Time Machine Airport Extreme - unplug external and take it with me?

[PeterM11]

Is there any way to use an external hard drive directly with my MacBook Pro and also by connecting it to my Airport Extreme?

I've read and experienced how for some reason Time Machine does the filing differently between the two. I want to be able to backup wirelessly at home but then be able to unplug my external and take it with me when I go on a trip without taking my router with me.

Anyone know how I can do this?

Please and thank you!

 

[Ipheuria]

I'm sort of confused by your question, do you have a time capsule or an external drive connected to USB? If I have this correctly? You connect to it but when you're moving around you connect the drive to your Wifi router is that your setup? Just trying to figure out your setup and what you're trying to acheive?

 

[PeterM11]

Sorry for any confusion.

I have an external hard drive with USB.

Normally I just plug it straight into my computer in order to do backups. This works fine but is kind of inconvenient.

I recently got an Airport Extreme and figured that while I was at home I would be able to simply plug my external hard drive into it and backup over my LAN.

For some reason when I plug the external hard drive into the Airport Extreme it wants to recognize it as a different device and not continue backing up to the same place but start over.

I realize I could just wipe the drive and only back up over the LAN but I was really hoping to be able to unplug the external hard drive and take it with me when I'm going to be away from home for a few days or weeks. This way I could make sure I don't miss backing up at least once a day.

So yeah, I want to be able to plug my external hard drive into my Airport Extreme, backup over my LAN, then unplug the external hard drive and take it with me, and still be able to continue backing up normally via USB.

 

[Ipheuria]

OK see now I got ya Well what I can say is that I have a 1TB drive connected to my laptop via USB and when I first connected it I was using it as a data drive. When I decided to use it in Time Machine the only way I could do it is by formatting the drive. So what I would say is copy off what you need hook it up to your Airport Extreme and set it up in Time Machine. It will probably want to format it go ahead and do it. Then once it's all setup unplug it and plug it in via USB and right click the time machine icon in the taskbar. Then go to setup disks and see if you can add it through USB or if it already recognizes it. If no dice then there are other third party software out there anyway that will do it the way you want or you could just get a drive specifically for backups since they are so cheap nowadays.