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dorianN
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: 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

by lethal,Solvedanswer
lethal lethal
Level 2 (435 points)
A:
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.

Posted on Mar 9, 2008 12:42 PM

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dorianN

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

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  • by Gabriele Sbaiz,

    Gabriele Sbaiz Gabriele Sbaiz Mar 26, 2008 9:46 AM in response to John Strung
    Level 1 (0 points)
    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.

  • by John Strung,

    John Strung John Strung Mar 26, 2008 9:53 AM in response to Gabriele Sbaiz
    Level 6 (13,440 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 9:53 AM in response to Gabriele Sbaiz
    That's right. I guess you have two choices if you want to backup USB devices -- either attached them directly to a Mac (in which case I believe TM would back them up) or leave them attached to the TC and manually back them up (which I suspect would be very slow.)

  • by Gabriele Sbaiz,

    Gabriele Sbaiz Gabriele Sbaiz Mar 26, 2008 10:46 AM in response to John Strung
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 10:46 AM in response to John Strung
    Yes. Right now I'm setting up a back up using "Backup 3" to save datas from a USB drive connected to Time Capsule. I'm trying to set the Time Capsule disk as destination hoping this works.

    In this way all the computer connected to home network can access to these datas and in the meanhile I am sure to have a back up copy.

    Anyway I repeat that this is really odd for a product like Time Capsule.

  • by lethal,

    lethal lethal Mar 26, 2008 10:57 AM in response to Gabriele Sbaiz
    Level 2 (435 points)
    Mar 26, 2008 10:57 AM in response to Gabriele Sbaiz
    It's not really all that odd.

    The issue isn't the Time Capsule - it's Time Machine.

    Time Machine works by monitoring the filesystem activity of the backup-source-drive. It is kept aware of each and every change made (that's the primary reason MacOS Extended Formatting is required).

    Anyway, your machine (and it's OS) may not be the only device writing to the network-attached external USB.

    There is no trigger on the TC to inform TM that changes are being made - hence TM would be unaware of the changes... how would the Time Capsule know which machine to inform of the changes?

    Further... the backups will be slow - all the data would be brought back to your machine and written back to the TC.

    Attaching the USB locally and sharing it might make for a better solution.
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