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Time Machine via Airport Extreme Problems (that old chesnut)

T

tekilla

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2008
95
0
Hi all,

I'm muddling my way through getting my AE working (it shouldn't be this hard I know).

I finally partitioned the USB drive for Time Machine on 2 MBP's and local USB backup works fine.

However, when I then move the disk to the AE and connect, Time Machine doesn't find the disk.

Please help!

Thanks,
JB
 
What's the file system on that hard drive? Are you using HFS+ or FAT32? Time Machine will only work with HFS+ formatted drives.

Also, just a heads up, if you plan on moving your TM backups to your AEBS, you may need to start your backups from scratch as TM backs up differently to network drives than it does to locally connected drives (sparsebundle image file vs. direct copy).
 
Formatted correctly (HFS, GUID etc).

Thing is that Time Machine can't even see the disks. Seriously tempted to sack off the AE and return it. It's a load of cash for something not quite what I was hoping for.
 
Have you set up file sharing in AirPort Utility? Can you mount the disk in your Finder?

Edit: Pardon the basic questions, but I'm just trying to figure out what's going on. It may just be that the AEBS just doesn't wanna play nicely. Users have reported mixed results with trying to set up TM backups via AEBS and a connected USB HDD.
 
Have you followed any of the online guides for making this work?

Did you understand going in to this that it is not a 'supported' Time Machine destination?
 
Thanks.

Yes, drive mounted and all the basics taken care of. It's a shame the disks won't stay constantly mounted as I need to reconnect everytime.

Yes - understand it's not "officially" supported, just did plenty of research first and saw that most people had no problems with it. Shame Time Capsule is still crazily over priced.

EDIT: Looks like it might now be backing up, however, as previosuly mentioned, it's creating a whole new backup :confused:
 
Glad it's working.

If you want, you can keep the old backup on the drive in addition to the new sparsebundle file it's created. That way you'll be able to go back if you need. You may have to connect the hard drive directly to your computer to do so but at least they'll still be there.

Additionally, if you need to restore from the sparsebundle file (new backup), you can connect the HDD directly and still be able to do the restore, which will be faster than via WiFi or Ethernet.

Lastly, you can always write a script that mounts those drives automatically when your computer turns on.
 
Any idea on the best place to check for Scripting help pls? That would be perfect
 
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