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trifona

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 22, 2007
78
13
Originally posted in the Sonoma forum:

My daily machine is 2019 i9 MBP running Sonoma. An old 2007 iMac running El Capitan has been running as a fileserver on our home network. The iMac has had an external HDD formatted in Mac extended journal serving as a dedicated time machine drive. I'm now looking to replace the iMac and was looking over options for a new Mac Mini or maybe even a Synology Raid; leaning towards the Mini right now.

I'm writing to revisit an old issue with Time Machine that I never solved several years ago to understand what did I "break". For about 5 months after purchasing the MBP in late 2019 I was able to connect over wifi to the external HDD that is connected to the iMac. I know not the best practice, but I had not purchased portable SSD yet at that time.

In April 2020 I know I replaced our router, and immediately Time Machine over wifi stopped working completely. For the longest time I assumed the new router blocked a port/protocol/something. I don't recall if I updated Mac OS at that time or no, but perhaps? The old router was an Asus, and we had switched to a Netgear. I just bought a new router again this month, another Asus, and I still cannot get this old functionality back.

On my MBP I have file sharing turned on, and can access everything on the iMac's internal HDD as well as the external drive hanging off of it. I just cannot get Time Machine on the MBP to recognize the external drive as being an option. The reason why this is important to me now is I'd like to solve this issue so I can hang 2 external HDDs on a Mini, to serve as backups for the Mini & MBP respectively.

I've confirmed that file sharing on the MBP is set up as per the instructions I found in the links below:

https://512pixels.net/2023/09/how-to-set-up-time-machine-server-ventura-or-later/
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/back-up-to-a-shared-folder-mchl31533145/mac

There has to be something in MAC OS that explains this, no?
 
Last edited:

trifona

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 22, 2007
78
13
I finally figured it out! I was not logged in / connected to server via AFP. I kept digging at this this morning, because I could mount every other shared folder from the iMac, except for the external drive and my Pictures folder. This feels like such a buried element on its own. I was always able to access the iMac's primary drive , the external drive and all subfolders from both drives from the Finder from my MBP, but not logging in via AFP was not permitting the external drive to "Mount".

MBP is backing up over WiFi for the first time in nearly 4 years. Mystery solved.
 
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