Okay, I bought a new Time Capsule from the Apple Store and it’s a great wireless base station but… I want to use it for Time Machine backups too and am a tiny bit lost on how to get that set up. Can you help me out?
I can still remember the old Apple Mac ads where they talked about the “computer for the rest of us” and showed how the user’s guide was only a 15-20 page brochure, rather than a 200-page notebook for a DOS machine. The joke we had was that it marketing based on the “thud factor” and it’s still true: Apple products still tend to come with tiny little brochures, just enough to get you started. And sometimes not even that. 🙂
Anyway, that’s a long, roundabout way of saying “no problem, we can get you started!”
Once you have your Time Capsule set up and your Mac hooked up to it via either direct Ethernet or wireless, all you really have to do is launch Time Machine (which should be in Applications –> Time Machine. Important first step: make sure your app is up-to-date!
Since you’ve never run it before, you should see this:
Click on “Set Up Time Machine” and you’ll see this (eventually. For some strange reason it an take 30 seconds or more to progress past this point):
Before you eagerly click on “Choose Backup Disk” I strongly suggest that you check “Show Time Machine Status in the Menu Bar” as it’s darn helpful. Next you should see your Time Capsule with whatever name you gave it when you first set it up (if you haven’t yet set it up, do so with Airport Utility, which can be found in “Applications”):
Pick your device (just in case you have more than one, which would be cool, but expensive) and click on “Use for Backup”. Now you’ll get:
Enter the appropriate password (two comments here: first, I don’t know why it says “enter account and password” when you can’t actually enter an account name, and second, I strongly strongly! recommend that you always set passwords to maximize your security, even on a network you think is only you’ll access).
Now, finally, you’re up and ready to have Time Machine start doing its backup magic.
Since you checked the “show menu” option (right?) you’ll also be able to see what’s going on right on your menu bar with the nifty Time Machine menu:
Now the longest and most tedious part: the first full backup. For my setup, it was a matter of streaming and organizing almost 60GB of information and, yes, it took a few days to complete. If you can, a handy tip is to hook your computer up to the Time Capsule via Ethernet and it’ll run a lot faster, but my Macbook Air doesn’t have a built-in Ethernet connector.
If you want to exclude some directories (like “Applications”) then simply click on “Options” in the Time Machine preference pane, which you can easily reach by choosing “”Open Time Machine Preferences…” from the Time Machine menu, or going to Apple –> System Preferences… and clicking on “Time Machine”.
Not sure what you mean, Patsy, but if the hard drive isn’t plugged directly into your Macbook Air and it isn’t running on a Mac server, then Time Machine isn’t going to see it when you click on “Choose Drive”.
Hi Dave,
I have been setting up my time capsule. Thanks for the information. I have 3 external hard drives hooked up to my device using a usb hub. I can see the drives when I click on disks, but nothing happens. I am new to Apple. I just bought a macbook air but I also use a desktop running Windows 7. I am trying to access the external hard drives using either of them. Can you help?
Carla, sounds like you’re in a bit of a pickle, actually, because once you decided to use your Time Capsule as an external drive you kind of got in the way of it being a backup storage device. It might honor the files that you already have on there, but I’d just pick up a second hard drive, copy everything over, then reformat the Time Capsule and use it as a backup device only. FYI I just bought a 2TB external drive as a redundant backup system from Amazon.com for $119. Yup, they’re cheap now. 🙂
:OS How embarrasing!!! pardon my spelling…
Hi Dave, this article was very helpful. I would like to confirm one thing before I follow you step by step…
I’m Tiger OS currently. I got the Time Capsule but was unable to get Leppard or Snow Leppard when I made my purchase.
I have been using my Time Capsule as my hard drive as I ran out of space. Now I just received my Snow Leppard but I’m afraid to upgrade… I read in another forum that the intallation of Time Machine would at some point use all the space and whatever I had there would be replaced…
What do you suggest?
tnhx in advance
If you want to set up Time Machine using a hard drive that isn’t made for Mac check here for a simple and tested method: http://www.dagaza.com/2010/03/setting-up-time-machine/