Wireless time machine backup with Airport Extreme... HELP

[londonmystery]

I have a newly purchased Airport Extreme base station. It is connected to a WD 1TB My book.

I set it up and did an initial backup using firewire.

I don't know how but I managed to get all subsequent backups to work wirelessly for 3 days.

Now they don't and its bugging the s..t out of me.

Help please as newbie to macs here.

Thanks in advance.

 

[SqB]

I have a newly purchased Airport Extreme base station. It is connected to a WD 1TB My book.

I set it up and did an initial backup using firewire.

I don't know how but I managed to get all subsequent backups to work wirelessly for 3 days.

Now they don't and its bugging the s..t out of me.

Help please as newbie to macs here.

Thanks in advance.

Make sure you can see your MyBook in finder. Go in and open up the directory where the backups are stored, but don't open the sparsebundle. Sometimes I have to do that first before time machine will find the drive to do backups. I think in my case it's because I have a password on the drive. YMMV.

 

[londonmystery]

When running over wifi it does not appear in finder only when connected through firewire.

Really frustrating because it worked for a few days and then just stopped.

 

[SqB]

When running over wifi it does not appear in finder only when connected through firewire.

Really frustrating because it worked for a few days and then just stopped.

You should be able to see it in the finder under the "Shared" section as a folder on your AirPort Extreme. If you can't see it, time machine can't see it either. In that case you may need to check your settings on the AirPort utility for shared disks.

Can you see the backup drive in the Time Machine preferences under "Change Disk"?

 

[londonmystery]

Wow, you are a genius. lol. typed shared in spotlight then found it. now time machine recognises it and is doing what I want.

Thanks alot. Seems I have same problem as you.

Must be because its password protected

So will I have to do this every time or just once in a while?

 

[SqB]

It happened twice on two of my Mac's but the other three haven't had any trouble once I initially opened the folder. The ones with the trouble were my notebooks so I think it has something to do with switching around to different networks. You may see it again, but it's an easy fix. I think that using a USB drive on the AirPort is still not officially supported so that's probably why it's not a little smoother.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Apple. PM me if you need help in the future.

 

[londonmystery]

Will do and thanks again for the help.

I love my Mac and so does the whole family to the point we are buying an imac to replace our 6 month old pc. Just after 20 or so years of pc's it is taking a while to get used to.

Thanks again.