TimeMachine and WD worldbook ethernet

[SuperDave]

I'm new to macs. I have a new imac, and I also have airport extreme base station. I hooked up my external hard drive that is a 500 MB Western Digital worldbook drive. It hooks to the base station via an ethernet wire. I can see it on the left in my finder, the problem is that Timemachine does NOT see it when I try to set up time machine. It only sees the PC partition I made from boot camp, and asks if I want to format it. Can the drive I have work with with time machine? or does it have to be a USB drive?
Thanks
Dave

 

[webgoat]

how is the drive formatted?

 

[SuperDave]

Its PC formatted. Though the partition I created is PC formated as well, but that still shows up when trying to set up for Time Machine. Time Machine tells me I will need format the partition, but the WD drive doesn't even show up in the Time Machine set up. I will try to format it to Mac tomorrow and see what happens.

 

[ravenvii]

Time Machine will only work on HFS+ formatted drives.

And for Time Machine to see the ethernet-attached hard drive, you'll have to connect to the drive directly via AFP.

Note that support for this is spotty with Time Machine. Better-supported than an USB-attached drive (plugged into the AirPort), but still spotty.

 

[SuperDave]

Aaaa. you lost me. HFS+? AFP? What does that stand for? Thanks for the warning with the spotty support. Will I still be able to put other things on the hard drive, or will Time Machine take up all of the space?

 

[webgoat]

Aaaa. you lost me. HFS+? AFP? What does that stand for? Thanks for the warning with the spotty support. Will I still be able to put other things on the hard drive, or will Time Machine take up all of the space?

open disk utility from your utilities folder in applications... select your wd external and select the partition you wish to use with time machine... click erase and you will be able to format it hfs+ extended which is the format necessary for time machine

 

[SuperDave]

The disk utility does not see the WD external harddrive.

 

[webgoat]

you have to connect it directly via firewire or usb to format it with disk utility

 

[SuperDave]

Well thats a major problem then. It only has ethernet connectivity. The USB on the back is for incoming drives only (a port like on the back of a mac). I tired with ethernet for a while, but this not only makes me lose is from the left side of the finder, but it also will not show up in drive utility. I don't think this drive works with macs. I think I might need a different version of it. Any other thoughts? If not, thank you to everyone who replied. Least I know how to get Time Machine running on a different type drive

 

[crochelt]

Well thats a major problem then. It only has ethernet connectivity. The USB on the back is for incoming drives only (a port like on the back of a mac). I tired with ethernet for a while, but this not only makes me lose is from the left side of the finder, but it also will not show up in drive utility. I don't think this drive works with macs. I think I might need a different version of it. Any other thoughts? If not, thank you to everyone who replied. Least I know how to get Time Machine running on a different type drive

SuperDave,
I had exactly the same problem you did.

you could accomplish backing up your system to your drive by writing a cron job to find recently changed files and copy them to a directory on your world book drive. Unfortunately, my Power Book does not connect automoatically to the World Book so I have to make sure its connected before I go to bed at night.

Here's a look at what I use. Not as cute as Time Machine, but it works...

59 23 * * * find /Users/bob/Pictures -mtime -7 -exec cp -v '{}' /Volumes/PUBLIC/bob/pictures/February_2008 ';'
59 23 * * * find /Users/bob/Music -mtime -7 -exec cp -v '{}' /Volumes/PUBLIC/bob/music/ ';'
59 23 * * * find /Users/bob/docs -mtime -7 -exec cp -v '{}' /Volumes/PUBLIC/bob/docs/ ';'

HTH

Best,
Bob Crochelt