Wireless Time Machine Backups

by Ben on December 15, 2008 · 18 comments

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I recently ran out of space on my 500 GB Western Digital My Book. I had been optimizing the data there and realized I could not trim down the data any more and HAD to get additional storage. I picked up a 1 TB Western Digital Elements device from DickSmiths, Chadstone for about A$199. After transferring all the data from the old storage to the new, I decided to use the 500 GB drive as a Time Machine backup drive with my Airport Extreme wirelessly. Umm, now that was easier said than done…

The convenient way to get wireless backups done would have been to use Apple’s Time Capsule, which is basically an Airport Extreme a hard drive rolled into one. But I feel, the product is simply way too overpriced for what it does. Besides getting another router simply seemed like overkill. So here is how I got on with the tools (the 500 GB Western Digital My Book and the Airport Extreme) at my disposal.

Formatted the external drive as a Mac OS Extended drive. The gurus’ among you might suggest the Journaled format.
Connected the drive to the Airport Extreme into the USB port. Make sure its visible in the Airport Utility, it secure and can be accessed using the Airport Extreme password.
In the Finder window, you should now see the networked drive under the ‘Shared’ tab. Access the drive, by clicking on the ‘Connect As’ button on the top right corner of the Finder window, and logging in with your Airport Extreme password.
Ideally, you should now be able to open Time Machine now and spot this drive in the backup drive window.
But just in case, you do not see your drive there, close the Time Machine settings window, launch Terminal and run the following command;

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

And thats it, open Time Machine preferences and select the drive connected to the Airport Extreme. The backups are automatically made just as if they were physically connected (albeit, a little slow). Enjoy your hassle-free, wireless backups!

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1 Alan Levine January 7, 2009 at 1:38 am: Thanks for the tip! I just set up a new Airport Extreme running on 802.11n for this, which is supposed to be reasonably fast, and could not figure out why Time Machine could not see my shared drive. Now it does! Now for the slow first write of 102 Gb

Alan Levine’s last blog post..iFad?
2 Ben January 8, 2009 at 10:30 am: No worries, Alan. Glad I could help… and I’m guessing it took all night to back up 102 Gigs. Cheers!
3 mitch March 8, 2009 at 3:04 am: I have my “WD My Book Studio Edition II 1 TB” plugged into the USB port on my Airport Extreme Base Station and when I go to Time Machine, it does not show the drive. However, if I hook it up via Firewire, it shows and allows me to backup with Time Machine.. but I want to be able to do this wirelessly…. what am I doing wrong?

also, how do you allow it to do scheduled backups, when the WD My Book hard drive shuts itself off automatically when not in use? how could the backup turn it on?

any help would be greatly appreciated
4 Ben March 10, 2009 at 10:11 am: Hey Mitch! Just checking, have you used the terminal command I’d mentioned here after connecting your external drive to the Airport Extreme Base Station? If not, once you’ve connected the “My Book” to the AEBS, open ‘Time Machine’ in your System Preferences, click on ‘Choose Backup Disk’ and then fire up terminal and run “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1″, without the quotation marks. You should, ideally, have your external drive come up as a selection. Let me know how you go with this.

I normally access my drive once, to wake it and then proceed with the backup. Unfortunately, I’ve still not yet figured out how to keep it permanently ‘awake’… Let me also know if you figure this out.

Cheers!
5 Dorset web design July 5, 2009 at 5:55 am: If it is an all in one device that you can use through a network as printer/scanner/fax and its docs do not mention anything about wireless, you would likely need a wireless print server if it is USB or parallel, or wireless bridge if it has an ethernet (RJ45) port.
6 Dorset web design July 5, 2009 at 5:56 am: you need to connect any fax machine to a phone line (RJ11). If you do not have a phone jack nearby, there are powerline phone extension devices. One module plugs in near a phone line and the other near fax or phone.
Dorset web design´s last blog ..Web design- vital for business
7 Dorset web design July 14, 2009 at 4:28 am: The Time Machine Backup is taking 40gb and I want to use it for other file and I have no idea how to delete it. When I right click the hard drive, it tells me to eject it but when i restart the computer i come back.
Dorset web design´s last blog ..Stunning and effective web-designing
8 Dorset web design July 14, 2009 at 4:28 am: I bought a 320g western digital external hard drive yesterday.. but i was wondering how to partition it into 2 drives, after i do that i would like to know how to use one of the drives as the time machine backup…
Dorset web design´s last blog ..Stunning and effective web-designing
9 Dorset web design July 20, 2009 at 11:24 pm: Use Disk Utility and check the Time Machine preferences. I’m not sure if “Time machine” work on separate partition. As far as I know, Time Machine use the whole drive.
Dorset web design´s last blog ..Stunning and effective web-designing
10 Dorset web design July 20, 2009 at 11:24 pm: I bought a 320g western digital external hard drive yesterday.. but i was wondering how to partition it into 2 drives, after i do that i would like to know how to use one of the drives as the time machine backup
11 Dorset web design July 20, 2009 at 11:25 pm: The Time Machine Backup is taking 40gb and I want to use it for other file and I have no idea how to delete it. When I right click the hard drive, it tells me to eject it but when i restart the computer i come back.
12 Dorset web design July 29, 2009 at 3:22 am: When selecting an external drive, get one that is at least 3 times the capacity of your hard drive. Most importantly, don’t plan on using that drive for anything else.
13 Dorset web design July 29, 2009 at 3:22 am: If you need external hard drive space get on large enough that you can partition it to get one part for backup and one part the size you need for external storage. Just remember that the data in the other partition is pretty much on protected.
Dorset web design´s last blog ..Stunning and effective web-designing
14 Dorset web design July 29, 2009 at 3:23 am: I recently upgraded my Mac OS X to Leopard after my hard drive failed. There aren’t any empty hard drives available at home though but I have one with a bit more than 50 GIGABYTES available.
15 Dorset web design September 3, 2009 at 6:27 am: If the amount of files you want to back up is under 30 GB then you should be fine. You can also move, delete, or update later on too so there is nothing to really worry about.
16 Dorset web design September 3, 2009 at 6:28 am: I currently have a time machine backup on my external hard drive however, this hard drive is getting full and I need to change the hard drive that im using. If I copt the backups.backupbd file to another hard drive, will it still work?
17 Ben November 12, 2009 at 10:43 am: Wow! ThreeSpursDesign… I’m not sure what’s really happening here, with you asking and answering all your questions right here. Well, I don’t mind you thinking out loud here as long as you get your problems solved. Cheers!

PS: I’m amazed I missed seeing all your comments across my blog.