Setting up Seagate BackupPlus HD with Airport Time Capsule

[tharrso]

I just bought a Seagate BackupPlus 2TB external HD (connects with USB2) to backup my Airport Ttime Capsule. Unfortunately, while Seagate gives instructions on how to set up a connection to a Mac computer, nowhere can I find any instructions on how to set up a connection to a Time Capsule.
The Time Capsule is an older 1TB version (~6 years old now) and I'm concerned that it's reaching the end of its useful life. I'd like to backup the Time Capsule to the Seagate BackupPlus; retire the old Time Capsule; get a new 2TB Airport Time Capsule; and recover the old Time Capsule backup from the Seagate BackupPlus to the new Time Capsule.
Can anyone point me to instructions on how to do this? Or give me a little tutorial?

thanks,
Ted

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Well there's this way;

1. Open a new Finder window. ...
2. Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" from the original backup drive to the top level of the new backup drive.
3. Enter an administrator name and password, then click OK to start the copying process.

Or you can use a 3rd party app like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact copy of your Time Capsule.

Clone an Existing Drive

 

[tharrso]

Can we back up a little bit?
First I have to be able to see the drive. Just plugging it into the Airport Time Capsule doesn't do this. The drive is not visible in either Finder or the Airport Utility. How do I get the drive to be visible on the network?

 

[Lufbrarunner]

How is the Seagate drive formatted?

 

[tharrso]

It appears to be NTFS, although Seagate doesn't come right out and say this.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Is the partition type MBR ?

 

[tharrso]

I don't know how to tell. Documentation is nonexistent.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

You should be able to set up the HDD via the airport utility LINK

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Connect the Seagate to your Mac then launch Disc Utility. Click the seagate drive in the left column (the top Seagate icon not the indented one immediately below it). Click Erase in the toolbar, then in the next window, format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the GUID Partition Map, then click Erase.

With the Seagate drive mounted & if your Time Capsule is also mounted on your Mac's Desktop then your can continue as per my earlier advice.

 

[tharrso]

Thanks Spawn and Lufbrarunner.
"Click Erase in the toolbar, then in the next window, format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the GUID Partition Map, then click Erase."
I see how to do the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) part, but I don't see anything about GUID Partition Map in the ERASE window of Disk Utility. Is there something else I need to do? Someplace else to set the partition map? It says "Partition Map Scheme : Master Boot Record" at the bottom of the ERASE window.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Did you click the top entry for the drive and not the indented one?

 

[tharrso]

Yes. What should I be seeing?

 

[tharrso]

Here's what my ERASE panel looks like:

 

[tharrso]

Mac OSX 10.9.5 BTW

 

[tharrso]

Figured it out. If I plug the seagate drive into my MacBook Air instead (Mac OSX 10.11) I see the partition dropdown menu and I can choose GUID Partition Map. So I'm now formatting the disk from the MacBook Air.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

I think in this case because you'd previously partitioned the drive, that to enable the Format section of the window you would have needed to have selected the indented "Seagate Backup Plus Drive".

 

[tharrso]

Success! The Seagate backup disk is now formatted and when hooked up to the USB port of the Time Capsule is visible both in Finder and Airport Utility.
Now let me study that LINK that Lufbrarunner sent and see if I can get the Seagate Backup to mirror the Time Capsule. This is complicated by the fact that I use the Time Capsule both as a place for Time Machine backups of my computer, but also as an archival facility for stuff I don't want to keep on the computer any more. So there's a lot more on it than just the sparsebundle disk image from the computer.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Just in case this is helpful,

Time Machine has the inbuilt feature to back up to 2 different drives, in your case, the Time Capsule plus the Seagate Backup Plus drive.

Just click the "Select Disk" button if you want to use both drives. Once Time Machine has backed up to the Seagate drive you could just disconnect from the Time Capsule whenever you felt you no longer wanted to use it.

When you purchase a new Time Capsule just follow the steps again.

Whatever extra files you are storing on the Time Capsule you would need to copy them over manually or via a 3rd party solution.

 

[tharrso]

Sounds good. I'll hook up the Seagate BUP and make it the second Time Machine backup disk this evening and let it run overnight. Hopefully by the morning it will have backed everything up. Then I can just copy the archive files over to their own directories.

 

[tharrso]

Thanks for all the help guys. Everything seems to be working. Time machine is backing up to both HDs and I've manually copied the archives.