With today’s Time Machine and AirPort Updates v1.0, Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine now supports USB hard drives attached to Apple Airport Extreme Base Stations, MacDailyNews can confirm.
In other words, an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) with an attached USB hard drive can now function with Time Machine and perform wireless backups just like Apple’s Time Capsule.
After applying the Time Machine and AirPort Updates v1.0 and restarting, users should launch Airport Utility (Applications>Utilities>Airport Utility). This will prompt the user to apply the 7.3.1 Firmware Update for their Airport Extreme Base Station.
After doing so, users with Airport Extreme Base Stations with attached USB hard drives will have Time Machine functionality (use System Preferences>Time Machine to set up your desired drive; you may have to Connect to the drive via the Finder in order to see it in TIme Machine Preferences).
At this time, it is unclear if Apple officially supports using a hard drive connected to the AEBS USB port for Time Machine (but their latest software sure seems to).
MacDailyNews Note: MacFixIt confirms here.
Great News!!
It “kinda” works. It starts a new backup from scratch instead of using your previous time machine backups.
Does this work for the older AEBS? Mine’s the UFO-ish looking kind.
@El Guapo
Your Apple router is not the airport “extreme”. It’s just the regular Airport. Hence, it will not work for you.
Over in the other thread, rahrens says: “If you don’t see it in Time Machine, you’ll need to open the window for your HD, then click on the Airport disk icon in the shared section on the left sidebar. Then click on the icon to the right so it will mount on the desktop. Then time Machine prefs will pick it up.”
That same process was true *before* this firmware update. Nothing has changed. What needs to change is the auto-mounting of external drives so Time Machine can use them. There should be no extra steps.
Actually, it is an Airport Extreme.
It’s not working for me, and I have a brand new Airport Extreme with an attached USB drive. All software and firmware updates applied.
Wow, this new Apple, the one that actually listens to their customers is scaring me. Thank goodness they finally fixed this.
Nothing has changed for me after this update that I notice.
I was able to back up to an external drive previously by first manually mounting it in Finder. The external drive is *not* seen by Time Machine until I mount it, so that part hasn’t yet changed.
What *may* have changed is the reliability of the process. Maybe before, something wasn’t working very well, whereas now it does.
Are others getting a different behavior? Are their attached drives auto-mounting without doing anything?
Anyone having a problem with this, try attaching the drive directly to the computer via USB, and repairing permissions. It worked for me after that.
Thank you Lord Stevus! My faith is restored! I AM a believer again! Moreover, I won’t have to tell my sister I wasted her money when she bought her Extreme expecting this feature, only to have it withdrawn. (I still wish Apple would have at least released a statement as it would have settled a lot of discontent.)
Anyone know how to make an Epson stylus C84 printer work with AEBS? The air port sees it but epson software does not. I call Epson is at fault here. Updates all drivers.
anyone know how to use a linksys WAP54G as a bridge to a TimeCapsule/Aiport wireless network?
ive seen stuff about the router, but i have the access point only.
Thanks.
@eMax,
Probably not something you want to do — have another router between you and the backup drive. Can’t you switch the two routers around, and make your Time Capsule the primary router?
It works on my intel iMac but not a PPC Mac Mini.
MDN, thank you for posting those screenshots. I suppose you’re trying to illustrate that this new functionality somehow exists as of today. But just for the benefit of your readers, everything you’re showing is exactly the same as before today’s software/firmware updates. I saw all of that exactly as posted in your screenshots.
I’m still waiting for official confirmation that Time Machine automatically sees the attached drives.
I assume those are shots directly from your own computers. Are you saying that Time Machine saw your backup drive without you manually mounting it in Finder? That’s really the answer I’m after.
Someone, please, help shut me up about this. I’m not convinced that anything has changed.
@coolfactor
Look at the first screen shot. It shows an Airport Extreme and a “Samsung” external drive. This was _not_ happening before this update.
Coolfactor,
Don’t take this the wrong way. I am not trying to be snarky or anything, but this site is called MacDailyNews (emphasis added), not MacFixIt, or Apple Support Discussion Forums. You’d be better advised to check those sites for help with your problem, and you might also consider other support resources which can be found at Apple Support Site, including support contact info which can be found at Apple’s Contact Us page, and of course, you can always call/go to your “local” (assuming you don’t live in some remote village in the middle of nowhere or something) Apple Store and see an Apple Genius for assistance, and then there are also independent Apple Consultants whose lives revolve around fixing these sorts of problems for people. Just some suggestions that are likely to be more useful than posting here over and over.
Eric
By the way, those should all be clickable links by the way (but I can’t preview this post before submitting – hint hint, that’s a suggestion, MDN admin dudes… 8^p ).
Is the update really working to make Time Machine work with AEBS? Coolfactor’s whining, and the fact that this would be a MAJOR change that folks have been wanting for a long time yet no one is making a big deal about it (least of all Apple), makes me wonder what’s really going on. Can any other AEBS users confirm this and the fact that the disk is automatically mounted?
Anyone know if this speeds up the USB performance? I have an external USB drive connected to the Airport Extrene, and a G4 MacMini wired into it. I can open an AVI off the drive and watch it fine, but if I open any H.264 encoded quicktime file it stutters like mad. I’d love to have the drive attached but stuttering is no good for a media center machine.
Thanks.
Over on TUAW, there’s a thread where some folks are saying they’ve got it working.
I’ve posted there, too, but a couple of my posts are in regards to my experience with Apple support:
They DO NOT support Time Machine over AEBS!! They were very clear on this, that a wireless connection is NOT supported.
I am assuming they mean not at all, because while I can get TM to recognize the drive as a TM drive, it will not back up “until Mac is plugged back in”.
…and that’s wired or wireless.
I can confirm this. My Airport Extreme just did a firmware update that includes the Time Capsule firmware update. Although I’m not using it, My hard drives connected to my AEBS are now available to use with Time Machine. I have a spare USB drive – I will have to try it later.
no problems with a G4 powermac. Just mount the shared drive, and all is well….
one point–since my AEBS only has one USB port to which my printer is connected for household wireless printing, i guess there’s no way to take advantage of the hard drive that my iMac backs up to (via Firewire 800) for my MacBook to back up wirelessly. no one else has their lone USB port used already? i already have an 8-port USB hub connected to the iMac; am i supposed to hub the AEBS as well? that doesn’t seem like that would make for a happy base station.
I hope I didn’t just mess something up, but… I used this publicised terminal hack a couple months ago back: “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1” and I did get this AE USB HD backup feature with intermittent “volume cannot be mounted” errors. I applied all the patches today and I couldn’t get it to work, so I tried reversing with this terminal command: “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 0” and it came up, but I just got another “mount” error — bleh. Any ideas?