Connect existing Time Machine disk to Airport Extreme

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Level 1

79 points

Connect existing Time Machine disk to Airport Extreme

Hi
I just connected my 1TB USB Time Machine backup disk to my Airport Extreme Basestation. After mounting the Airdisk and selecting it as my Time Machine volume, I am surprised to see Time Machine not recognizing all the backups that have been made on that disk before.

Instead, Time Machine is creating a sparsebundle file and begins backing up my computer wirelessly to this sparsebundle from scratch (the backups that were made locally, were not made to sparsebundle files)

How can I force Time Machine to recognize the earlier, locally made backups? Or does Time Machine + Airport Extreme only work with sparsebundles?

thanks
-frank

AIrport Extreme 7.4.3, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on May 23, 2010 3:11 AM

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Answer 1

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

May 23, 2010 4:41 AM in response to captnswing

captnswing wrote:
I just connected my 1TB USB Time Machine backup disk to my Airport Extreme Basestation. After mounting the Airdisk and selecting it as my Time Machine volume, I am surprised to see Time Machine not recognizing all the backups that have been made on that disk before.

you probably have issued because your setup it not supported by Apple. see Disks that can be used with Time Machine.

bottom line, for some users it works and for some it don't.

anyways, you might want to browse through this read: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html.

good luck !

J GG

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

May 23, 2010 7:37 AM in response to captnswing

As Jolly Giant says, backing-up that way is "iffy" and +*not supported by Apple.+* See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

You have the added complication that when Time Machine does backups over a network, it stores them in a +sparse bundle.+ That's why it doesn't recognize the previous backups. You cannot switch from one method to the other. You can copy the old backups into the sparse bundle, so TM will continue backing-up that way, but it's probably not worth the effort. See section 3 in question #18 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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Answer 3

captnswing Author

Level 1

79 points

May 23, 2010 9:04 AM in response to captnswing

thanks guys!

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