Time machine - migrate USB setup to AirPort Extreme ?

Hi,
I use to backup to an external USB drive using Time Machine, great!
Now that I have just bought an AirPort Extreme router and that I've connected the USB drive to it, I wonder if it's possible to backup over the air without erasing the previously backed up data?
I would like to use the backups already on the drive because it's so long to backup these 140GB again over the air.

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

Similar Messages

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 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.

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.

Any issue using Time Machine on USB drive with AirPort?

Are there any issues using a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme with Time Machine? My guess is no, but figured I would ping the forum and see if there's something I have not thought of. I know Time Capsule does this, but I don't have that - I have an AirPort Extreme.
The drive is within my network and not exposed to anyone unless they can connect
My password is required to access the Time Machine files
Any security implications not covered by these two points?
I'm currently using a USB drive I attach/detach from my MacBook Air and it would be much more convenient to backup to the drive connected to the AirPort. The first backup will probably take a day short of forever being over the air and not the wire, but after that I imagine it would nicely run in the background.
Thanks for any feedback or suggestions!

Are there any issues using a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme with Time Machine? My guess is no, but figured I would ping the forum and see if there's something I have not thought of.
The correct answer is yes. First off, Apple does NOT support Time Machine backups to external USB HDDs attached to the AirPort Extreme ... although they do for the Time Capsule.
Please check out this excellent Pondini article which provides some details on why this would not be a good idea.

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

Can I unplug my time machine hard drive from my airport extreme and plug it direcly on my MacBook pro without having to do a new back up?

I want to bring my back up hard drive on a trip, but now it's attahced to my Airport Extreame.
If I unplug it and plug it directly on my MacBook Pro, it'll keep updating or I'll lose all my back ups and have to restart again?

Leo666 wrote:
I want to bring my back up hard drive on a trip, but now it's attahced to my Airport Extreame.
If I unplug it and plug it directly on my MacBook Pro, it'll keep updating or I'll lose all my back ups and have to restart again?
Yes, but you'll probably have to manually "mount" the sparse bundle containing your backups. See the blue box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #17 for details.
Also, I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

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 and Disk Shared via Airport Extreme

Is it possible to use Time Machine on a disk shared via Airport Extreme?

No, they pulled it, even though Steve promised the wireless backup feature in his latest keynote. One hour into it to be exact.
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/d7625zs/event/
Now, I am very much against releasing a product before its ready, so I respect them for that. However Steve VERY clearly states that it was already working and would release with Leopard. He usually makes a very very clear distinction between things they "can/might" do and things that are working. He even goes into detail about how all the house macs can wirelessly use the same backup through the Airport Express. THEY EVEN HAVE A PICTURE of it!
So they need more time, okay. But I feel lied to. The least they could do is make a press release with an ETA! The hush hush, makes it seem like they are going to scrap it and pretend it never happened.

Time Machine and Drive connected to Airport Extreme?

Hi All,
Any one knows if there i a way to have a drive connected to the USB port of an Airport Extreme mount on its own once I'm logged in ? a script of something to that effect.
TIA
Oscar A.

Thanks for the reply... but I don't think that is happening with mine... but I'll be keeping an eye on it. .. it sounds like we have the same set up... USB drive connected to the Airport Extreme.. If that's the case. .. that'll be cool.... but one question.. do you have to be logged in. or does it do it even if not logged in?
Thanks again...
Oscar A.
Message was edited by: OzZkar65

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.

Can't print from Win2000 to USB printer via Airport Extreme

Background: I have an Epson Stylus Photo 820 printer connected by USB to an Airport Extreme base station. My iMac is connected to the base station via an ethernet cable.
Using Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3, I've set up the Epson printer to print from Win2000 in a virtual machine in VirtualPC 6 which is running in the iMac. The setup process for the printer completed OK, without a hitch. (By the way, I loaded the printer driver from the printer's disk, because the driver for the Epson Stylus Photo 820 isn't one of the drivers selectable from the Bonjour window.)
Problem: When I try to print via the route that I set up using Bonjour, an error message appears, stating:
- There was an error found when printing the document "mhtml.mid://00000047/" to IP-extreme986254.local.9100"\
(Note: extreme986254 is the name of the network I configured in the base station. Otherwise, the network is working OK. Also, my Win2000 in VPC is connected to the internet OK.)
When I re-try printing, I get the same error message.
When I hook the printer directly to the iMac by USB and then set it up as a printer for Win2000 in that configuration, I have no trouble printing to the printer.

Using Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3, I've set up the
Epson printer to print from Win2000 in a virtual
machine in VirtualPC 6 which is running in the iMac.
The setup process for the printer completed OK,
without a hitch. (By the way, I loaded the printer
driver from the printer's disk, because the driver
for the Epson Stylus Photo 820 isn't one of the
drivers selectable from the Bonjour window.)
Though for XP should also work for Windows 2000.
Problems with finding Printer Driver on Windows XP when using printer connected to Airport Extreme or Express
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/1012.html
Problem: When I try to print via the route that I set
up using Bonjour, an error message appears, stating:
- There was an error found when printing the
document "mhtml.mid://00000047/" to
IP-extreme986254.local.9100"\
Printing from an Windows 2000 PC to a printer attached to an Airport Extreme Base Station
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/1006.html
iFelix

Error "The Connection Failed" in Time Machine, Migration Assistant and Restore From DVD

I am receiving this error when trying to connect to my Time Machine Backup in my Time capsule. I input the proper password to access my Time Capsule and It returns me to the screen with the caption "The connection failed" under the Time Capsule name in the "Select your Disk" screen. What would cause this error. I am connecting via WIFI (AirPort) and have full signal. I am using Mac OSX 10.6.8
I recently had my 1TB hard drive replaced and I am attempting to restore using Time Machine, migration assistant or from the startup dvd (tried multiple ways, no success). The initial setup of mac OSX 10.6 would not let me connect or other attempts after erasing hard drive and reinstalling OSX from disk.
Worked on it all weekend and don't have enough beer to drown the frustration, any help is appreciated.

You are correct TM is not at all easy to do a full restore.
To answer your question: Yes TM disk does show up in finder.
After my initial startup setup I was able to start TM and access all my previous backups. I migrated some files and was able grab the data from finder. Not satisfied with that I tried to do a restore to that previous date, to no success. I then erased the HD and reinstalled OSx and tried again from the setup screen. That didn't work, sulked over some beers. I then tired with Migration assistant...same result (more beer).
In starting TM after trying MA, only one backup was showing in the Star screen (today). None of my previous backups were showing. Since exiting TM it has been "Making Backup Disk Available" ( xGB of 6.29GB). Considering the size, I can only assume that these are my previous backups.
I have reviewed Pondini's posts, FAQs, and tutorials. I am a little scared to try and locate the drives through Terminal as in Pondini's TS #6 guide. If I can get my previous backups to show up, I will be happy with dragging files from Finder to restore my data and slowly work at restoring my settings/applications.

Hi, I am trying to connect a WD Mybook for Mac to my airport/time machine device. On the AirPort Utility it listed under Disks at 0 Mb. I enabled file sharing. But nothing happens. If I plug it directly into my MacBook it works fine. How do I fix it?

I am trying to connect a WD Mybook for Mac to my airport/time machine device. On the AirPort Utility it listed under Disks at 0 Mb. I enabled file sharing. And also followed all the steps - "secured disk access: with a disk passord", "Airport disk guest access: read and write", "Share disks over WAN". But nothing happens. If I plug it directly into my MacBook it works fine. How do I fix it? Also, its connected via a powered usb hub.

I assume that you are using Mac operating system 10.4.11, as your profile indicates.
The instructions that you referenced are for use with AirPort Utility....not AirPort Admin Utility.
Suggest that you download and install AirPort Utility 5.4.2 for Mac , which will run on 10.4.11.
Also noticed that the instructions do not tell you that the hard drive should be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to work with the AirPort Extreme, but they should.

Time machine - migrate USB setup to AirPort Extreme ?

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