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Airport Extreme and Time Machine

Select the right drive before erasing :)

This process works fine. I have several drives connected to a hub to my Airport Extreme. One of them is a TM disk and I've restored from it without problem.
 
jeffnebraska said:
Will any old hub work? I would like to have one TM backup and one drive that just adds more regular hard disc space. Can I use an un-powered hub?
Click to expand...

If the drives are powered, an unpowered hub should work, though that might not always be the case. Just be aware that drives connected to the AEBS will not be backed up with Time Machine, so if you store any data on the second drive, make sure it's backed up elsewhere.
 
skorpien said:
Just be aware that drives connected to the AEBS will not be backed up with Time Machine, so if you store any data on the second drive, make sure it's backed up elsewhere.
Click to expand...

I see. In that case, I will keep the drive for additional storage as local USB, and have that as well as my Mac HD backed up to the AEBS Time Machine drive.
 
Time Machine Tips website

In the last 12 months I have gone from PC's to Mac's and this website on Time Machine Tips helped me http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html I think jeffnebraska if you follow the tips then everything should work. http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Airport.html I have a Western Digital Elements 2TB external hard drive that is powered and attached to an unpowered usb hub on an AEBS, and the hard drive has 3 partitions and Time Machine backs up 3 Macs onto it. It works fantastic. This is the first time I have been able to back up all my computers and it great that Apple makes this happen. When the partition is full, the oldest back up is deleted. I have months of back ups on this external hard drive and I have used it to restore files.
 
jeffnebraska said:
Will any old hub work? I would like to have one TM backup and one drive that just adds more regular hard disc space. Can I use an un-powered hub?
Click to expand...

I have an $8 hub I picked up on Amazon -- non-powered. It's working fine. I have 2 drives on it now just hanging off the back. Both are externally powered drives though.

I just added a WD passport self-powered and it took a second but came up as well.
 
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So far so good

My old time machine drive has now been reformatted and is backing up anew over my network. Transfer is slow (over wireless and an a/c plug network), but it'll probably be done by morning.

Had some trouble "mounting" the drive, I think. It was showing up under the "Shared" heading in the Finder, but not under the "Devices" heading and not in Time Machine. I then found an option that said something like "View in Sidebar," and that caused it to show up under Devices and to become available in Time Machine.

Have tucked the drive into a filing cabinet, and am hoping, if I have the burglary, they will take the computer upstairs but not trace the wires from the router downstairs to the drive.

Thanks to all on this thread for helping a relative Mac novice step through this. :)
 
MooneyFlyer said:
Select the right drive before erasing :)

This process works fine. I have several drives connected to a hub to my Airport Extreme. One of them is a TM disk and I've restored from it without problem.
Click to expand...


How did you restore from it - wirelessly, I'm assuming? How long did that take you? Or, is there a way to do it wired? Right now my Time Machine disk is plugged into my AEBS and I'm backing up wirelessly. However, if I were to plug it into my Mac, wouldn't the computer not recognize it due to the change in the filepath?

Lots of questions, I know...:rolleyes:
 
boston04and07 said:
How did you restore from it - wirelessly, I'm assuming? How long did that take you? Or, is there a way to do it wired? Right now my Time Machine disk is plugged into my AEBS and I'm backing up wirelessly. However, if I were to plug it into my Mac, wouldn't the computer not recognize it due to the change in the filepath?

Lots of questions, I know...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Ask away --

I did it wirelessly though it wasn't seamless because of an AEBS issue. The first time, TM said something like "accessing the TM drive" (or similar) and it never connected. I tried it again with no luck and found that I couldn't actually access the drive through Finder either.

I restarted my AEBS and then everything worked fine. It was a little slower but I was only in to get 1 file after my machine crashed and lost its mind for a few minutes.

I do not know what would happen if you plugged it in directly though I could give that a try at some point to see... Perhaps someone else has already done it though.
 
I have an Airdisk on my AEBS that I use for Time Machine. To completely restore from a Time Machine backup took about 3 hours. However my backups are only about 25GB or so, since most of my data is saved elsewhere.

Hooking the Time Machine drive directly won't have any big effect. It will search for Time machine backups. When it sees one attached locally it will give you the option to choose it. IIRC.
 
Time Machine backs up to a network attached drive differently than it does to one connected directly. It creates a sparsebundle image on the network drive while it copies files directly to one attached locally. I haven't tested it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wouldn't recognize the TM backups on the drive once you connected it to your Mac. I'd be interested to know if it actually does though.
 
skorpien said:
Time Machine backs up to a network attached drive differently than it does to one connected directly. It creates a sparsebundle image on the network drive while it copies files directly to one attached locally. I haven't tested it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wouldn't recognize the TM backups on the drive once you connected it to your Mac. I'd be interested to know if it actually does though.
Click to expand...

Okay I just tested this out. I unhooked my AirDisk from my AEBS, and hooked it directly into my Macbook Pro. Then I booted into the Snow Leopard Install Disk and chose "Restore from Time Machine Backup". It immediately saw the Time Machine disk, had me pick a backup to restore to, and restored perfectly.

I'd say that means now we know what happens right? Or was there an error in my method?
 
Dalton63841 said:
Okay I just tested this out. I unhooked my AirDisk from my AEBS, and hooked it directly into my Macbook Pro. Then I booted into the Snow Leopard Install Disk and chose "Restore from Time Machine Backup". It immediately saw the Time Machine disk, had me pick a backup to restore to, and restored perfectly.

I'd say that means now we know what happens right? Or was there an error in my method?
Click to expand...

That's pretty conclusive evidence that it restores perfectly. The only basis I had for my assumption prior to your test was when people would attempt to transfer a backup from being connected physically to being connected to an AEBS, and that hadn't worked. Thank you for posting your results.

I'm also curious, does it see the drive as a target disk in Time Machine and back up to the sparsebundle file or does it try to make a new backup?
 
skorpien said:
That's pretty conclusive evidence that it restores perfectly. The only basis I had for my assumption prior to your test was when people would attempt to transfer a backup from being connected physically to being connected to an AEBS, and that hadn't worked. Thank you for posting your results.

I'm also curious, does it see the drive as a target disk in Time Machine and back up to the sparsebundle file or does it try to make a new backup?
Click to expand...

LOL I store ALL my data externally, so I have no problem testing. BRB.

EDIT: Okay when I hooked up my AirDisk locally to my Macbook Pro, I went into Time Machine settings and it SAW it. However when I clicked Backup Now, it said "Backup could not be made available". I was given the option to make it a new Time Machine disk, but that would have formatted the drive.

My guess is that when restoring it recognizes the sparsebundle as a Time Machine backup and mounts it. However it does not expect a sparsebundle when backing up locally, and refuses it.
 
Last edited:
skorpien said:
That's pretty conclusive evidence that it restores perfectly. The only basis I had for my assumption prior to your test was when people would attempt to transfer a backup from being connected physically to being connected to an AEBS, and that hadn't worked. Thank you for posting your results.

I'm also curious, does it see the drive as a target disk in Time Machine and back up to the sparsebundle file or does it try to make a new backup?
Click to expand...

Yeah, works to restore but not to write.
 
Dalton63841 said:
LOL I store ALL my data externally, so I have no problem testing. BRB.

EDIT: Okay when I hooked up my AirDisk locally to my Macbook Pro, I went into Time Machine settings and it SAW it. However when I clicked Backup Now, it said "Backup could not be made available". I was given the option to make it a new Time Machine disk, but that would have formatted the drive.

My guess is that when restoring it recognizes the sparsebundle as a Time Machine backup and mounts it. However it does not expect a sparsebundle when backing up locally, and refuses it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess sparsebundle images are for network attached drives only. It's good to know that Apple had the foresight to allow us to restore by connecting the disk since that will definitely speed up recovery time.

Thanks again for volunteering to be the guinea pig, especially since it was mostly just to sate my curiosity haha. But now I'll be able to help others that may wonder about this in the future. Much appreciated :)
 
skorpien said:
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess sparsebundle images are for network attached drives only. It's good to know that Apple had the foresight to allow us to restore by connecting the disk since that will definitely speed up recovery time.

Thanks again for volunteering to be the guinea pig, especially since it was mostly just to sate my curiosity haha. But now I'll be able to help others that may wonder about this in the future. Much appreciated :)
Click to expand...

LOL No problem. As I said I keep all my stuff external. AirDisk for Time Machine, Freenas for SuperDuper backup, and external drive with a copy of my User folder. Not to mention that I store all Pictures/Movies/Documents/Music on a Freenas share, not in my Home folder.
 
I would like to know if it is possible to back up a hard drive hooked to my AE using the time machine on my MacPro. I want to put on the external drive all my music/video/photos to access using my ATV or MacPro at times. But at the same time I want to make sure iTunes can read it over the air these files.
Would that work?
How can I make sure iTunes can find these files and play the content?
Thanks
 
gugy said:
I would like to know if it is possible to back up a hard drive hooked to my AE using the time machine on my MacPro. I want to put on the external drive all my music/video/photos to access using my ATV or MacPro at times. But at the same time I want to make sure iTunes can read it over the air these files.
Would that work?
How can I make sure iTunes can find these files and play the content?
Thanks
Click to expand...

I don't see where you are talking about backing up data here? Maybe I am confused?

What I read is that you want to host your iTunes library on a drive connected to your AEBS...with iTunes running on your Mac Pro? Is that correct?

This will work, although there is no Time Machine involved. In order to move your iTunes data to another drive follow the steps on this webpage:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

Follow this exactly or you may not have iTunes able to recognize the new location of your files and DON'T just drag the Library to the wirelessly networked drive yourself or you will be sure to have iTunes show you a whole lot of "?" and not be able to locate anything.:(

And by the way, Time Machine will be able to back-up any directly- or network-connected drives. I back-up both my internal and my USB external iTunes drive to my 'Time Machine' drive.
 
mstrze said:
I don't see where you are talking about backing up data here? Maybe I am confused?

What I read is that you want to host your iTunes library on a drive connected to your AEBS...with iTunes running on your Mac Pro? Is that correct?

This will work, although there is no Time Machine involved. In order to move your iTunes data to another drive follow the steps on this webpage:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

Follow this exactly or you may not have iTunes able to recognize the new location of your files and DON'T just drag the Library to the wirelessly networked drive yourself or you will be sure to have iTunes show you a whole lot of "?" and not be able to locate anything.:(

And by the way, Time Machine will be able to back-up any directly- or network-connected drives. I back-up both my internal and my USB external iTunes drive to my 'Time Machine' drive.
Click to expand...

Cool, you answered my question. Thanks bro.
 
Thanks so much, MooneyFlyer and Dalton63841, that really answered my questions. I guess I'll just keep backing up using the Airdisk, since there don't seem to be any solid reasons not to. I was considering picking up a refurb Time Capsule since I was dreading having to restore wirelessly if it ever came down to that. But since I know it works wired, I guess I'm all set!

The only thing that's still bugging me is the fact that Time Machine creates a sparsebundle when backing up to an Airdisk. I'm kind of scared of those. A while ago, back when I first starting backing up this way, the sparsebundle became corrupted (or something - I don't really remember what happened exactly), and I had to start over again. Do Time Capsules create a sparsebundle or do they back up in the same way that a locally-connected disk would? That would really be the only advantage that I can see that the TC has over an Airdisk. Of course, it has plenty of documented hardware disadvantages too, especially if I go with a refurb. Has anyone else ever experienced this type of problem with backing up wirelessly? Not sure if the sparsebundle problem that I experienced was just a random fluke or something more common with this setup...and therefore if it would be worth investing in a TC.
 
boston04and07 said:
The only thing that's still bugging me is the fact that Time Machine creates a sparsebundle when backing up to an Airdisk. I'm kind of scared of those. A while ago, back when I first starting backing up this way, the sparsebundle became corrupted (or something - I don't really remember what happened exactly), and I had to start over again. Do Time Capsules create a sparsebundle or do they back up in the same way that a locally-connected disk would? That would really be the only advantage that I can see that the TC has over an Airdisk. Of course, it has plenty of documented hardware disadvantages too, especially if I go with a refurb. Has anyone else ever experienced this type of problem with backing up wirelessly? Not sure if the sparsebundle problem that I experienced was just a random fluke or something more common with this setup...and therefore if it would be worth investing in a TC.
Click to expand...

The Time Capsule creates a sparsebundle unfortunately. If you want peace of mind though, you can always copy that sparsebundle to another drive periodically. If the main sparsebundle becomes corrupt, you can overwrite it with the backed up version and you'll only lose a fraction of your backups.
 
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