Time machine on a hard disc connected to airport extreme

I currently have a 500 gig hard disc connected to my iMac directly to be used to back up to time machine and it has been telling me there is no space for a long time. I am thinking about buying a bigger drive, but I would like to know whether I can connect the HD to my airport extreme and run Time Machine wirelessly?
The reason I want to do it is that I am, also thinking about buying a MacBook Air and I'd like to back that up to the same HD on the same network.
Can you help?

Is there no way that time machine can delete the oldest back up when it becomes full?
Time Machine will automatically start to delete the oldest backups first to make room for new backups when the drive is full. It has worked this way since its introduction about 4 years ago.
The one thing that can throw this off is if the drive is near full, and you suddenly ask Time Machine to make a very large backup. Then, Time Machine can have problems, and you have to manually delete some older backups.
I thought about time capsule, but someone told me that it runs very hot and has no off switch.
Well, the Time Capsule is an AirPort Exreme in a larger case with a built in hard drive. My 4th Generation Time Capsule and 3rd Generation AirPort Extreme both run about the same, heat wise in my experience. If anything...the AirPort Extreme runs a bit warmer than the Time Capsule....if my hand is any kind of accurate indicator. And, as you know, the Airport Extreme does not have an "Off" switch either.
I spoke to a lady in the Apple store today about a bigger drive and asked her what will happen when it gets full. She suggested that then I get another one. Sounds pretty crazy to me!
Sounds like a salesperson....hoping that you will buy more stuff.

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Using Time Machine w/external hard drive connected to airport extreme

I hooked up an external hard drive on my airport extreme. I see it in sharing, however, Time Machine doesn't recognize it as a back-up drive unless I have it directly connected to my MacBook Pro. How do I get Time Machine to recognize the external drive when it's connected to the airport?

FWIW, the AEBS has known problems sharing a directly connected HD. Take a look over in the AEBS forums, and you'll see that this is a very common problem. Perhaps Apple will update the firmware and rectify this problem.
Cheers,
Andreas

Time Machine clueless about external HD connected to Airport Extreme

This is not my first post about HD connected to Airport Extreme. Just came back from Apple store. Spoke to Geniuses there in tech support desk and they are clueless.
Here is situation: have 7 Macs in the house connected to Airport Extreme wirelessly. In that respect things are working fine. Last week I purchased brand new WD My Book external HD and connected it to Airport Extreme using USB (it also has Fire Wire but that is not a point here).
As per forum advices I re-formated drive using disk utility to Mac Extended journaled, GUID. here is result:
iMAC x 3, with Tiger - see, mount and use My Book easily, shows on desktop as mounted drive
MacBook Pro w. Tiger - same as above, back up every day to My Book
MacBook with Leopard x 2 - no My Book on desktop, Time Machine doesn't see it
Mac Mini with Leopard - same as above, no trace of My Book, Time Machine doesn't see it
* This problem evolved from me having regular 160 GB FAT32 HD connected to Airport Extreme. Again Tiger machines were using that drive every day no sweat.
* Then I decided to upgrade all Macs to Leopard for one single reason only - Time Machine. (Good that I didn't do it but rather decided to introduce new, bigger and better USB drive first).
* Western Digital My Book is being sold in Apple stores as "drive that is recognized by Time Machine" so I bought 1TB unit.
* All Macs and Airport Extreme are up to date.
Any suggestions? Thank you in advance,
Zack

I cannot tell you why your Apple Genius told you what he did, but he/she was dead wrong. Apple sells its Time Capsule product, so they are not interested in making the AEBS a product competitor.
I will give you a little secret for which you will forever be indebted to me.
Open your Terminal application in the Utilities folder and at the prompt enter or paste the following command pressing RETURN after:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Miraculously your problem will be Solved.

Using Time Machine with 3rd party drive connected to Airport Extreme

In Snow Leopard, I connected a G-Tech drive to my Airport Extreme via USB and used that with Time Machine for backups. It worked flawlessly most of the time, although my understanding is that this technique has not been supported by Apple since Snow Leopard was released. Is anybody using this method in Lion? If so, does it work OK?
I got a little worried reading about the issues some folks have had doing Time Machine backups in Lion so instead of trying that method, I got another drive and connected it via FireWire to my MacBook Pro for backing up in Time Machine. The first backup took a little over an hour. The second one took just a few moments. I do notice that my hard drive stays mounted on my desk top even when Time Machine is inactive. Is this normal?

Lots of people do this, but it is not supported and there have been reports of data corruption even if things appeared to be working for quite some time. The question you have to ask yourself is whether it is worth the risk. This is a backup, after all. An unreliable backup is worse than no backup (because you think you have one when you may not).
What you have experienced with your external drive is all normal. The first backup takes quite a while because it is both large and there are lots of small files to copy. (Copying lots of small files is slower than copying a few large ones.) Subsequent backups will usually be much faster. One hour for the initial backup is actually very fast. Finally, external drives remain mounted even when Time Machine is not using them, unlike network drives which are only kept mounted while the backup is active.

Corrupted time machine backup on external hd connected to Airport extreme?

I have an Airport extreme 11n (not gigabit) and a Lacie external hard disk connected to the usb port. Time machine is set up to make backups wirelessly from my laptop to this external disk. It used to work fine, but no I have the following problem all the time: Time machine complains that it cannot perform the backup. When this happens, I cannot access the drive from the finder (normally I can). I check the drive physically and I notice that it's LED show that it is constantly reading/writing (is yellow instead of red). The solution is (as also suggested by Apple support) to use disk utility and perform a repair on the drive. This solves the problem, but... only temporarily. After one or two successful backups, the same problem: no backup possible, drive not accessible in finder, disk utility finds problems. What can i do?

Somehow I thought that with OS X 10.6 Time Machine did support disks connected to Airport devices, but I guess I'm wrong.
The LaCie disk has indeed its own external power supply brick. Is this relevant?
I found this article http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550
which is not about airport disks, but I checked my LaCie disk and it has a Master Boot Record Partition Scheme. Should I change that?
It is also formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I thought that this was the recommended format, but checking in the Help of OS X 10.6, I found an article "Disks that can be used with Time Machine" which says: "The most common format for a Time Machine backup disk is Mac OS Extended format, but Time Machine also supports Mac OS Extended (Case sensitive, Journaled) and XSan formats"
implying that the Extended format is more preferable than the Journaled format, right?
I don't think the disk drive is defective: I after "repairing" it with disk utility, I could back up again, at least one time, before the problem reappears.

Can Time Machine backup a USB drive connected to Airport Extreme?

Hi all,
I have an airport extreme that I used to run a shared USB drive for the family. I have a network drive attached to the airport extreme which I used for Time Machine backups, how do I tell Time Machine to back up the USB drive also?
All help very gratefully recieved.

Thanks for your reply,
When I open Time Machine preferences I can either select a different disk to use as the backup disk or exclude items from the back up. I cannot find an option to add the USB drive attached to my airport extreme. Apologies if I am being a little dumb.

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

How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad

Hello,
How do I access external hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme via iPad / windows laptop.
I donot have a Mac and I use windows laptop.

For your iPad, you will need an app, like FileBrowser, to access the external drive.
For your Windows laptop, you would access the drive like any other network share. The basic format is: \\<servername>\<sharename>, where, in this case, the servername is the base station name and the sharename is the name of the external drive.

Can I access my files stored in the hard disk connected to airport extreme when I am away? how?

Can I access my files stored in the hard disk connected to airport extreme when i am away? How?

You can't technically. iPads cannot directly read HDDs like a computer can.
You will need an app liie FileBrowser to do this. Of course all file operations will be done through the App itself.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/filebrowser-access-files-on/id364738545?mt=8

Two hard drives connected to Airport Extreme. How to include one of them in TimeMachine Backup and use other disc as Time Machine backup disc?

Hi,
the title says it all. I've got an airport extreme and two hard drives connected to it. My idea was to use one as my additional storage (say DISC STORAGE) and the other one as my backup drive (say DISC BACKUP). I would like to backup my mac AND DISC STORAGE together to DISC BACKUP using time machine. My mac has 256 GB HDD, DISC STORAGE is 1 TB big, DISC BACKUP 2 TB. So there are no space issues.
Problem: DISC STORAGE is not included in Time Machine's backup to DISC BACKUP. At the moment, only the mac is backed up to DISC BACKUP.
Does anybody know if and how I can include DISC STORAGE in the backup process?
By the way, DISC STORAGE is not listed in the "exclude from backup" list in Time Machine.
Thanks!
Arne

Unforrtunately, Time Machine cannot backup from a network drive to another drive. Time Machine will only backup a Mac and a drive that is directly attached to the Mac, via USB or FireWire.
You will need to use an application like Carbon Copy Cloner or SupoerDuper to be able to backup from DISC BACKUP to DISC STORAGE.

Can i use time machine with a hard drive connected to the airport extreme?

Just wondering if there is any news on this since the last post was in 2008.
The Apple website info regarding the Airport Extreme mentions attaching a hard drive to the Airport Extreme, but I can't see whether that could be used for a Mac using Time Machine.

You can attach a hard drive, but Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port at the AirPort Extreme are not supported by Apple, so it's not possible to say what your actual results might be.
If you decide to try this, it would be wise to have a secondary backup plan in place as well.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html

How do I access my hard drive connected to airport extreme?

I've already imported video to my hard drive. I had it previously connected via firewire. It's there in an imovie 08. However, when I open up imovie in the "Event Library" panel, my hard drive has a yellow triangle with an exclamation point on it. Does anyone know how I can access this?
Do I have to choose "import" first and then copy the movie back into imovie? I think this would defeat the purpose of storing the footage on the external drive, right? I'm trying to make my first movie, so please be gentle if this is an easy question to answer. It's throwing me for a loop right now.
Thanks again!

sorry, the hard drive is connected via USB to my airport extreme. Here's how i can look at the files:
Macintosh HD, under "shared" i select my hard drive, open it and then click on imovie events, then i can access the 19 different folders which contain multiple clips in each folder, along with an imovie thumbs file etc.
However, in imovie when create a new project, then click on import, it will ask me where i want to save the files, and on the drop down arrow, the only choice is my macintosh HD and I can't choose anything else. I really don't want to save them to my computer's hard drive if i don't have to. It seems there should be an easier way to do this, but i'm overlooking something. I just want to be able to make a movie with the clips that are already saved on my hard drive which is connected via airport extreme. Thanks again!

Can Time Machine back up a external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme

I recently purchased a new macbook pro, and airport extreme.
I attached a 750 GB external hard drive to the macbook pro, and reformatted it so time machine made the initial back up and hourly back ups from there.
Is it possible to now to unattach the external hard drive and attach it to the airport extreme, where the mac book time machine will back up to the external hard drive through airport extreme?
i have seen conflicting posts is if this is possible.

That would probably be safest.
Note that Apple's position on this got even more negative with Snow Leopard: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
It does work well for some folks, not so well for some, and not at all for others.
I got a refurb dual-band model in September. It worked well for about 3 months, but lately I get the error 109 and corrupted backups every few days, that Disk Utility can't fix. Once, Disk Warrior could, but since then, if they're corrupted, nothing helps. That's on a year-old Seagate drive that seems fine otherwise, especially when connected directly.
And I have an excellent wireless connection; it's only about 10 feet from my Mac, speeds are great, S/N ratio is good, etc.
It makes no sense to me that a TC would work better, but they seem to.

Problem in restore software and files from time machine to new hard disc

hello, recently im just change my macbook's hard disc, and i can't open any of my software and also the finder is keep no responding after i restore my files and software from time machine. Got any solution about it?

I see. Don't do that. I do not believe using Migration Assistant is a valid method of accomplishing what you intend.
Furthermore, unless you are using the "Enter Time Machine" feature, you really shouldn't pick and choose what you want to copy from a Time Machine backup... "no user serviceable parts inside". You can certainly find and individual files and folders in the Finder, but you will run into the permissions problems you describle. I would not attempt to circumvent those protections.
As I understand Time Machine, you must either restore a volume from a Time Machine backup, thereby erasing the volume first, or restore individual files and folders by using "Enter Time Machine" when the backup has already been properly designated for the source.
Since your replacement hard disk - the source, now - is technically new, the latter is not an option. It's as if you were trying to restore to a different computer. This can't be done.

What's the most recent opinion about Time Machine backups to Hard Drives connected to the USB port on the Airport Extreme Base Station (5th generation)?

I have been searching the Apple communities and Internet for a final answer. I just bought an Airport Extreme Base Station (5th generation) and LaCie d2 quadra 1TB external drive as a replacement for TWO failed Time Capsules, neither of which Apple would replace due to failed power supplies. I formatted the 1TB drive using Disk Utility (Mac OS extended (journaled)) from my MacBook Pro, and then plugged into the Airport Extreme Base Station USB port. The Airport Extreme Base Station see the Hard Drive, and my MacBook Pro sees the Hard Drive in my finder under shared resources. Time Machine, however, does not see the drive. Is there a solution for this problem? If Time Machine will not work, is there another software product out there that will work, like Carbon Copy. Having to plug the backup drive into the USB port of your laptop every evening kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Keeping in mind that this is not supported by Apple, I have been successful at doing the following:
1) Format the entire drive (1 Partition) as Mac Extended (Journaled). You must click in Options and set it as a GUID Partition Table (first option)
2) Plug drive via USB to AEBS
3) Using Airport Utility, use Manual Setup, then under Disks, select the new Disk and click File Sharing, then Enable File Sharing and Secured Shared Disks (recommended, of course). Other settings are up to you.
4) IMPORTANT: you will NOT see this Disk in Time Machine until you open Finder and double-click on it. You will not need to do this again (hopefully).
5) Now it should appear in Time Machine. Remember to exclude any large files like Virtual Machines, since they will be re-backed-up (is that a word?) every time it changes in any way.
6) Remember that the first backup (over WiFi) is the longest. Leave the computer alone during this period.
Good luck, and let us all know how it went for you!

Time machine on a hard disc connected to airport extreme

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