Hi Everyone....
First, thanks for all of the help, greatly appreciated...
And, to those who are interested, here is what I learnt after 30 minutes on the telephone with a WD Level 2 System Engineer [Jeremy (very helpful and nice), case # 120712-633-2496].
1. As far as the WD ShareSpace that I have it is officially supported in OS X 10.7 and earlier [i.e. it is not officially supported in 10.8 and higher.]
2. As far as WD_Backup hidden share i) appearing as a TimeMachine eligible backup disk and ii) showing an AFP path when moused over this is "normal behavior" in that this is how it appeared / worked ans has always been "mounted" (see 3. below) in OS X 10.7 and earlier.
3. As far as the WD_Backup hidden share being mounted it is NOT mounted but rather appears -- AND ONLY IN TIME MACHINE -- as a mountable drive...the proof / support for this is that one needs to enter credentials were one to select this share as their TimeMachine drive.
4. As far as last night's activities [i.e. creative attempts by me to "break" the AFP link as noted in posts 19 and 20 of this thread] the above behavior explains my lack of success and the adaptive behavior of the NAS to always appear in TimeMachine.
The above also explains why none of Swinton's suggested comamnds worked!!!
5. As far as the concerns / differences between the time when I first reported the problem [let's call this Install 1] and the the current situation [let's call this Install 2 (i.e. after having done a wipe my OS X disk and fresh install)] is that:
-- Install 1 was not appearing to work properly in that the WD_Backup hidden share did not appear in TimeMachine and I had to enter the command "sudo smutil....".
-- Install 2 appears to be working properly in that the WD_Backup hidden share appears in TimeMachine without me having to enter the "sudo smutil ...." command.
What could the cause of the difference be between Install 1 and Install 2...though my MBA is brand new is it possible that the initial install was flawed?
6. As far as the current situation and next steps are concerns it appears that I am in a different situation now in that I have
*NOT* mounted the drive and, given the previously problems I had with the AFP mounted drive,
I will not do so!
7. Other interesting tidbits in my attempt to completely separate the WD_Backup hidden share from my MBA...
a) There is no way to roll back to earlier firmware versions which
DO NOT have the AFP broadcast feature.
b) There is no way to turn off AFP within the NAS drive...therefore the only way to stop the WD_backup hidden share from appearing in TimeMachine is to disable AFB in OS X which I am not going to do.
c) There WD_Backup hidden share has been designed from day one to be i) "mapped" and then mounted AFP ii) not directly accessible from within OS X.
d) This means that even formatting the drives will change not a thing...good thing I was patient this morning as I was considering doing this!
8. Those interested in a TimeMachine compatible drive should get a MyBook Live [this was the WD engineer's suggestion] as it has the ability to i) backup to other shares in TimeMachine and ii) not appear in Timemachine...seems my drive is old in the tooth....
*****
Two final closing points / thoughts...
1. Thanks to all who tried to help me as you concern, effort, and time are greatly appreciated and is what makes this a great community.
2. Would be interested in your thoughts and comments on the above.
Thanks,
Joel
PS. It follows that technology is great when it works and a huge frustration and time waster when it does not...that said, I remain interested as to why the WD_backup share did not automatically appear in Install 1.
