First Time Machine Full Backup over Ethernet not recognized latter over AirPort

According to Applecare personnel, Time Machine is NOT designed to be useable correctly over WiFi.

Hope this helps 🙂

ravs78 wrote:

. . .

I will run a brand new full first backup over Ethernet, but I'd like to know what do I have to do for getting it recognizable for futures backups over AirPort?

That should work, and does with most network backups, including to Time Capsules and shared disks on other Macs.

NAS drives, however, are all different. They have their own internal software, so interact with OSX and Time Machine differently.

Your best bet is probably to contact Iomega.

Radiation Mac wrote:

According to Applecare personnel, Time Machine is NOT designed to be useable correctly over WiFi.

Not so. That's what the Time Capsule was designed for. And wireless backups are also supported to a shared drive on another Mac on the same local network, or to a Mac Server, and even those NASs that meet Apple's requirements (not all of them do) See: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html

WIFI is, of course, much slower and less reliable than a wired connection.

ravs78 wrote:

. . .

"when you do the TM backups is referring to the computer MAC address"

. . .

He insists that TM uses the MAC address of the computer... impliying that there is a MAC address for the computer... not the ones of the Ethernet port or AirPort.

It's the Ethernet MAC address.

From your first post:

I've seen that the MAC address is used as part of the sparse bundle file name; obviously, there will be a conflict here because Ethernet and AiPort do not have the same MAC address (of course !).

That sounds like either Iomega's software created the sparse bundle, or they instructed you to do that. The MAC address was in the name of Time Machine-created sparse bundles on Leopard, but that was dropped in Snow Leopard (and Lion). The identification is now inside the sparse bundle.

(Sparse bundles created under Leopard continued to work on Snow Leopard; presumably Snow Leopard updated the contents).

If you locate the sparse bundle via the Finder, select and right-click it, then choose See Package Contents, you should see a com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist. Double-click it to open it. There should be several entries.

On Lion, a sparse bundle created by Time Machine has the Hardware UUID.

On Snow Leopard, a sparse bundle created by Time Machine has both the Ethernet MAC address and the Hardware UUID.

Here's one created by Time Machine running Snow Leopard on my Mac (and note that the name does not include the MAC address):

Click the Apple icon at the left of your menubar, then About This Mac then More Info (or use the SystemProfiler app).

I haven't done this in Snow Leopard lately, but on Lion, the Hardware UUID is the last item on the first page, titled Hardware Overview.

Select Network in the sidebar, then Ethernet from the list of Active Services. The MAC address is shown in the lower panel.

And yes, it does use the same Ethernet MAC address whether you're connected via Ethernet or WIFI; that's how you can do the first backup (or a full restore) via Ethernet, but normal incremental backups via WIFI. Otherwise it would think you have two different computers!

I recall a thread here a couple of years ago, where the user's Ethernet card had failed, and he couldn't understand why he could no longer do backups via WIFI, either.

Bottom line: we may need to know how your sparse bundle was created; automatically by Time Machine, by Iomega's software as part of the setup process, or did you do it manually per their instructions?

ravs78 wrote:

. . .

Regarding your last question, I trigered the backup via TM. I mean, I've opened TM preference, selected the drive where I want the backups, I turned off automatic backups (in order to not trigger another backup via Airport wanting to delet the first one - FYI, I haven't tried to do another backup since the first full one via Ethernet or Airpot) for eventually start the backup itself. This is what you mean automatically by Time Machine, right?

Yes. It should make no difference whether you're connected ia Ethernet or Airport (and doesn't if you back up to a Time Capsule, or another Mac or Mac Server over your network.

If the Iomega is doing that, I have no idea why or how to fix it.

Again, how was the sparse bundle created in the first place? Did the Iomega instructions have you do that, either via a Terminal command or their programming? It doesn't look like Time Machine made it, so there's no telling what's going on.

I've created a copy of the sparsebundle in another location (within the NAS). I'll trigger another backup to see what will happen, first via the Ethernet port, then via the AirPort. If my first full backup get erased again, I'll just copy the sparsebundle I got into the other location. What do you think?

I don't know -- I don't use a NAS, and know very little about the Iomega version.

It seem that I have a similar problem... I did the original backup with ethernet... then switched to wireless. Couple first backups went nicely, just the changes. And then it started to back up more than 350 gb of my hard-drive and Im pretty sure I havent used all of that in between the backups. 🙂

So is there a list of programs that would cause such a thing? I do have a symantec endpoint on my computer. And I also use bonkey to back up my music to our home server. I use Airport Extreme with lacie usb hard-drive to do my timemachine backups.

Any ideas?

Pexi_ wrote:

It seem that I have a similar problem... I did the original backup with ethernet... then switched to wireless. Couple first backups went nicely, just the changes. And then it started to back up more than 350 gb of my hard-drive and Im pretty sure I havent used all of that in between the backups. 🙂

So is there a list of programs that would cause such a thing?

Yes. See #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for some of the common culprits, and ways to see exactly what's going on.

I use Airport Extreme with lacie usb hard-drive to do my timemachine backups.

I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple. See: Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.