Wireless Time Machine Backup via AEBS Failing

I just bought a Airport Extreme Base Station (5th Generation) so that I can use an external hard drive (Western Digital My Passport SE) to wirelessly backup my Mac Book Pro. I've been using the external hard drive as my time machine via USB cable and it works fine. However if I connect the external hard drive to the AEBS, the TM software says that the "disk is unavailable", even though I can selected the external drive as a TM disk in the TM preferences and the Mac Book Pro can read and write from the external hard drive wirelessly using the airport. The only function not working is the TM wirelessly.
Has Apple blocked this functionality? I called Apple Care and they said it is unsupported and that they will only help if I buy the time capsule.
This is what I have tried from of posted that have failed with the same error "disk is unavaiable":
Updated firmware on AEBS and external drive
Reformatted the external drive using the Mac Book Pro disk utility to MAC OS (Journaled)
Erased old backups and started the TM wirelessly from scratch
Started TM through USB, canceled then tried wirelessly
Tried this terminal command: sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Turned off the wireless signal and connect AEBS via Ethernet cable to the Mac Book and started the TM
Used another external hard drive (Seagate 500 gig)
I'm stuck! Any ideas?

I'm afraid that you are not going to like this answer, but it will explain the difficulties that you...and almost all other users who try this....will experience sooner or later.
Apple does not support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme
Reference this Apple Support Document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
All you can really do if you want to continue to try to backup using Time Machine to a disk at the USB port of the AirPort Extreme is connect the drive directly to your Mac and run Disk Utility to "repair disk" and/or "repair disk permissions".
This will likely get you going again....until the backup becomes corrupted again....which might be a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. Eventually, Disk Utility will not be able to repair the disk.
You might want to consider a secondary backup plan if you elect to contine to try the backups through the AirPort Extreme.

Similar Messages

Two Discs shown for wireless time machine backup., "Data" and "Extreme"

I have a new 1TB iMAC 24" connected to Time Capsule via ethernet and wireless, one MacBook connected to Time Capsule via ethernet, and another MacBook that uses wireless. The iMAC and the ethernet-connected MacBook backup just fine using Time Machine. When I try a wireless Time Machine backup from the wireless MacBook, the backup fails and I get the "unable to ... image ..." message (don't remember the exact wording). When I try to "Change Disc" in Time Capsule preferences, I see two discs, one labeled "Data" and the other labeled "Extreme." Which one should I choose?

Try a new post in the 10.5 Time Machine forum.
DALE

I can't access my wireless time machine backup.

When I try to access my backup files wirelessly it says enter your name and password for the server "Base Station ddb9a1". I do not know my name and password. I had did a clean install to upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion. I used the migration assistant, but I can't access my wireless time machine backup. Please someone help.

Hello,
I would like an answer to this question as well. As this is a time capsule and not a Airport extreme question I think here is a better start.
I'm planning on getting a Time Capsule but have been backing up to a 500GB USB drive connected directly to my MacBook. It's probably only a month or 2 worth of back ups and not that big of a deal but if i get a Time Capsule and want to access the old back ups it would be nice to know if that is possible and if so how it can be done. I was thinking it might be possible to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner and move the back up file to the Time Capsule drive and erase the external that I have now, and have Time Machine use that file like it has been doing from the wired drive.
I will look around the posts and see if I can find anything. In the mean time if someone finds something it would be nice if you could put the link in this discussion.
Cheers,
Shadowrider

Time machine backups continue to fail. I keep getting the message Sparse bundle in use

My time machine backups continue to fail. I keep getting the message: sparse bundle occupied. Any suggestions?

Half off all problems seem to be solved by simply powering off a device, waiting a few minutes, and then powering it back up again.
What happens when you do this for the Time Capsule?

Time Machine backup to AEBS external hard drive

Buy in haste, repent at leisure they say. I needed a new wireless router and thought the AEBS looked just the thing - and a quick look on the spec page showed you could connect an external hard drive via USB - great, I could back up all our computers wirelessly I thought, using Time Machine. Didn't see the small print that says you cannot do this, tho' can't see why Apple couldn't make it work.
I have had a whole string of hard drives go down in the past year, LaCie, Maxtor, WD, and two internal hard drives from a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. The only ones that seem bullet proof are the Gtech drives I have for editing in Final Cut so I bought one of those for our communal Time Machine drive.
To begin with everything worked fine despite Apple not supporting this set up. Then with a regular Software update I must have upped the firmware to 7.4.2 and the system stopped working. I discovered the problem and went back to 7.4.1 but no joy. Then, inexplicably, it began to work again later that day so I just breathed a sigh of relief. Now it's happened again - I realised that I had updated to 7.4.2 again - presumably from a Snow Leopard update, and I am now unable to get it going again even after going back to 7.4.1.
I can select the external HD so that it appears on the desk top as a wireless drive, it appears in the list of available disks in TM, but if you ask it to back up it takes an age to return a message saying it 'could not access the sparsebundle (error 109).
It seems to me I have invested heavily in a system that is never going to work but I wondered if there was some way of backing up manually over the wireless link using another type of back up system? Or are there other things I should try? I know some people seem to have this set up working fine...

The problem here is the way Apple chooses to implement Time Machine Backup in 10.6.x to a Network volume. When TM first came out myself and a bunch of similarly naive Unix hackers figured we could get the best of both worlds by backing up with Time Machine to a backed up or otherwise redundant network volume using Time Machine. But in the beginning TM didn't backup to network volumes. It does now by creating a sparse bundle on the network volume and backing up to the Sparse bundle as if it were a physical, local, disk drive. I seems logical to infer that Time Machine was written to backup to locally connected disk drives which differ from network disk drives in one very important respect: You can tell a local, physical disk drive that you need to know the status of any given write operation and you can trust that result with a reasonably high degree of confidence. That same can't be said for a write to network drive so Apple fakes it by creating a Pseudo Drive or Disk Image Drive on the network volume and writing way. The Sparse Bundle Error comes up when the Pseudo Drive wasn't put away correctly. There are filesystem repair programs to fix this condition which are described in other threads. Dig around for "fsck sparse bundle" on Google the next time this happens and you may be able to rescue things.

Time Machine backup via ethernet to Time Capsule

I need to replace my 5 year old FireWire hard disk. I'm considering a Time Capsule and would connect it to my main Mac via ethernet.
Will my iMac see the Time Capsule disk and mount it on the desktop? And can I use it for Time Machine backups when connected with ethernet (rather than AirPort)?
I assume Time Capsule will do the above, but would like to hear from users who's used it like this. Thanks!

I would have to disagree with Smokerz. I've had repeated problems backing up to my airdisk through my AEBS when my computer was connected via an ethernet cable. Backups would go fine for a week or so, then suddenly the DMG wouldn't mount. There was no way to successfully repair it, and I'd have to start over again.
I have several computers on my network, and they were all backing up just fine, except mine, which was connecting with a cable. The others were backing up wirelessly with no problems.
Finally, on a hunch, I disconnected my ethernet cable from my AEBS and opted for using my Airport card. It seemed silly since the computer is right next to the AEBS, but it has been working for nearly a month with no significant errors.
(Before someone asks, I did not have the Airport connection running simultaneously with the ethernet connection. I used only one at a time, and I had them correctly configured with good, working equipment.)
Message was edited by: fletchbiz

Moving external time machine backup to AEBS

I've been backing up my mac to an external drive for a while. Recently I just got an AEBS and I want to move that drive to the base station. This works fine, but time machine on my mac no longer recognizes it's backups. How to you migrate you backup to the base station without deleting your old backups and starting over?

Time Machine backups to AirDisks (e.g. USB HDD attached to Extreme) is unsupported, but has been successful by some. As well, once you decide to move any old TM backups (HDD connected directly to the Mac) to an AirDisk, you cannot continue backing up to your previous TM backup. The format it saves to vs. a local HDD is different. The folder structure you see becomes a sparsebundle/disk image via the AirDisk.
If you are interested in proceeding with your plan, check these links out:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8225748&#8225748
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8650723&#8650723
http://jamesshore.com/Blog/How-to-Accelerate-Time-Machine.html

Time Machine Backup on DS212j failed

This morning everything was fine, but then it happened out of nowhere
Usually my MBP does it Backups on a Synology DiskStation212j, but today it got some errors.
So here is the log:
16.05.12 14:44:56,180 com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
16.05.12 14:44:56,203 com.apple.backupd: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://tm@DiskStation%20(Time%20Machine)._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeBackups
16.05.12 14:44:57,738 com.apple.backupd: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/TimeBackups using URL: afp://tm@DiskStation%20(Time%20Machine)._afpovertcp._tcp.local/TimeBackups
16.05.12 14:45:17,665 com.apple.backupd: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
16.05.12 14:45:20,489 com.apple.backupd: Disk image /Volumes/TimeBackups/iCustom.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups
16.05.12 14:45:20,495 com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb
16.05.12 14:45:23,745 com.apple.backupd: Error: (-36) Applying backup protections to /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb/iCustom/2012-05-16-080606.inProgress/4FFE2379- CB93-48D8-BD96-B025AB10ED2E
16.05.12 14:45:23,746 com.apple.backupd: Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotStartDate path:/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb/iCustom/2012-05-16-080606.inProgress/4FFE2379- CB93-48D8-BD96-B025AB10ED2E size:17
16.05.12 14:45:23,746 com.apple.backupd: Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotState path:/Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb/iCustom/2012-05-16-080606.inProgress/4FFE2379- CB93-48D8-BD96-B025AB10ED2E size:2
16.05.12 14:47:03,479 com.apple.backupd: 2.28 GB required (including padding), 999.97 GB available
16.05.12 14:47:03,482 com.apple.backupd: Copied 0 files (0 bytes) from volume Crucial M4.
16.05.12 14:47:03,482 com.apple.backupd: Copy stage failed with error:11
16.05.12 14:47:13,545 com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 11
16.05.12 14:47:17,641 com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
16.05.12 14:47:17,930 com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
i googled quite some time, but i havn't found anything helpful.
Since the backup is made on a NAS i can't use the DiskUtility to repair permissions
(My NAS doesn't have any Errors)
Hope that anyone out there knows what to do, i really need to make my Backups

Linc Davis wrote:
Backing up to a third-party NAS with Time Machine is unsupported by Apple
Not so. From the link you posted:
"Note: Some AFP disks from manufacturers other than Apple don’t support Time Machine. If your network uses an AFP disk, but the disk doesn’t appear in the list of devices available for Time Machine backups, contact the disk’s manufacturer."
It says some don't support Time Machine. Many do.
It is true that Apple won't (can't) help diagnose problems with them, as neither the AppleCare or Genius Bar folks have access to 3rd-party NAS drives, much less technical info. But many NASs do work with TM.
Personally, I don't recommend it, as there tend to be complications and limitations; and many of the makers don't provide much support.

Manually deleting Time Machine Backups Via Finder?

Hi everyone,
I'll just pose the question right away:
Is it safe (and feasible) to navigate through my external HD in which I've set up for Time Machine via the Finder and manually select and delete back ups (ie. drag them to the trash can)? Thanks!
If you really want to know why I ask, please read below:
I recently had my logic board replaced. Then I noticed my system was not backing itself up via Time Machine. After a few Google searches I found out that when you replace your logic board, your MAC address changes I also found out that Time Machine pairs its backups via MAC addresses.
I found a procedure to help pair your new MAC address to your previous Time Machine backups from the old logic board and MAC address, this required finding your old MAC address, something I could not do. However also read that after completing the procedure, Time Machine will do a FULL backup, backing up all it had basically. It would not have fit on my external HD anyways.
So my plan was instead to start Time Machine fresh with this new logic board and MAC address. However, it needed to do a full backup as well, and I don't have space for that. I don't want to wipe my external hard drive and start from there, because I'm afraid that something will crash in the whole process of starting a new set of backups. What can I do is, delete a set of backups from the old logic board. I am aware of how to do this via the Time Machine interface. But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface. After having a steady set of new backups, then I'll delete ALL of the old backups.
Thanks ahead of time for any help.

jusdel wrote:
But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface.
Ah, you haven't found the fairly well-hidden +*Browse Other Time Machine Backups+* option.
See #17 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

I had to restore my system from a time machine backup. It Failed...

I had to restore my system from a time machine backup. It seemed to go alright up to it asking me to resart to complete the installation, but it would not boot. It forced a panic screen that told me to force quit my computer and resart which did not resolve anything.
Now I have installed the original Leopard 10.5 but I used to have 10.6.8 on it. How can I get it back to 10.6.8? or do I have to buy it again?
Any ideas why the restore failed?
thanks,
R.

It seems you had a kernel panic (see attached link):
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3742
Regarding upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6.8), you will have to install the disk you used originally. If you have lost it, then you will have to get a new one. The Apple online store sells them for about $29. When you install Snow Leopard, you should then do a Software update.
Ciao.

How to setting up new (June 2011) TC to do wireless time machine backup but not connected to network?

Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
My understanding is that I can use Time Capsule wirelessly to do Time Machine backups by switching out of my wireless network to - I assume - a new Time Capsule generated network(?). It's an extra step, but that beats connecting cables to the computer everytime I need to do backup. Basically it's like an external wireless hard drive that I have to join everytime the backup is updated, right? (Again, if there is a better way to go about doing this, please let me know.)
So how do I go about doing this? The setup manual isn't helpful (not at all).
Here's more detail if necessary. I have 10.8 Macbook Air (which I plan to upgrade to 10.9 soon) and my spouse is running 10.9 Macbook Pro. I am also assuming I don't have to partition Time Capsule, and when the Time Machine backs up, it'll figure who's who.
Thanks in advance.

Hello. Just got new (refurbished June 2011, 2TB) Time Capsule. My building has a shared wifi network, and I'm assuming it's hard to join the network with Time Capsule and still be satisfied with security/privacy/performance. (Of course, if I'm assuming wrong, please let me know!)
Security is ok.. but performance is abominable.
The TC unfortunately has some design limitations that Apple imposed that makes it rather poor for anything but ethernet.
There is a couple of ways around the problem of sequential internet or backups.
1. Get a wireless bridge that is suited to your in-building system.. and plug that into the TC so it can take normal router settings .. This will give you double NAT but I doubt your in building system will be handing out public IP anyway. An airport extreme can do this. Although it is pricey for the same results as a $35 standard wireless bridge. All devices in your place will then get both internet and backup direct to the TC.
One flaw here could be the download limits.. if you have two connections do you get double the downloads.. ??
ie how many IP are allocated to you?? And is it divided between all of them or the more IP clients the more download bandwidth?
2. Use a USB wireless stick in the Mac.. these can be tiny little things now.. just buy Mac compatible ones.. use that for internet and use the internal (faster) wireless for local connections. there are some manual setup tricks needed here but nothing hard.

Time machine backup via target disc mode?

My MBP is stuck at the grey screen on start up and the only way to access it is via target mode.
Is there a way to do a time machine back up through target mode or maybe a migration assist back up onto my external, through target mode.
So that once I have formatted my drive and reinstalled lion I can just restore from time machine or migration assit?
Any help or other solutions are greatly appreciated.

I would not attempt a Time Machine backup that way. Carbon Copy Cloner to an second external hard drive would be better. That way you can extract the exact elements that got corrupted.
If the target machine is not visible, you may need to follow these directions:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1689

Magic Mouse Unusable during Wireless Time Machine Backup

Hello,
I have had the 500gb model Time Capsule for some time which I am using for Time Machine backups. Since its release I have had a Magic Mouse and every time a Time Machine backup is initiated it interfere's with my Magic Mouse and renders it unusable until the backup completes. I have been holding out for a update/fix but none have worked, I would even settle for the ability to configure Time Machine only to backup over night. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards,
- LzK

Take a look at this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12814835&#12814835

Wireless Time Machine Backup

I was told that I cannot backup wirelessly with Time Machine to my Western Dig HD. Has anyone been able to do this. Time Machine will backup wirelessly to Time Capsule - so why not another Ex. HD?

Averysgrammy wrote:
I was told that I cannot backup wirelessly with Time Machine to my Western Dig HD. Has anyone been able to do this. Time Machine will backup wirelessly to Time Capsule - so why not another Ex. HD?
only the following wireless options are supported:
- Time capsule
- a drive directly attached to another mac running leopard
- it also works with drives directly attached to Airport Extreme Base Station
anything else is unsupported. there are hacks to enable backups to other NAS but they are just that - hacks. No guarantees and no support from apple.

Manual restore from a Time Machine backup from a failing disk?

The hard drive on the iMac seemed to be having issues. I called apple and they said to bring it in for a hard drive (recalled) replacement. So, I unplugged the TimeMachine backup drive, and took the iMac in to have the hard drive replaced. When I got it back, it had a fresh install of the OS.
I plugged in the external TimeMachine backup disk, and it wouldn't restore. After running Disk Utility several times (always errored out on the catalog file), I used disk drill to recover all of the files off of it. I saved all of the recovered TimeMachine files to the new internal hard drive. How can I retrieve my files from these backups?
I need mostly the latest version of my Documents folder (and contents), and Desktop folder contents. Eveything else would be a sweet bonus.

Can you open Time Machine at all or can't it find the backup?
If the backup doesn't mount:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170
Inherit a backup: http://pondini.org/TM/B5.html
http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html
General troubleshooting:
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11194
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3275 (note - older article)

Wireless Time Machine Backup via AEBS Failing

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