Setting up 2TB Time Capsule for backups only.

Can I ask why you need this?

Because we are going to use TC on a separate network without a gateway. But saying that is fairly obscure I suspect.

Here is a previous post I did with the instructions.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7726868?answerId=30888441022#30888441022

Let me try and simplify that somewhat.

You need to configure the TC and the computer.

To do this it is easiest to do all the major settings.. First Pass.

Then tidy up any issues on a second pass.

Step 1. Configure the TC.

Plug the TC Lan port to Lan port on the iMac. Open your airport utility.

Reset the TC to factory and set it up again. (Reset will not delete the existing backup).

Use short names <8 characters, no spaces and pure alphanumerics. NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED NAMES.

Passwords same but 8-20 characters.

I have setup to match your configuration.

My main network is using 192.168.20.x instead of 192.168.0.x but the principle is the same.

One important thing.

You need to know to swap control of the airport utility from wireless to ethernet.. here.

Here is the shot of the TC. I reset it and gave it a new name.. You should end up with something very close.

Please note you will have lots of errors showing in the airport utility.. just ignore them for now. We can fix that on second pass.

Now in the computer make sure you have wireless at the top of the list of network connections and ethernet below it.. if your order is different fix it with gear symbol on the bottom and set order.

Now I have both Internet working over wireless.. and backup can work over ethernet at the same time. You can check in Finder that you can mount the TC disk first. With the disk mounted setup Time Machine to use this disk for backup and run it.

So first pass gets you to a working configuration.

Do not worry about anything else until you get to this point. If you have issues give me a screenshot of where you are up to and what is going wrong.

I will put second pass, cleanup and error fixes in a second post.. as it is more important that you get to a working setup.

We are on opposite sides of the world (I am in Australia) so getting to answer your questions is going to take a while.

I am worried about your screenshot which shows do you want to delete all files

Sorry there is no file deletion at all. I don't know where you picked that up from.

You need to factory reset the TC.. no files are deleted when you do that.

Factory reset -- google is your friend you know.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201945

Anything you don't know how to do.. just google.

Not trying to be mean or anything. I have no issues explaining it.

With the TC powered off press in the reset button using paperclip etc. Power on TC without releasing reset.. and keep holding for another 10sec or until the front LED flashes rapidly. All airports are reset this way.

Also I would be interested to know how your original suggestion of a USB would work. What do you use and how does that work.

Buy a USB external drive. (You could also buy thunderbolt or if your iMac is old Firewire but any iMac since 2012 or 2013 will be USB3 and that is the cheapest by far).

You can buy them already formatted for Mac .. I suggest drives of around 2TB for 2.5" portable type and 4TB for 3.5" desktop type (come with power supply). I use HGST Touro. Others use WD or Seagate or LaCie.. makes little difference. You can see the hgst drive in the Finder screenshot above.. I use a 3.5" 4TB one which is partitioned into two parts and I run Time Machine to one partition and Carbon Copy Cloner to the other due to Time Machine really being unreliable now.

What age is your iMac and what OS is it running??

Screenshot of Airport Utility missing. How do I attach. Image insertion does not work and the paperclip says wrong URL.

Take the screenshot.. command + shift + 4 so you take just the part of the screen you want. The screenshot goes to the desktop.

Click image insertion.

Select the file.

Bob's your uncle..

Is there anyway, that I can get the Disk to appear in Time Machine

Generally mount the TC disk in Finder first.. makes it much easier to get it into Time Machine.. but there are some tricks that can help.

1) Can you tell me why They are easier to operate than the TC?

TC is network drive and your computer has no direct control of the disk.

USB is local drive so fully under the control of your computer.

Remember faster and much more reliable.

2) Do they use Time Machine in the same way as the TC?

No, Time Machine uses what is called a sparsebundle on the TC .. a virtual disk. We (collective pronoun not royal) think a lot of the recent unreliability of Time Machine is related to this. Apple made a major change at Catalina. Guess how much info they have released to the public about this.. zero, zilch, negatory, not a jot or tittle.

Backup to local disk has not substantially changed.

3) How do I ensure that the USB drive is already formatted for my late 2014 iMac running OS Catalina

Catalina still uses traditional Mac format for backup. NOT THE NEW APFS.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh15139/mac

4) Could you send me, say an Amazon UK link that matches your criteria?

It seems Amazon is not stocking Mac formatted drives. So anything you buy will need format .. this is simple.. plug it into your Mac and run disk utility.

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/disk-utility/dskutl14079/mac

From Amazon the 2TB seagate portable. This is powered via the USB port so no power cable is needed.. very small unit.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-Portable-Exclusive/

Or desktop version

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01IAD6016/

WD My Book series. These were traditionally Mac version but it seems no market for them now at least with Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Book-Desktop-Hard-Drive/

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN

The only problem is they appear to be formatted ex-fat now. (To make it compatible with both PC and Mac) This is unsuitable for Time Machine no matter what the blurb says.

It seems most drives are formatted either windows NTFS and supplied with a Mac driver or Ex-Fat to make it compatible.

You might do better going to a Mac Speciality store if you are not prepared to format the drives yourself.

Apple sell some. https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/mac/mac-accessories/storage?page=1&fh=3783%2B30a3

You need USB3 not USB-C but some have dual ports or come with adapters..

LaPastenague needs the IP Address of the Time Capsule to be able to tell you in detail how to set up the Time Capsule to do what you want. Stay tuned for his instructions.

As far as the old backups on the Time Capsule, it won't hurt to leave the old backups on the Time Capsule if you feel that you really need them, but it is also possible that they may likely just be taking up space that could be put to better use in the future.

If you don't really need to go back months and years to see how your Mac looked long ago, it would probably make sense to erase the Time Capsule drive and start over again with a new backup and move forward from there.....once you have the Time Capsule configured to work with your Mac.

But, it's your call.

If you decide to erase the Time Capsule drive and start over again.......

Open AirPort Utility on your Mac

Click the Other WiFi Devices button and select Ethernet

Click to select the Time Capsule

Click Edit in the smaller window that appears

Click the Disks tab at the top of the next window

Click Erase Disk

Choose the Quick Erase option if it is not already selected

Click Erase

The process will only take a few minutes

1) Should the light on my TC be green all of the time, because when I switch off it goes to flashing amber?

It could change over because when you switch off the computer the connection to the TC drops out.. this is really irrelevant.

2)Airport Utility does not pick up the TC until I switch from wifi to Ethernet. It does not seem to stay on Ethernet, when I switch off, but reverts to wifi Does .this means that I need to remember this every time I switch on the iMac, otherwise I will not be backing up?

Defaults in some programs will not be remembered. I had not noticed this effect in Airport Utility tbh. I never switch off the Mac.. it goes into sleep mode and consumes just 5W so I seldom power down.. It is what I love about the stability of Macs.

The fact that Airport Utility swaps to wireless (due to wireless higher priority in the network list) is irrelevant to Time Machine. It will still find the TC based on TC name and IP address.

Next time you restart the Mac don't worry about the airport utility.. just make sure Time Machine is running backups.

3{ I will try to send some screenshots of my set up, as they do not seem to match yours.

Screenshots always help. Most of the differences are not important.

Let me remind you where we started.. this is a second best setup. A USB plugged into the Mac is superior in so many ways. I am still of that opinion.

A few things you can do as we never got to the second pass info..

#1 Turn off setup over wan. This is not actually a problem (since there is no wan connection) but we can make the problem go away.

#2 Turn off wireless in the TC. You do not want or need wireless left on. (unless you have another computer connecting to it over wireless you did not tell me about).

#3 Make sure you have IPv6 setup correctly in the TC under the Internet tab, Internet Options.

That covers it.. none of these are required. In other words as long as it continues to work properly so Time Machine can find the disk and continue the backup that is all that is relevant.

There are some nicetices you did not follow.. short names for one. I notice most people ignore my advice in that area at least.. and clearly it works without fixing it.. so don't worry.

Only one thing is needful.. Time Machine backs up without problem. Other stuff is window dressing.

EDIT.. And you can do both Internet and backup at the same time as per Bob comment. This is after all the point of the exercise.

You should not have to "switch" connections between Ethernet and WiFi at all if everything is configured correctly.

This is a case where you do.. but it is unusual as I never have noticed the reversion to wifi in airport utility before. I will need to check that is the case.

EDIT

Yes.. it does. I shut down computer with setting ethernet and reboot it reverted to wifi. My guess is it follows the order in network preferences instead of sticking to the setting as the computer was shut down.

So the old dog learns new tricks.

It sounds as if you have set up things so that you can either back up using the Ethernet connection......or......connect to the Internet using WiFi......but you cannot do both things at the same time.

Because the TC is isolated from the wifi the way airport utility works it must manually be swapped.. but internet should still work simultaneously with backup. Just this one computer can achieve this feat because TC is isolated from rest of the world.

A USB drive works faster and more reliably with Time Machine than a Time Capsule.

To format a USB drive to work with Time Machine.......

Connect the USB drive to your Mac

Open Disk Utility (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)

Select the USB drive on the left panel

Click Erase

Choose the option to format the drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Assign a name for the drive

Click Erase

The operation will take a few minutes

You are misunderstanding.

The USB drive is a target for Time Machine.

Just like the Time Capsule is a target for Time Machine.

The Time Capsule is not involved in the backup process.. that is purely Time Machine which is backup software on your compuer. It copies all the files on your computer to the target drive.

Same for USB drive.. it does nothing itself.. it is merely a disk. The software you use for backup is or can still be Time Machine. ie it will behave identically to using TC only be faster and more reliable. You can restore files exactly as you do now.

Here is my list of disks (targets) in Time Machine.

hgst1 is a USB drive plugged directly to the computer. (HGST is a brand of external drives bought out by WD)

J1900NAS is a Synology NAS on the network.

tc5e is a 2TB Time Capsule.

All targets are selected in rotation. The fastest and most reliable is HGST1

It is also used in two partitions with Carbon Copy Cloner which is actually my trustworth backup.

You can plug the TC into the ethernet port of the iMac and backup directly.. it takes a bit of fiddling but is possible..

However I recommend not doing backups like this.. it is better to sell off the TC and buy a USB drive and plug it into the back of imac and use that for backups.. much faster, more reliable and in the end better.

If you want the full instructions to use the TC give me the Sky Router home IP address.. and I can give you more details.

Rather than make it confusing with other things.. let me make a completely different suggestion.

I still highly recommend a local drive, ie USB plugged into the computer over any alternative setup with the TC.. but this might work and can offer advantages.

Buy a pair of EOP powerline adapters.

I strongly suggest the AV2 MIMO type. AV1200, AV1300 or AV2000.

eg I used the TP-Link ones.. TL-PA8010 which gave me about 240Mbps over half the house during a renovation.

I did replace with ethernet finally but these were a decent stopgap.

You plug one unit into the sky router power point down stairs.. always use the main power point not a power board. They have power through.

Then other end on power point nearest your Mac.

Run the ethernet to WAN port of the TC (nearest power) and ethernet to LAN port on the iMac. Reset the TC to factory and do the setup.. should be automatic and work in bridge.