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!

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How do I open the same ports on an Airport Extreme Base Station for multiple computers at the same time?

As the title suggests...
I have a mix of five Mac and PC's at home using an Airport Extreme Base Station as the router.   I need many ports opened on the AEBS for all of the computers- not just one computer. (for example: three people want to play TF2 on Steam at the same time; each machine needs the correct ports open on the router).   Port forwarding only allows me to forward a given port to a single IP, yet I need that port open for five differnt IP's, all at the same time.
How do I do that on an AEBS?
In the same way, I have a small office of four iMacs using an old airport with the same exact issue.   I would like to be able to connect to all of them remotely with Apple Remote Desktop, but the port forwarding on the airport only allows a port to forward to a single IP.   I want to be able to tunnel into the office network and log onto any machine behind the Airport extreme... not just a single IP.    I currently have it set up where I can tunnel into the office from my house, I can find the one machine that the port forwarding has been assigned to, I can log on and everything is just fine... with one machine.    How do I open the firewall for the other machines?
TL,DR version: How do you open ports on an Airport Extreme Base Station instead of forwarding ports?   Forwarding ports doesn't work for multiple IP's.

You can open a single or multiple ports to a single device or different ports to different devices, but you cannot open the same port to multiple devices via the AirPort Utility for the Apple routers.

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it?

My time machine backup external hard drive has failed. I have a newer external drive already connected to my MAC but can't figure out how to get Time Machine to set up on it

http://pondini.org/TM/21.html

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

Time Machine backup mirrors Hard Drive, but doesn't back up

I noticed a few days ago that my external hard drive, on which I store my Time Machine backups, only mirrors the content of my Hard Drive instead of actually backing up. I don't know if it has anything to do with that fact that I finally recently upgraded from OS Snow Leopard to OS Lion, which is the last OS upgrade my late 2007 model MacBook will accept. I'm using 10.7.5, build 11G63
I can drag files from my Time Machine backup folders going back to Feb. 22, 2013 on to my desktop, but they do not copy. Instead, they move out onto the desk top from the Time Machine folders and the same files disappear from the equivalent hard drive file folders, as if they had been dragged to the desk top. Likewise, any file I drag from any hard drive folder to the desk top disappears from the equivalent Time Machine folder. Conversely, files moved from the desk top to either a Time Machine folder or its hard drive equivalent show up in the other.
I don't know the significance of the Feb. 22 date, since I upgraded to OS Lion sometime after that.
Any suggestions?

I solved this myself. I found that, after upgrading to Mac OS Lion from Snow Leopard, some of the aliased folders in my Time Machine backup hard drive are not locked, but the regular folders are locked. Apparently this is new in Lion. (As I mentioned above, my MacBook is too old to upgrade to Mountain Lion.) I had based my query above on my ability to delete things from some aliased folders on my backup hard drive. Fortunately, they are locked in the equivalent non-aliased folders.

Import apps from time machine backup ext. hard drive

I just reinstalled by Mac OS X 10.5.8 using my original installation discs. I'd like to selectively import a stand-alone application (vitual piano) from my external hard drive time machine which I had used to back up my Mac. Can I do this after I upgrade to Snow Leopard?

I solved this myself. I found that, after upgrading to Mac OS Lion from Snow Leopard, some of the aliased folders in my Time Machine backup hard drive are not locked, but the regular folders are locked. Apparently this is new in Lion. (As I mentioned above, my MacBook is too old to upgrade to Mountain Lion.) I had based my query above on my ability to delete things from some aliased folders on my backup hard drive. Fortunately, they are locked in the equivalent non-aliased folders.

Question about Time Machine backup on external drive containing photos

I have a Le Cie external hard drive with iPhoto '08 photos on it. I bought the drive when I started running out of room on my early 2008 iMac and moved a bunch of iphoto pictures and imovie movies onto it. Can I use this same external drive to run Time Machine backups? Or would that risk losing the photos that are already on the external drive?? Can an external drive be used for both photo storage and Time Machine backups?
Ultimately, my goal is to update to iPhoto '11, but I would like to have all my photos backed up first in case it doesn't go well.
Thanks!

Yes. You can back up your internal the external drives to the TM drive.
Here is a site that has probably all the info you will need for using and troubleshooting TM. Bookmark this to read and for future reference.
This was created by Pondini:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Move Time Machine backup from hard drive to Time Capsule

I have a new Time Capsule. Can I move my existing Time Machine backup from a hard drive to the TC? The tips given back in 2010 in this forum are no longer available.

It is extremely difficult if the disk you are talking about is plugged into your computer.. TM does different kind of file for network drives.. so you need to trick it.
See Q18 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

How do I reinstall Mavericks from a time machine backup? (Hard drive failure)

Ok, so I have a mid-2007 iMac and the hard drive finally died. It originally shipped with Leopard or something, but I had it upgraded to Mavericks. I have an external hard drive with a current Time Machine backup on it. I am about to replace the internal hard drive with a brand new (unformatted) hard drive. So here is the question: Is there a way to boot from my Time Machine backup and then reformat the drive and do a Time Machine recovery?
I have the old OS X install disks, but I don't want to have to upgrade through all of the old OS Xs. I also have a Macbook that I could create a bootable USB from--something like this (http://lifehacker.com/how-to-create-an-os-x-mavericks-usb-installation-drive-145 0280026)--and then I could reformat the drive and recover from Time Machine. But is there an easier way? Can I just boot straight from my external hard drive that has the backup on it?
Thanks for your help everyone, I'm hoping to be able to take care of all of this tonight.

You can try this. OPTION boot the computer.
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the
"OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the disk icon labeled Recovery HD.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.
This should boot the Mavericks Utilities Menu.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
When the formatting is done quit Disk Utility and return to the Main Menu. Now select the option to restore/reinstall OS X from a Time Machine backup. Follow the directions.

Restore Time Machine backup after hard drive crash

My hard drive on the mac book crashed, so I replaced it. Now I need to get my time machine back up on the new drive. I've already started using the computer and reinstalled lion, so I'm not getting the original "backup" screen. How do I find my old time machine backups?

Your best bet is to do a full restore from your backups. See #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Would Time Machine backup external hard drive attached to my Mac?

I have a hard drive which is attached to my iMac 24*7. I plan to move all my movies & pictures over to it. Would the Time Machine backup (through a different hard drive) backup my Hard drive?

Yes, TM will back up any Mac-formatted volume attached to your Mac.
Regards.

Copy Time Machine backup from Hard drive to Time Capsule

I have my Time Machine backup on my external hard drive. Is there a way to copy this to the Time Capsule so I don't lose the backup and to save time on the initial backup. Is there a way to make the Backups.backupdb folder into the Time Capsule Sparsebundle? Any ideas?

AppleCare just told me this was not possible (5-23-8 3:56pm EDT).
This is too bad as people do not want to lose their archive data and it is possible with pre-existing wifi TM backups (ex. my wifi's MB use to backup to my local iMac and since it is sparsebundle, it can be moved around(now backups up to AEBS/USB 10.5.2) same image file)
Cheers
-wsn

Time Machine backup & External Hard drive issue

Hello,
I have a MBP running Snow Leopard. I use two external Hard drives for Time Machime backups. The first one Seagate2TB is working with TM just fine.
The second one Seagate3TB worked with TM just fine for about a year until two days ago. Since two days ago, TM doesn't backup any new data (or file changes) anymore to this 3TB drive. It back's up only a few kb and cleans up, while it should backup at least 200Mb that I just uploaded to my MBP.
Here are two (maybe) useful additional info:
- I used disk utility to verify this 3TB hard drive and it returned okay. I also use this 3TB hard drive to backup a different Macbook and it still works just fine.
- At the same time, my TM woks on my other 2TB hard drive.
Can someone please let me know what the issue is and how to fix it?
Thank you very much.
PS: These hard drives are connected to my MBP via a USB cable not time capsule.

thanks for the suggestions -- actually, the "real" issue is that my technophobe spouse needs the "documents" file backed up. TimeMachine "should" work --does not. And because working from dropbox (which is a great idea and already installed) would mean opening up a file other than "documents" - it would cause such anxiety, I was hoping to write an apple script to back up the file daily to someplace else without me having to physically do it myself.
Here is what I am trying --I will put the entire folder on DB and then create an alias (that looks like the same title as the original) and leave that on the computer -- I wonder if that will work?!
Or maybe I am confused. I thought I needed to work from the document in DB in order for it to sync there...
Thanks again for the ideas!

Can time machine backup internal hard drive and external hard drive?

Hi, I have an iMac that I recently bought Leopard for specifically for Time Machine, which I heard rave reviews. I have a 160gb internal drive that I use for the OS and a 750gb external drive that I use for storing all my media (pics, music, movies). I recently bought an additional external hard drive, capacity 1tb. The original intention was to backup both my internal drive and my external drive to the new 1 tb drive through time machine.
When I go into the Time Machine preferences/options, it lists that the 750 drive is not to be backed up and I cannot remove it from the list. I called Apple support and they stated that you cannot backup an external drive through Time Machine which I think is ridiculous.
Both drives are connected to the computer via Firewire. Is there something I'm not doing right? Does anyone have a possible solution?
Please help as I incredibly annoyed with Apple if this is actually the case. Thanks

Andrew Graceffa wrote:
Hi, I have an iMac that I recently bought Leopard for specifically for Time Machine, which I heard rave reviews. I have a 160gb internal drive that I use for the OS and a 750gb external drive that I use for storing all my media (pics, music, movies). I recently bought an additional external hard drive, capacity 1tb. The original intention was to backup both my internal drive and my external drive to the new 1 tb drive through time machine.
When I go into the Time Machine preferences/options, it lists that the 750 drive is not to be backed up and I cannot remove it from the list. I called Apple support and they stated that you cannot backup an external drive through Time Machine
they told you that?! unbelievable. that's quite false. TM will back up any directly attached drive (external or internal) provided it's properly formatted. it has to be formatted mac os extended. how is your drive formatted?
which I think is ridiculous.
Both drives are connected to the computer via Firewire. Is there something I'm not doing right? Does anyone have a possible solution?
Please help as I incredibly annoyed with Apple if this is actually the case. Thanks!!!
Message was edited by: V.K.

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

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)?

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