Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

No Airdisk (Airport) Time Machine Backups!

A simpler method....

I also got Time Machine working over AEBS but with a much simpler method.

1. Connect your USB disk directly to the Mac
2. Set up Time Machine and let your initial backup run
3. Eject the disk and connect to the AEBS
4. You need to 'touch' the disk by opening it in Finder, then Time Machine realises where it is and carries on.

Works for me on my iMac (wired) and Macbook (wireless to AEBS) - TM keeps the backups tidily with separate directories for each machine.

Still have an issue with my Macbook - it doesn't see the disks after sleeping.

Obviously Apple need to fix this - it shouldn't need me to view the disk each time so that TM can see it, and it should enable direct access to new disks via AEBS.
 
Yayyyy! Very good to hear some have gotten AirDisk to work for TM. It was something I was really looking forward too, and you guys are awesome. Hope it works out for everyone else as well:eek:
 
martymcr said:
I also got Time Machine working over AEBS but with a much simpler method.

1. Connect your USB disk directly to the Mac
2. Set up Time Machine and let your initial backup run
3. Eject the disk and connect to the AEBS
4. You need to 'touch' the disk by opening it in Finder, then Time Machine realises where it is and carries on.

Works for me on my iMac (wired) and Macbook (wireless to AEBS) - TM keeps the backups tidily with separate directories for each machine.

Still have an issue with my Macbook - it doesn't see the disks after sleeping.

Obviously Apple need to fix this - it shouldn't need me to view the disk each time so that TM can see it, and it should enable direct access to new disks via AEBS.
Click to expand...

Great! Thanks -- but still, it should have been implemented by Apple in a totally straight way.
 
CavemanUK said:
Just playing devils advocate here but is it wise to rely on unsupported methods when your primary goal is the integrity of your backup data?
Click to expand...


You son of satan you!

Not sure really - will probably move the Time Machine disk and connect it direct to my iMac, share it out and back Macbook up to it - this looks like it will work as a shared disk on my iMac appears in the Macbook as a possible TM destination.
 
CavemanUK said:
Just playing devils advocate here but is it wise to rely on unsupported methods when your primary goal is the integrity of your backup data?
Click to expand...

on MR I'm confident that these methods will be tested and feedback will be given. Everyone will pull out alright, I'm sure.
 
Regarding the safety of your data if you want to use an unsupported Time Machine/AirDisk feature, I can't see how it can be a problem if you use this workaround posted by A@ron:


A@ron said:
1) disconnect airport disk and plug into computer as a USB drive directly.
2) Set up time machine to use this volume.
3) In terminal cd to volume "cd /Volume/HDD"
4) In terminal "touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported" this will create an invisible file.
5) In terminal "sudo chown root:admin .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
6) In terminal "sudo chmod 1775 .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
7) In terminal "ls -l -a" the .com.apple.timemachine.supported file should be -rwxrwxr-t
8) eject disk, unplug from mac, plug into Airport.
9) mount at mac using connect to server in finder (command k) and afp://airportname.local./HDname
10) see if time machine now sees the drive and tries to use it.
Click to expand...

All you are doing there is enabling Time Machine to recognise the AirDisk, which is presumably exactly what it did in the earlier builds of Leopard before they disabled it.

Apple may have disabled it due to speed problems and reliability when trying to do the initial backup over wireless - 2 days to copy 500GB would turn any user right off Time Machine! But if you do the initial backup with the drive plugged in, then use Time Machine over wireless thereafter, it should be invisible and problem-free.
 
CavemanUK said:
Just playing devils advocate here but is it wise to rely on unsupported methods when your primary goal is the integrity of your backup data?
Click to expand...

The primary goal for many people is convenience, not necessarily integrity. That's the whole reason people are excited about Time Machine rather than all the other backup apps that are out there. It's not that people haven't realised in the past that it's a pretty good idea to make backups, it just doesn't seem worth the effort.

Plugging in an external drive every time may again not be worth the effort, and the likelihood that it will have a wobble over the network is probably quite small.

And even if it does go nuts and totally corrupt the Time Machine backup, Time Machine will probably notice it immediately and tell you "hey, looks like you don't have a backup setup anymore".
 
Crap AEBS

I've had problems since my last post - my AEBS is randomly disconnected my drives, so I've had to move them to a direct USB connection to my iMac.

Once they are locally connected, you can share them so remote machines can use them for TM, and you can also backup up other locally connected external disks.
 
we have three macbooks in the house. is it possible if one is connected to an external hard drive, for the other two to use that hard drive as a backup over the network? will time machine create a seperate folder for each mac?
 
D1G1T4L said:
This includes NAS drives?
Click to expand...

I've read the whole thread, and I can't see if anyone answered this question.

I brought a Buffalo Linkstation 500gb gigabit NAS drive specially for Time Machine. (4 iBooks to backup to it over a wireless router, after plugging in directly for the initial load)

I will be VERY disappointed if it doesn't work :(

Has anyone got the GM Time Machine to work with a NAS drive?

(I'm not even sure if the Buffalo can be reformatted to HFS, or if it has to stay in FAT32 due to its linux controller board)
 
ac-mac said:
we have three macbooks in the house. is it possible if one is connected to an external hard drive, for the other two to use that hard drive as a backup over the network? will time machine create a seperate folder for each mac?
Click to expand...

In a word YES !!!!

Time Machine creates a folder called Backups.backupdb on the external drive, then folders inside for each machine.

If you share the external disk from Preferences your other Macs will be able to use it for TM.

Just don't bother trying the AEBS method for now - it's rubbish and doesn't work reliably.
 
ChrisA said:
Now I'm glad I ordered Leopard through Amazon. I can cancel it. No
need to spend $109 if it is broken. I'll wait until Apple fixes it.
I can return the router for a refund too. If this is really true Apple
will look really stupid in the press.
Click to expand...

Broken? They took out a non-advertised feature.

Some people really do make me wonder how they base their logic.
 
Diatribe said:
It was advertised all right... and not too little.
Click to expand...

And at the bottom of that page it said features were subject to change, and that's what they did. They never said it WOULD be in there, which is unfortunate, but wouldn't help now either.

I tried the second method (backing up via USB first then unplugging and waiting for it to automatically do it via wireless. It's been "preparing" to do the wireless incremental for ages now and I'm not sure what it's doing. I guess I can disable it and wait for an official patch. However I'll let you know if it works.
 
samh004 said:
And at the bottom of that page it said features were subject to change, and that's what they did. They never said it WOULD be in there, which is unfortunate, but wouldn't help now either.

I tried the second method (backing up via USB first then unplugging and waiting for it to automatically do it via wireless. It's been "preparing" to do the wireless incremental for ages now and I'm not sure what it's doing. I guess I can disable it and wait for an official patch. However I'll let you know if it works.
Click to expand...

Yeah well, I know that features are subject to change, I just think that does only legal justice. It'll still sit badly with a lot of users.
 
This is because Leopard HFS+ 'thinks different'

Apple had to change HFS+ to support 'multilinks' aka multiple hard links in Leopard, for Time Machine to work. [1]

My guess is, first time you connect an HFS+ disk to Leopard, it 'enables' it for mutli-linking. Hence why these workarounds work - the Airport Extreme itself cant enable mutli-linking, but after you've hooked the disk into your mac, its enabled, and so is valid when shared over AFP from the Airport Extreme.

This explains why the official line is that network Time Machine backups require a Leopard host... because the remote host has to have enabled the multi-linking feature on the backup volume's HFS+ filesystem.

I strongly suspect a forthcoming Airport Extreme firmware update will address this problem, and enable Time Machine backing up to AirDisks.

[1] http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html&page=2

"Time Machine does something new and different that actually required Apple to make changes to the underlying Mac file system, HFS+. The new change is referred to multi-links, which are similar to "hard links" common to Unix users..."
 
mungler said:
Apple had to change HFS+ to support 'multilinks' aka multiple hard links in Leopard, for Time Machine to work. [1]
Click to expand...
If this is true then surely it would take more than just plugging an AEBS disk into Leopard Mac for its FS to update. I would have thought formatting the drive would have been necessary.
 
stomer said:
If this is true then surely it would take more than just plugging an AEBS disk into Leopard Mac for its FS to update. I would have thought formatting the drive would have been necessary.
Click to expand...

It's gotta be something going on with the airport base station though, otherwise why support wireless backups to another drive on the network but not to an air disk? Like many here I'm pretty disappointed this feature didn't make it.
 
With no undercover support until 2.0 comes out and no time machine air disk. I no longer plan on getting 10.5 today. Rather I will be waiting for this issues to br fixed.
 
martymcr said:
I also got Time Machine working over AEBS but with a much simpler method.

1. Connect your USB disk directly to the Mac
2. Set up Time Machine and let your initial backup run
3. Eject the disk and connect to the AEBS
4. You need to 'touch' the disk by opening it in Finder, then Time Machine realises where it is and carries on.

Works for me on my iMac (wired) and Macbook (wireless to AEBS) - TM keeps the backups tidily with separate directories for each machine.

Still have an issue with my Macbook - it doesn't see the disks after sleeping.

Obviously Apple need to fix this - it shouldn't need me to view the disk each time so that TM can see it, and it should enable direct access to new disks via AEBS.
Click to expand...

Will it automatically connect if you disconnect from your network and connect again? For example, I take my MBP to class every day. When I get home and turn my computer on, will it automatically start the TM backup when I connect to my wireless network and my Airdisk is available? Or do I have to open it in Finder again?
 
synth3tik said:
With no undercover support until 2.0 comes out and no time machine air disk. I no longer plan on getting 10.5 today. Rather I will be waiting for this issues to br fixed.
Click to expand...

I'm sure that missing $129 (from you) will make them think twice about removing features like that again.
 
I tried out the leopard beta some time ago and I was able to use Timemachine to backup to an external usb drive shared via the Airport extreme. I don't know why that support would have been disabled since then. I guess I will have to try it out when I get home (fedex should be delivering any time now).

I was also planning to build a fedora core 7 linux box to use as a file server. I sure hope Timemachine will be able to use that soon. Writing files to the airport extreme seems really slow right now. I have seen lots of threads about sharing being slow on the airport extreme in some cases.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back