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USB Drive attached to Router for Time Machine

raholland

raholland

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 22, 2011
52
2
Virginia
Hi all,

Let me apologize in advance if this seems like a dumb question.

I have a Cisco/Linksys EA4500 router. I want to attach a USB hard drive to its USB port and then use that drive to do Time Machine back ups.

I am going to buy a new drive to do this, but in the mean time, I have been testing with another drive I have. Time Machine does not see the drive, even though it shows up in Finder and I can read/write to it.

What am I doing wrong? Will a newer hard drive work?

Thanks
 
How is your USB drive formatted? TM only backs up to drives formatted with the HFS+J file system. That could explain why Finder sees the drive and TM does not.
 
LaWally said:
How is your USB drive formatted? TM only backs up to drives formatted with the HFS+J file system. That could explain why Finder sees the drive and TM does not.
Click to expand...

It is formatted as HFS+J. Time Machine will use the drive if it is plugged directly into my computer. It will not see the drive in Time Machine when the drive is plugged into the router.
 
An AFP mountpoint is a network share that is shared by the hosting server using AFP (Wikipedia link).

I know there is/was a workaround that negated the need for the drive to be shared via AFP, but I didn't think it was possible out of the box.

Hopefully mfacey will answer.
 
I know this is an old post, but any resolution? I am having the exact same problem. My SeaGate is on the list of compatible hard drives. Same router. Works fine when hooked directly, but that does not help me.... I want the hard drive out of sight. Basically I would love to replicate what my old Airport Extreme did, without having to buy a 3rd AE in the last 2 years.
 
I know this is an old post, but any resolution? I am having the exact same problem. My SeaGate is on the list of compatible hard drives. Same router. Works fine when hooked directly, but that does not help me.... I want the hard drive out of sight. Basically I would love to replicate what my old Airport Extreme did, without having to buy a 3rd AE in the last 2 years.

Same issue here. Seagate STBU1000101 formatted correctly as it does backup TimeMachine when its connected via direct USB but nothing when I try to access via router :( Thanks.
 
I doubt the router understands the Mac HFS filesystem. The disk will probably have to be formatted FAT32 or NTFS for the router to recognize it. Note that the on-disk format only matters to the router, not your Mac in the network storage scenario. When you access the disk over the network, you will be using the AFP or SMB network filesystem protocol.

Doing all this is still not supported by Time Machine though without pulling some settings shenanigans. And even if you do manage to back your machine up using this third-party router you won't be able to restore it in an emergency because, again, it isn't supported.

Stop wasting your time.
 
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