Lion prevents Airport disk Time Machine back up

gildrush wrote:

How did you come to realize the backup was corrupted?

I saw errors in Time Machine during backup, so I checked the disk with Disk Utility which found a mess, and when I tested a restore, it failed.

Can't recall more detail than that, it was a while ago.

PS I had to erase the disk, there was nothing useful on it

Message was edited by: John Kitchen - added PS

As John says, sometimes Time Machine backups fail, other times you get this:

I found out today from Apple that Time Machine was not designed to do backups through Airport with an external drive connected to it which it had been doing fine under Snow Leopard. They refused to help me "since it is not supported". I asked how come nothing was said or documented anywhere. All he did was since me a link to a knowledgebase page stating that. Funny thing was it worked fine for about a week under Lion, then it just stopped working.

I'm not a happy Mac fan today...

Yes, they refuse to put anything on the AppleStore page, much less train the AppleStore folks. 😟

But it has never been supported since the release of Leopard (when Time Machine was introduced).

It does work, to some degree, in some circumstances, but most likely the backups will turn up corrupted, sooner or later. See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

And that includes Lion; it's worked for me in beta testing, and stil works now. But I have other backups, for that very reason.

Thank you. I wish I had known when I bought the **** thing. It was why I set it up that way, but there is nothing warning you that "it's wasn't designed to work that way". Well gee thanks Apple for letting us know and relying on that wireless backup...

Couldn't agree more.

What, exactly, is happening (or not happening)?

Time Machine just stopped seeing the external drive connected to my Airport Extreme. It worked fine for over a week after upgrading to Lion. Had no problem under Snow Leopard... I could see the drive in the finder OK. Now I'm trying to figure out how to reconfigure my backup routine. Don't want to go back to plugging the drive back into my laptop everday. That's moving backwards...

I assume you did the usual:

"Reset" Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Repair the backups, per #A5 there.

Reset the Airport Extreme, per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3728

No I haven't. I called Applecare thinking they would direct me to do what you've documented. But I got no help which was very dissappointing. I even mentioned they were leaving me in a lyrch and he took offense to that! Oh well...

Thanks for your help!

Most likely it is that Apple wants to sell more Time capsules.😁

peterwillem

Baloney. If that were true, they wouldn't support backing-up to a shared drive on another Mac, or to a Mac Server. All indications are, it's just not reliable enough due to the hardware in the Airport Extreme.

Apple has certainly dropped the ball by refusing to put anything on the page in the online Apple Store, and not training the folks in the Apple Stores better, but it's pretty clear that they don't support it because it's not reliable enough.

Sounds like you have a different setup from mine but I thought I'd share my problem and haphazard fix since it's kinda of a similar configuration.

Within a week or so after upgrading to Lion I could not longer backup to an external HD that I have had connected to Time Capsule. My set up is the following: Uverse wireless router/modem (used for wireless) --> ethernet cable --> Time Capsule (wireless turned off) --> USB hub plugged into TC --> 2 HD's connected to hub for TC backups (one for me and my wife). Aiport Express connected wirelessly and only used to stream musch to connected speakers. TC is used only as a shared drive.

Anyway, I noticed that backups weren't happening and that I could no longer see our TC, Airport Express or the attached drives. I could reconnect the all three but Time Machine wouldn't allow me to backup to them for some reason. And when I rebooted the connection wouldn't re-establish automatically. Also, the Airport Utility wouldn't even recognize that the TC was there or the Airport Express module we have in the living room. So, I connected to the TC via ethernet to see about changing the setup...but this is when the problem randomly fixed itself. Unfortunately, I don't know which step worked so I'll give you a list of what I did...it's possibly a little confusing so I apologize ahead of time:

Preface: I powered cycled both TC and my Uverse router before starting these

1) Connected to TC via ethernet

2) Entered Airport Utility and only the TC appeared (no Airport Express)

3) Turned on the wireless to the TC and reconnected the ethernet cord back to Uverse to get the internet signal (still no sign of Airport Express)

4) Changed back to the Uverse network that everything was setup on so that I could reconfigure the router/modem....

5) With the Airport Utility still open all of a sudden TC and Airport Express reappeared...and so did the USB hub drives

6) Switched back to the TC network and used Airport Utility to turn off wireless again

7) Switched back to Uverse network...TC, drives and Airport Express still visible...

8) Restarted my MBP and initiated a Time Machine backup....everything was good to go

Given this mess that I did...I'm thinking that reconnecting via ethernet and f'in with the wireless settings might have helped...but this is a total guess.

Good luck everyone...hope you can get it back the way that it was. I know I prefer my setup this way.

I had the same issue; I could see my drive in the Airport Utility, and on the sidebar in finder but Time Machine could not see the drive. After 3 or 4 hours combing fourms I tried this very complex solution...

Open Finder.

Drag your Airport drive from finder to the right side of the dock.

Click on the @ spring icon that you just created and allow it to connect.

Open Time Machine and select the drive...

Yep, thats it...

Since upgrading to Lion on MBA 11" (late 2010), I have an intermittent problem of external disk connected via a brand new Airport Extreme. Along with the printer, it always shows in Airport Utility but, more often than not, cannot be found in Finder/Go/Network or Go/Connect to Server . I stress that this is an intermittent failure. Occasionally the disk does show in Finder. The point of wanting to see the disk in Finder is to use it for Time Machine backups - which I have in fact done on this setup, even backing up to two hard disks connected to Extreme via a hub. I conclude my settings are not to blame and there is a software glitch. Apple may not support TS backups through Extreme. OK Fine. But surely it does support Lion software issues one of which is an exernal hard disk connected according to Airport Utility but not 'findable' in Finder?

Or, if you have a desktop Mac, you can back up to a shared drive on it over your network. See #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

This no longer works for me. I followed all the steps, and the disk/shared folder does not show up in TimeMachine on the source machine, a MBP. The disk is an internal drive in my Mac Pro. This has to be a bug, it worked prior to Lion, and now it does not.

If there are any workarounds please advise.