Time Capsule/usb hard drive- How to get Time Machine to back it up

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Level 1

6 points

Time Capsule/usb hard drive- How to get Time Machine to back it up

I installed Time Machine with no problems. A 1 TB LaCie hard drive is attached by usb cable to the TC. The LaCie is seen by finder and I can open, edit and save files to it and so can the Macbook Pro on my network.

Time Machine backed up my internal hard drive on my Mac just fine, but Time Machine refuses to see the external Lacie drive so it cannot back it up.

Here is the situation:
1. If I go to Time machine preferences and click Options there are no volumes or folders listed as Do Not Back Up. nothing is there.

2. If I click Change Disk the name I gave my Time Capsule is listed as it should be but the LaCie drive is listed also as if it were possible for me to back up to that also. The LaCie's name is there with the name of the Time Capsule in parenthesis. Isn't that odd?

3. When I select the LaCie icon on my desktop and select Get Info in the Sharing & Permissions section it says, "You have custom access" below it says
Name Privilege
(unknown) Read & Write
everyone No Access

I am new to Mac in general and this permission and sharing thing is still a bit mysterious to me so I don't know if these sharing & permission settings are usual or weird and could be contributing to why the back up of the LaCie drive is not happening.

This is the final hurdle I have in absolutely convincing my small but vocal office that switching to Macs all around was a great idea.

Any help would be appreciated.

Mac Pro Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Time Capsule, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 7, 2008 12:57 PM

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Answer 1

dorianN Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 7, 2008 9:20 PM in response to dorianN

Anyone have any idea how I can get TC and TM to back up a hard drive connected to the Time Capsule by USB port?

I really need advise.

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Answer 2

dorianN Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 8, 2008 9:09 AM in response to dorianN

Okay, is this just a stupid question or is it a weird situation that no one else has ever seen?

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Answer 3

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 9, 2008 12:33 PM in response to dorianN

Not a stupid question, but TC has only been out a few days and probably not enough people have had a chance to play with it yet. I would like to know the answer to the question myself as I have also tried unsuccessfully to get TC to back up the connected external. Do you know if it will back up the external if it is connected directly to your Mac?

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Answer 4

Mar 9, 2008 12:38 PM in response to dorianN

How do you know that it did NOT back up the drive?

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Answer 5

lethal

Level 2

435 points

Mar 9, 2008 12:42 PM in response to John Strung

TM will backup an external drive if it is locally attached.

It is not a Network backup solution.

You can use other solutions to back up network drives.

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Answer 6

timla

Level 1

0 points

Mar 17, 2008 5:00 PM in response to dorianN

Let's not get off topic- this issue we're trying to resolve is completing a Time Machine backup of a hard drive installed in a Macbook, iMac, etc to a USB hardrive connected to a Time Capsule. The issue is not getting Time Machine to backup an external hard drive connected to a Macbook, iMac, etc to Time Capsule. I'm having the same issue and have read lots of posts that have gotten off topic very quickly.

I have a USB hard drive connected to a Time Capsule and can't get it to be recognized by Time Machine. It shows up in finder. Other than an article posted on the internet by a 3rd party reviewer I can't see any reference by Apple that states a backup to a drive connected via USB to the Time Capsule will work.

If anyone has been successful please let us know how you got it to work.

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Answer 7

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 17, 2008 5:09 PM in response to timla

As far as I can tell, it can't be done. Probably for the same reason that you can't use Time Machine to back up to an external connected to an AEBS.

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Answer 8

voigtstr

Level 1

29 points

Mar 17, 2008 6:26 PM in response to dorianN

Its weird that you can plug in external drives and still have access to the time capsule! My network tanks when I put an external drive in.
What format is you Lacie drive formatted in? My iPod is Fat32. My 500gig drive has 50 gig as NTFS and the balance in FAT32. Either drive stops the networking from working on the Time Capsule. Should I DOA my Time Capsule?

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Answer 9

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 18, 2008 6:37 AM in response to voigtstr

My external is formatted HFS+ Journalled.

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Answer 10

Mar 18, 2008 7:05 AM in response to timla

Please reread the original question. The question was how do I backup the external disk attached to the TC using TM, NOT how do I backup TO the external drive on the TC. I don't think there is any way to do this. You can exclude drives from TM, but you cannot add drives for TM to backup. And if you did manage to get TM to backup the external disk on the TC, it would be extremely slow, because it would be reading the data FROM the TC to the computer, and then writing the data back TO the TC from the computer.

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Answer 11

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 18, 2008 7:14 AM in response to danny whittington

The original question was answered by Lethal some time ago and marked solved. It seems that the thread got hijacked subsequently.

As a matter of interest, it seems that TM backs up drives differently if it is backing up to a TC than if it is backing up to local drive.

If it is backing up to a TC, it creates a single file package and backs up to the package. If it backs up to a local drive, it creates a duplicate of the original drive's folder structure in separate folders for each back up.

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Answer 12

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 18, 2008 11:45 AM in response to John Strung

I may have spoken too soon. Here is a post about how to use a terminal command to allow TimeMachine to back up to an otherwise unsupported drive:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=141960

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Answer 13

Mar 26, 2008 9:16 AM in response to lethal

This is a really odd answer.

I have Time Capsule, I add an external drive to it and you say that to back up THAT disk on Time Capsule I need other programs/solutions? This is really a stupid thing.

1 TB of storage space just for local files right now that on every wireless product you can add an external disk?

In other words with Apple products I can have all my laptops appleTvdesktops all wirelessly connected but I can't use Time Capsule to back up datas if disks are not locally attached? With Airport Extreme/Time Capsule I can share datas (music, pictures, my digital life files) with my family computers but if I do this I can't back up these files.

And just to know how many do I have to spend on other Apple devices, what are these "other solutions" to back up network drives? A server?

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Answer 14

John Strung

Level 6

13,440 points

Mar 26, 2008 9:27 AM in response to Gabriele Sbaiz

The recent updates to the Airport utility and the Time Capsule firmware now allow you to back up to USB drives attached directly to the Time Capsule or attached to a time capsule through a USB2 hub. Same applies to USB drives attached to an AEBS.

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Answer 15

Mar 26, 2008 9:46 AM in response to John Strung

Sorry John, I probably misunderstood your words but original problem is a bit different.

The point is not to back up datas to USB drives using Time Machine, but to back up USB drives TO Time Capsule.

If you have an USB drive connected to Time Capsule you can't back up these datas on Time Capsule. Same problem if the disk is connected to Airport Extreme and you have Time Capsule for backups, TC does not allow you to save them.

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