Move Time Machine Backup HDD to AirPort Extreme

I have exactly this same problem. Hoping that with the new High Sierra Mac OS that this would have been made possible. Looks like in 2008 and in 2014 when this string was active that it was not possible, or very difficult to do. Looks like there should be a way to do so.

I'm looking at 15 hours for the new back up to complete and I'm losing all of the history of backups for this drive. It was suggested above to go buy a new drive for the time machine network backups connected through AirPort Extreme. Disks are not that expensive anymore, but seems like a waste to let this drive just sit there and use a new drive. I want to use the same drive to backup my new MacBook Pro. It is a 2 TB USB 3 drive with over 1TB of disk left (before time machnine started a new backup an hour ago). As it is, I see no advantage to using Airport Extreme for backups.

I called Apple Care and asked the tech this question. I've been on hold for 30 minutes. Guess they don't have an answer either. I'll repost if I get any help from Apple Care.

Anyone know how to make this work. Or doesn't it work?

Dead link.

That would be expected after 3 years.

Please start a new post and provide complete details on what you want to try to do.

Just finished an hour on the phone with Apple Care. As Bob explained above, the network drive has different architecture than a directly connected back-up drive. It is probably impossible to make a time machine file created with a directly connected drive work as a network drive for time machine. Or, at least very difficult and prone to problems.

So guess I'll stop this time machine back up. It's been running for two hours and have only moved 37 GB out of 353 GB and is estimating about 14 hours to complete.

I think I'll put this drive back on the iMac as a directly connected drive and buy a new drive for my MBPro and make it a network drive. I have to do an initial backup on that drive anyway and so it just as well be on the Airport Extreme. Or, maybe it makes more sense to also have a dedicated direct connect drive for the MBPro. I will only back it up when I'm at home anyway.

Why does this stuff have to get so complicated?

Click here and follow the instructions.

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This sounds like you may have initially used the USB drive directly attached to your Mac for backups....and then moved the drive to the USB port on the AirPort Extreme.

Unfortunately, Time Machine backs up differently to a drive directly connected to a Mac than it does to a drive attached to a router. The drive connected to your Mac is a "local" drive, while the drive connected to the router is a "network" drive. With a network drive, Time Machine must create a special type of file to store all of your new backups called a sparsebundle.

So, Time Machine must make a whole new backup again if you want to connect the USB drive to the AirPort Extreme. If you do not want to erase the drive and start over, you might think about adding a new drive to the AirPort Extreme and keeping your current drive around in case you need to go back and pick up a file from the past.

There are a few workarounds to this issue if you must keep your current backups and cannot add a new drive, but they are complex, and speaking from experience, not always reliable. We can provide more details on that if you want.