topic Re: Hub 2, USB drive and Time Machine in My Router

Hub 2, USB drive and Time Machine

westoverjim — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 09:31:24 GMT

I'd like to connect a USB drive to the Hub 2 and use it as a storage drive for my MacBook Time Machine backups. I've connected an external HDD to the USB port and I can see the drive in Finder and I can create folders on it (from Finder) but I can't see it listed as an option in Time Machine Preferences so I can't select it as the backup destination. Has anyone had any success in doing this? Any ideas or useful links I can try?

I appear to be "logged in" to the external drive as user "Guest" which I guess is some sort of SMB logon, I tried the router admin password but that would not work. Are there some default logons for SMB and can I add more?

Thanks!

Re: Hub 2, USB drive and Time Machine

Baldrick1 — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 10:13:04 GMT

@westoverjim Welcome to the forum.

My, advice, don’t do it.

The hub USB port uses the now discredited SMB1 protocol. This is considered to be a security risk. I have no idea what a Time Machine is but as an example, if you want to use it with a Windows PC SMB1 has to be enabled rather than use the default SMB2 in the operating system after first accepting the warning notices.

Re: Hub 2, USB drive and Time Machine

bobpullen — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 16:55:03 GMT

I imagine if you want to get your hands dirty, you can probably do something using symlinks.

I'm with @Baldrick1 though, I would personally consider an implementation that doesn't involve using the Hub's USB port.

Re: Hub 2, USB drive and Time Machine

RPMozley — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:21:44 GMT

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202784#nas
According to that help page the SMB has to support Time Machine, probably not available from the USB port of the hub2.