[Anonymous]

Anonymous on September 10, 2015 at 1:57 pm #2482

How to conn Time Machine to non Apple wifi router to use with mac and macbook pro over wifi

[David Payette]

David Payette on September 11, 2015 at 5:25 am #2497

Hi Urbanelectica,

Oh boy. This is a technical issue that varies from router to router. There are workarounds that I’ve heard about for DD-WRT and other open-source firmware replacements, but that’s beyond the scope of the troubleshooting I can do here.

I can, however, explain why your Time Machine backup won’t work. Time Machine backups will only function if the hard drive is formatted using the Macintosh OS filesystem. It won’t work on a volume formatted with NTFS, FAT, exFAT, or any other file system.

The firmware that comes on third-party routers typically doesn’t support this filesystem. If you plug in a hard drive formatted with FAT or NTFS, it will show up on your Mac but Time Machine won’t work. If you plug in a hard drive formatted with the Mac filesystem, the router won’t recognize it and won’t share it at all.

From a hardware perspective, all wireless routers are essentially the same, but the firmware built into Apple-branded routers tends to be superior to third-party alternatives and it supports the Mac filesystem.

Thanks for the great question and I hope this helps,
David P.