- #MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE MOVIE#
- #MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE MAC#
- #MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE WINDOWS#
The first set of steps involves formatting the drive. Step 1: Format the Drive to “Mac OS Extended” Compatibility Drives that are pre-formatted for OS X are usually no different than a standard external drive, other than having a higher price tag.
#MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE MAC#
Note on buying external hard drives: it’s almost always cheaper to buy a generic external hard drive and format it yourself to be Mac compatible.
If you want to use this HDD for Time Machine and as Network storage while attached to your router you need to create 2 different partitions – one formatted in HFS that will be used for Time Machine backups and one FAT32 that will be accessible over the network. You need to keep in mind that formatting an HDD erases all the information stored on it and that your router won't be able to see the HFS partition. This partition can take the whole drive or just part of it depending on your needs. To backup to your My Book drive on a MAC you need to create and HFS partition on it. That's why you can have read access then. However once you connect your drove to the router it becomes a network drive and it's actually the router that is reading writing to the HDD, not the OSx. So when your drive appears as a DAS ( connected directly) you have only read access. This is because OSx doesn't support writing on NTFS formatted drives.
It's possible that you are having wireless signal issues or the router is too busy handling other traffic on the network. As a DAS you can use it for Time Machine backups, but you still need to have a partition on it that is formatted in HFS. The situation is verry different if it is a DAS (Directly Attached Storage). If it has an IP address then it's a network drive. This is because your external HDD is handled as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) /Network drive. Furthermore Time Machine cannot use any network attached storage for the backup unless we are talking about a Time Capsule. Additionally if you format your HDD in HFS your router won't be able to read it as it most probably doesn't support HFS. You cannot because this HDD is NTFS and not HFS. In addition to write to an external HDD when using a Mac you need the HDD to be formatted as FAT 32 or HFS.
To backup using Time Machine you need to have your external HDD formatted as HFS. However if I plug it in to the wireless router, I can. I just realized that while I have the hard drive actually plugged in to my computer instead of the wireless router, I can't write to it.
#MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE WINDOWS#
Fairly frequently, the screen will go gray, or partially gray, then go back to normal once there is a significant change in the frame.ĭoes the hard drive possibly have to be reformatted to a correct format? It is formatted as Windows NT File System (NTFS).Įdit- Sorry, one last weird thing.
#MAKE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE MOVIE#
I do this by plugging my laptop in to the TV with an HDMI cable then essentially streaming the movie to my Mac from my external hard drive connected to my wireless router. Lastly, I use my laptop to watch movies on my TV. However when I go into the Disk Utility app, the hard drive does not show up. I can read and write to the hard drive wirelessly using my setup I have described. My main question is why I can't use this wireless external hard drive as a backup disk for Time Machine backups? Opening Time Machine preferences and clicking "Select Backup Disk." only shows my Bootcamp partition of the hard drive in the Mac. I can see this hard drive by going Finder>Go>"Connect to a Server." then enter the server address given to me by the wireless router's login page. I have this plugged in to my wireless router via a USB cable. I purchased a WD My Book 4TB external hard drive.