No longer able to use AirPort Extreme disk as Time Machine backup drive

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No longer able to use AirPort Extreme disk as Time Machine backup drive

Recently I tried to use my Airport extreme's disk as Time Machine backup storage for my M1 MacBook Air as I used to do but I have no clue why, Time Machine is no longer able to do it. Thru Finder I can see, mount and use the disk with no problem but on Time Machine, I see and select the disk, it shows a message "mounting AirPort Time Capsule @ home.local" and asks for the password to prepare it, press Connect button and bingo.... nothing happens :-(

Does anyone have a clue on why this started happening?

I don't know if an update has something to do with this cause on Ubuntu for instance, latest versions dropped support for ntlm and the result is that so far I either need to use older version or cry.

I'll be surprised if Apple is doing this with it's own products...

Below a screenshot right after I press Connect.

You can see another drive That I am using now but I tried connect with or without it with same results. Time Machine works on it. Just doesn't work on Airport's disk....

Anyway, has anyone experienced this or has ideas to help a friend out?

Thanks in advance.

Parallels

Posted on Aug 23, 2023 5:28 PM

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Jeff_W.

Community Specialist

Aug 24, 2023 1:30 PM in response to cbenjam

Hi cbenjam,

Did you recently upgrade macOS on the Mac in question? If so, the following guidance may be relevant to this as described here, and formatting the disk may be necessary. If that is the case, we'd advise to manually copy any important data on the disk for safe keeping since this will erase the disk:

"Upgrade macOS and use an APFS-formatted backup disk

If you're using the same Time Machine backup disk that you were using before upgrading to macOS Big Sur or later, follow these steps:

Make sure that you're using macOS Big Sur or later. Find out which macOS your Mac is using.
Select your backup disk in the Finder.
Choose File > Get Info from the menu bar. In the Info window that opens, look for the item labeled Format.
If the format isn't APFS, but you want improved Time Machine performance, use Disk Utility to erase the backup disk using the APFS format. This permanently deletes any backups and other data on that disk.
Set up Time Machine to use the backup disk again. After the first backup, future backups should be faster than before."

This is from If Time Machine takes a long time to back up - Apple Support.

If that's not the case, let's test to see if you are able to back up after setting up and logging into a new user account on the Mac. This will help us to isolate the issue further:

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Cheers!

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No longer able to use AirPort Extreme disk as Time Machine backup drive

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