AC86U USB Drives not recognized & Time Machine not working

[Serge]

I've installed Merlin's firmware on my AC86U. Uploaded successfully. Time machine works perfect and fast. But in my case, connection to my ISP was not established and seems like it's a firmware bug. But other ISP might have better networking and Merlin's firmware might help.

 

[Serge]

Time Machine is a proprietary Apple technology. It will never work reliably outside of with an Apple product, because everyone has to reverse engineer and guess how Apple's implementation is working. And Apple can make changes at any time, which will break support with third party products.

From my point of view, if ASUS declare TimeMachine support, that should support it. Or just do not declare it.

 

[ApexRon]

Time Machine is a proprietary Apple technology. It will never work reliably outside of with an Apple product, because everyone has to reverse engineer and guess how Apple's implementation is working. And Apple can make changes at any time, which will break support with third party products.

@RMerlin I agree with you. However, if ASUS is going to market a product with a feature called "Time Machine" that supports Apple's Mac backup, then they need to step up and resolve to every customer's satisfaction that wants to utilize that feature or remove feature from product and offer full refunds to those customers who purchased the product because of the feature.

As a side note, I worked for a large company who would market products that didn't work. However, as each customer called in for service, engineering would fix or circumvent.

 

[ApexRon]

I've installed Merlin's firmware on my AC86U. Uploaded successfully. Time machine works perfect and fast. But in my case, connection to my ISP was not established and seems like it's a firmware bug. But other ISP might have better networking and Merlin's firmware might help.

@Serge What level of MacOS are you using?

 

[Serge]

What level of MacOS are you using?

Mojave, 10.14.1

 

[ApexRon]

Okay, Merlin installed. Initially I tried just removing from Mac USB connection and plugging into ASUS, Merlin would not mount drive. I reformatted hard drive using Merlin and Merlin would not mount hard drive. I remounted hard drive on Mac and formatted then partitioned (250GB and 750GB). Reinstalled on ASUS and hard drive mounted. Time Machine connected just fine and it is now backing up across WiFi.

 

[sfx2000]

Time Machine is a proprietary Apple technology. It will never work reliably outside of with an Apple product, because everyone has to reverse engineer and guess how Apple's implementation is working. And Apple can make changes at any time, which will break support with third party products.

Many of the third-party implementations will work for a while - the big challenge is when the TimeMachine client starts thinning the sparsebundle, and that when things might go awry...

The best TimeMachine "server" is OSX Server running on a Mac - TimeCapsule works great, and the older 802.11n 4th Models - the HDD can be replaced with a larger disk - put it in "bridge" mode and disable WiFi (or use the Wifi for IOT things, maybe)...

The 11n models are cheap on eBay or Craigslist...

 

[ApexRon]

Many of the third-party implementations will work for a while - the big challenge is when the TimeMachine client starts thinning the sparsebundle, and that when things might go awry...

The best TimeMachine "server" is OSX Server running on a Mac - TimeCapsule works great, and the older 802.11n 4th Models - the HDD can be replaced with a larger disk - put it in "bridge" mode and disable WiFi (or use the Wifi for IOT things, maybe)...

The 11n models are cheap on eBay or Craigslist...

MacBook is using APFS and with a USB hard drive MacOS would only format it as Mac OS Extended. That and MacOS Mojave, no more sparse bundle. Each timed backup goes into a separate folder.

Right now, my ETA for backup completion is 5 hours so I won't know a lot about Time Machine complete functionality until later. I have an old Apple router that I used to use for backups but I don't like a lot of old gear hanging around taking up space.

 

[ApexRon]

I just checked hard drive and there is a file called Mac.sparsebundle so I stand corrected.

 

[Not Important]

I was facing the same issue and could not enable Time Machine on my Asus AX88U and using my Macbook Pro 2019 running Latest Catalina 10.14.4
Setup SMB on your router
Setup Time Machine and select the drive (the drive can be in any format that Asus router reads)
On the Mac Setup a AFP connect to the SNB (afp://192.168.50.1 in the connect window). I also set it up to auto login at reboot. (http://www.mackungfu.org/HowtouseAFPtoconnecttoaNASonmacOSSierra)
On the Mac goto the Time Machine and try to connect, you should see the AFP drive to backup.

The below link also helped, just replace smb with afp in the link

https://dongknows.com/how-to-turn-your-wi-fi-router-into-a-time-capsule/

 

[ATLga]

I was facing the same issue and could not enable Time Machine on my Asus AX88U and using my Macbook Pro 2019 running Latest Catalina 10.14.4
Setup SMB on your router
Setup Time Machine and select the drive (the drive can be in any format that Asus router reads)
On the Mac Setup a AFP connect to the SNB (afp://192.168.50.1 in the connect window). I also set it up to auto login at reboot. (http://www.mackungfu.org/HowtouseAFPtoconnecttoaNASonmacOSSierra)
On the Mac goto the Time Machine and try to connect, you should see the AFP drive to backup.

The below link also helped, just replace smb with afp in the link

https://dongknows.com/how-to-turn-your-wi-fi-router-into-a-time-capsule/

You’re replying to a year and a half old thread

 

[Not Important]

You’re replying to a year and a half old thread

Hope it helps someone in the future. I spent half a day trying on my own and reading a bunch of forums.

 

[quadra2030]

.. and pray after few weeks that your Time Machine backups still will be usable/not corrupted. Been there, done that.