 seconds and I would wait to connect it to the AirPort Extreme to see if you can set it up. If you can access the Time Capsule with AirPort Utility then I would plug it into the AirPort Extreme and continue your setup.

Time Machine doesn't see new AirPort Extreme

My old Time Capsule died. Hardware failure. Too bad. So I bought a new one, a 2TB AirPort Extreme. 'Upgraded' to OSX 10.9.1 (which crippled a lot of my software, and seems generally more buggy & slower than 10.6.8, but that's beside the point) just to be able to administer it. Setting up the WiFi network was easy. Fine.
Now when I go into Time Machine preferences and click on the "select backup disk" button, the new AirPort Extreme is not listed. There is an option for "Other Time Capsule." If I click on that, the AirPort Extreme shows up. OK. If I click on it, I get a window with IP info, etc. There's an option to "edit". Clicked on that but found nothing about setting up the Time Capsule. I tried clicking on the disks tab, but that returns an empty list of partitions and file-sharing options.
I tried reseting the device with the little button on the back and starting again. Same story. What am I missing?
To be clear, I am not trying to use an external disk. I am trying to use the 2TB disk I am told is inside the AirPort Extreme.

Is it possible to know from the serial number whether I have a misbehaving Time Capsule presenting itself as an AP Extreme, unaware of the hard disk it conceals, or a perfectly functional AP Extreme?
That would be a question for Apple Support.
http://www.apple.com/support/contact/
If you can locate a model number on the device....it might be on the bottom in very small print.......it will start with an "A" followed by four numbers.....we can tell you what you have.
But a clue might be that an AirPort Extreme sells for about $200. A Time Capsule sells for $300-400 depending on the size of the internal hard drive.
And to anyone from Apple reading this, could you please make your new software compatible with hardware you produced in last 3 yrs?
It is extremely unlikely that anyone from Apple will ever see your post on a user-to-user support forum. Best to contact Apple directly with your comments:
Apple - Time Capsule - Feedback

I have a Airport Time Machine at my computer, a Airport Extreme in the kitchen, and I want to set-up my Airport Express in my second office. How is this done so all show 4 bars on my iPhone?

I have a Airport Time Machine at my desk in the office with the router, a Airport Extreme to have WiFI in the kitchen connected by my ethernet, and I have a Airport Express in my second business office connected to the ethernet thru a switch.
Will this all work? And what is the best configuration?
Do I connect my Express to the Ethernet? From the installation notes it seems I do, but I'm not sure?
Any help on these is appreciated?
NoviceJM

It is on DHCP & NAT under router mode yet my isp is still the one issuing ip addresses to my devices instead of the router issuing them

Printer not recognized by Airport Extreme

I recently purchased an Airport Extreme that I'm trying to use to network a USB HP Printer (PSC 2410) and an external hard drive for access by a Macbook Air and a Windows laptop. I had the printer working for a day with the Macbook and then it is no longer recognized from the Printers in the Macbook; the printer never got recognized by the Windows laptop via Bonjour but I'm mostly interested in trrying to at least make sure I can get this working with the Macbook. The printer works fine if plugged directly via USB into the Macbook. I have searched forums and tried the basics - made sure I had latest firmware, restarted the Airport Extreme and the printer multiple times, reset printers in the Macbook, etc. but no matter what I do I can no longer have the printer be recognized when connected to the Airport Extreme. Also, I've noticed people talking about a printers tab in the Airport Utility, but I do not have a printers tab in the Airport Utility (version 6) on the Macbook. Any ideas would be very much appreciated about how to get the printer recognized again in order to use it wirelessly. Thanks!

Try this: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999

Time Machine backup not recognized?

I have a Time Machine configured drive that I have been using since 2010. I recently tried connecting it to my Airport Extreme backup over the air. It worked, but very slowly so I attempted to connect directly to my iMac again. Now Time Machine wants to backup my hard drive all over again. I can still access old backups, but it will not continue using the file on the drive. How can I reconnect the backup database to Time Machine?

The format of a network backup is different from that of a local backup. They're not interchangeable.
The backups you made on the AirDisk are unreliable. I suggest you put that drive aside and start a new backup set on another, locally attached, external drive. When you're sure you'll no longer need the data on the first drive, erase it and start over. You need more than backup anyway.

TIme Machine verification issue (Drobo and Airport Extreme)

Hello. I recently purchased a Drobo (1st gen, off ebay) to replace a 1TB WD MyBook I was using as a Time Machine backup and Media Server.
The Drobo is connected to an Airport Extreme base station over USB 2.0. My Mac is connected by ethernet to the Airport Extreme.
I followed the instructions on the Drobo website to create a separate 500 gb partition for Time Machine and the rest to accommodate my media collection. http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/67/related/1/session/L2F 2LzEvc2lkLzdta1VHNmZr
The Time Machine backup seems to go OK, taking several hours to backup 160gb of data. Later on in the day, I'll get a message that says:
"Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."
I've tried redoing the backup 4 or 5 times now. I've tried repairing permissions and the repairing the disk on both the Mac and the Drobo. I've learned that Time Machine Backups to Airdisks aren't officially supported by Apple (Although I never had a problem with my previous hard drive attached to the Airport Extreme, and Drobo say it's fine on their website - "Time Machine with a Drobo device connected to an AirPort Extreme or network attached (NAS) works. Just make sure you have updated Time Capsule or Airport Extreme to firmware 7.3.1 or later."
Every time, after a couple of hours, I get the verification warning and have to delete the backup and start again. I wouldn't mind just going and buying another 500gb external drive to just attach to my Mac, only I now have a separate 500gb volume sitting on my Drobo that I can't do anything with and I can't delete because I don't have anywhere else to transfer the data from my Drobo while I reformat it!
I'm running out of ideas and would love it if someone can offer some advice. Thanks guys!

Hi. Thanks for the response and sorry for the double post in the Airport forum. I'm really just not sure if this is a Time Machine, Airport or Drobo issue.
Everything is updated to the latest versions and I've been looking at the Drobo support site, but all I see is that Drobo is 'supposed' to work with Time Machine over Airport Extreme. However, I've tried everything I can think of and scoured forums over the weekend to try and get to the bottom of this. It's just bizarre that a cheap WD hard disk used to work, and a much more expensive Drobo doesn't.
I've posted the same message to the forums over at the Drobo site, so we'll see what comes of it. I'm not that hopeful. This mysterious black box on my desk seems to have a mind of its own. Even now, even though I'm not reading or writing any data to it, I can hear the Drobo accessing data on the disks and moving things around. I'm not surprised if it's a bit too much for Time Machine to handle. I'm just a bit annoyed that I followed all of the advice from Data Robotics to the letter and it doesn't work, even though it should.
I think I'll just give up and buy a firewire drive (I'm out of USB ports). I'm sure I'll find something I can move onto this redundant 500gb partition. Thanks for your help.

Time machine is not recognizing my existing sparse bundle

On my MB Pro with OS 10.8 I have been making backups for two weeks to a new Time Capsule 3TB. Time Machine (and my Mac) lost the ability to connect to the drive called Data on the TC. In Airport Utility everything looked fine. After some messing around (restart TC, reboot Mac, remove the Data drive in TM Preferences and then select it again as the backup disk) I find myself with Time Machine connecting to the Time Capsule, but trying to create a new backup from scratch. It appears not to be recognizing the old Sparse Bundle. Is there anything I can do to get TM to recognize the old Sparse Bundle?

Rich from 1968 wrote:
After some messing around (restart TC, reboot Mac, remove the Data drive in TM Preferences and then select it again as the backup disk) I find myself with Time Machine connecting to the Time Capsule, but trying to create a new backup from scratch.
Does it just show "None" for the backup dates, or does it actually show it's going to back up a huge amount of data?
The "None" is very misleading -- it just means the preferences window hasn't been updated (and won't be until the next backup is finished).
Did you change the setting for Secure Shared Disks (on the Disks panel of Airport Utility) to or from With Accounts"? If so, that will cause a new backup, as they're stored differently.
Log on to an Admin account. Via the Finder, see if there are two sparse bundles, something like this (in Column View):

Recovered Time Machine backup not recognized..

This is a strange situation/horrible situation to explain. We had one of our iMacs lock up unexpectedly, and on restart it just hung all the time. We booted from the Snow Leopard install disc, ran Disk Utilities verifying/repair option which noted the drive had serious errors. We do use Time Machine on an external drive, but unfortunately the last backup performed was ".inprogress" as it was tagged. To add more problems, the entire TM backup folder (..all of it) was trashed/deleted and we had to recover the entire contents via recovery software (which took forever sadly).
With the contents recovered completely (luckily) we decided to move forward. We formatted the hard drive/installed OSX again on the iMac and went to restore using the Restore from backup function on the installation disc. However, when we pointed Snow Leopard to the external drive it did not recognize the TM backup. We tried the Migration assistant as well, and no luck, simply won't see the TM backup (even though the backup folder and all its elements seem to be all there).
We can see our files buried in some folders in the backup, as well as images, but replacing those manually I'm sure will run into permissions issues. We're open to suggestions at this point as this iMac served as a media server for us.

RavenMac wrote:
To add more problems, the entire TM backup folder (..all of it) was trashed/deleted and we had to recover the entire contents via recovery software (which took forever sadly).
That recovered some files, but they're no longer in a form that's recognized as Time Machine backups, so you won't be able to restore/recover them normally. See the blue box in [Data Recovery|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Recover.html].
We can see our files buried in some folders in the backup, as well as images, but replacing those manually I'm sure will run into permissions issues. We're open to suggestions at this point as this iMac served as a media server for us.
Are the recovered files on a separate HD? If so, right-click it on your Desktop or Finder sidebar, and select +Get Info.+ See if the +Ignore ownership on this volume+ box at the very bottom is checked. If it is, you should be able to copy the recovered files. If not, click the padlock, enter your Admin password, then check the box.
Figuring out what and where they all belong (and which version is the most recent) will not be easy.
Once you get this sorted out as well as you can, consider keeping "secondary" backups. What happened to you is quite unusual, but obviously possible. See #27 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 this forum) for some suggestions.

Time Machine Harddrive not recognized from Airport Extreme anymore

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