KB wrote in to ask whether it is possible to have her Mac Book’s Time Machine automatically mount her Time Capsule (which is at her home) while she’s traveling and back up her Mac. The answer is yes, but it’s only easy to do if you have MobileMe.
For those of you without a MobileMe account, this solution won’t work (which is another reason to consider getting this great service). For those of you with a MobileMe account, let’s proceed. I am going to assume that you have only a single-user MobileMe account. If you have a family account, then without any more help, this hint will work if you are also the administrator of the Time Capsule. In addition, I am assuming you have already set up your Mac to back up to your Time Capsule. This solution is for adding a remote backup function, not setting up your Mac to use Time Capsule.
Basics
You need a few things to start: Your MobileMe user name and password, an internet connection, and administrator access to your Time Capsule. If you’re the only person using all of these, you should be all set.
The first thing we need to do is make sure you have set up your MobileMe account on your Mac. If you already have done this and turned on Back To My Mac, skip down to “Getting the Password” For the rest of us, you can find the MobileMe preferences in your System Preferences (access those from the Dock, your Applications folder, or the Apple Menu). Note: If you’re still running a plain-vanilla version of 10.5 Leopard and have never used Software Update, your Mac may still list the MobileMe preference as .Mac. I highly recommend you run all of your software updates before proceeding.
Here’s what we’re looking for:
Once you click on the MobileMe preference, your account page will come up. If you have not entered your MobileMe user name and password, it will provide fields for you to do so. Once you enter this information and it is verified you should get a screen similar to this:
The key here is that the screen says you are signed into MobileMe. Once that’s the case, click on “Back to My Mac.” Once on this screen, you need to click on the “Start” button to turn on the service. Note: If you don’t want to use the Back to My Mac service, that’s ok. We only need the computer to connect to the MobileMe servers once to generate a password. Once Back To My Mac is running, you can feel free to shut it off.
Great! Now you can quit your System Preferences.
Getting the Password
Now that we’ve set up our MobileMe account and Back To My Mac, we need to get our Back To My Mac password. To do so, go to your Applications Folder. From there, open your Utilities folder. Finally, in the Utilities folder, open the program called “Keychain Access.”
In the upper left pane, click on the “System” keychain. Then, look for the key that is the kind called “Back to My Mac key.” You’ll probably only have one of these, and it take the form of username.members.mac.com or username.members.me.com, where username = your MobileMe user name. It looks like this:
Now, double click on that key, and a new window will open. At the bottom, click on the checkbox next to “Show password.” A new administrator verification window will pop up, and you need to enter your computer’s admin password in order to view your Back to Your Mac password. Once done, you should see something like this:
Finally, highlight the password and copy it into your clipboard. We will need this password in just a minute. (Alternately, you can copy and paste it into a sticky if you think you’re going to need to use the clipboard before we finish this set up.) Take note of whether your account says username.members.mac.com or username.members.me.com. It does matter, so write it down. If you’ve only added your account since .Mac switched to MobileMe, it’ll say me.com. If you’re an old .Mac user, it’ll probably say .mac.com. Now you can quit Keychain Access. (If the program asks you if you want to save changes, say no.)
Time Capsule Setup
The last big job we have is to make some changes to the Time Capsule setup. You’ll need to open your AirPort Utility, which is in the same folder as Keychain Access. Once you open the AirPort Utility, you should see your Time Capsule listed in the window, like this:
Obviously, my Time Capsule is called Satellite. Double click on your Time Capsule. You may then have to enter your Time Capsule’s password in order to configure your settings. Once that window opens, you’ll be on the Summary tab. Click on the “Time Capsule” tab, then click the Edit button, as shown here:
Once you click the Edit button, you should get a window like this:
Ok! This is where the meat of the project comes in:
- You will not have the “Use dynamic global hostname” checkbox checked, but we want to do so now.
- Make sure you have something filled in for “Local Hostname.” Anything is fine.
- Now, back on the “Hostname” line, we’re going to fill it in with a long string. The first word will be your local hostname. Since mine is Satellite, my first word is satellite. Then I put a period, followed by my MobileMe user name (in my photo, I just put the word “username.” You’ll replace it.). After that, you’ll put another period, followed by members.mac.com or members.me.com, depending on what your keychain indicated your account used.
- On the “User” line, this is again going to be your MobileMe user name, followed by a period, followed by members.mac.com or members.me.com (whichever is correct for your account).
- On the “Password” line, you DO NOT put your MobileMe password. Instead, you paste the password we copied from the System Keychain.
- Now, click Done, then click the Update button to have your Time Capsule save the settings and restart.
Are we done yet?
Maybe. 
Theoretically, we’re done! You should be able to leave your home, go to a coffee shop or anywhere else with a wireless network, and within a few minutes of getting online, your Mac should detect your Time Capsule. I have found that, in some cases, it doesn’t quite work perfectly until we try a couple of steps at least one time.
If you go to another wireless network and then check your Time Machine system preference, look to see whether your Time Capsule is recognized. If it is, then you should actually have a date and time listed next to the “Next Backup” line. If you do not, try this:
- Simply turn off Time Machine and turn it back on. Wait a minute, and see if this does not correct the problem.
- If it still does not, go to the finder, then click on the “Go” menu, followed by “Connect to Server.” For the address, type in that entire host name string. On my computer it was satellite.username.members.mac.com (where username was my username). Then click Connect. If you did not set up your Time Capsule with a password to connect, it should connect on its own. If you set up a simple password only for the device (rather than usernames and passwords), then when the username/password box pops up, your username will be “user” and your password will be whatever you set up on your Time Capsule. Finally, if you chose to use specific usernames and passwords for Time Capsule, enter your username and password. Once your Time Capsule appears under your Devices tab on your Finder window (or Desktop), you can eject the Time Capsule. NOW, go back to your Time Machine preference, turn Time Machine off and then back on and wait a minute to see if the problem has gone away.
These two steps above should only be needed in rare circumstances. For most people, everything should work without the extra steps. A few more notes:
- If you’re like me and are stuck with a crummy cable connection at home or remotely, your upload speed is probably not very good, and this will significantly impact how long your Time Machine backups take. In my experience, the “Preparing” step in the Time Machine takes 20-30 minutes remotely before you even get an indicator of how much data needs to be backed up. This isn’t a bug; this is simply what happens when you’re not on a local connection.
- Since backups take much longer, you might want to consider downloading a program that lets you schedule your backups rather than using the standard every-hour-when-my-machine-is-plugged-in setting. I recommend the wonderful and free Time Machine Editor.
Update: If, after trying all the steps below, your Time Capsule still does not appear in the Time Machine list of disks, open Terminal and type this command, press return, then reopen System Preferences to look for the disk:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes -bool yes
Did this work for you? Have a suggestion to improve this answer? Post your thoughts in the comments section!
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{ 57 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t make it work, I get an error code -36 that says it’s not possible to read/write xxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.members.mac.com?
Don´t I have to turn file sharing on or open up som ports?
You do not need to turn on file sharing. You may need to open up ports, but only if the Time Capsule is not your router AND your actual router is not an AirPort Extreme/AirPort Express. If that’s the case, you need to set your Time Capsule as the DMZ (as Time Capsule does not support UPnP, so all ports would need to get forwarded there).
Your error message makes me suspect that your Time Capsule requires authentication to connect to it (either a username/password or disk password). If that’s the case, you might temporarily disable the authentication requirement and try again.
Hm, strange in deed. My TC is my router. I guess i disable the authentication requirements through leaving the user name and password field in the TC dynamic global hostname empty?
I tried to connect to it through my network just typing in the IP-adress, and then it asked me for the TC username/password. But when i switched networks and used the mac.com adress, I got the error message….
And thanks for the quick reply!
Jörgen,
1. In case we did not communicate well earlier, it should not matter whether you have file sharing turned on in the “File Sharing” tab of the “Disks” preference when you configure your Time Capsule in the AirPort Utility. However, if you DO have file sharing turned on, you might try changing the setting under “Secure Shared Disks:.” Personally, I use “With Time Capsule password.” One setting might work better for you; if you have file sharing turned off, try turning it on (and vice versa).
You MUST configure the dynamic global hostname under the Time Capsule name settings as I described. If you leave those fields empty, the MobileMe server will have no way to find your Time Capsule.
Ok, I tried another way to do it and actually made it. And it was way easier. I don´t know if it’s as secure as your way. This was how I did it:
Launch airport Utility, select manual button, select Disks then File Sharing. Check “enable file sharing” and “share disks over ethernet wan ports.”
I then connected over the TCs IP-adress, logged in with my TC username and password. Then I went in to the Time Machine setup, change harddrive and choose the same TC i had before, but now it had the IP-adress in (). It just started where I left off, so no probs.
Best regards!
Jörgen,
Yes! This is a very good way of doing things, and I’m glad you got it to work. Here’s the only problem: that method will only work as long as your public IP address does not change. If you’re on a dynamic router (cable modem, DSL, etc.), eventually it will change. Then you’ll need to know the new IP address. You might want to consider having your Mac use dynDNS services or something similar to always have an address that points to your actual IP address.
After a little futzing around I got this to work! I had to go the “Connect To Server” route, and then re-point Time Machine to my drive, but it worked! For a few minutes anyway. After it spent several minutes preparing (as expected), my drive un-mounted in finder and all attempts to re-connect to the server failed. To be fair, their COULD have been a power / connection outage at my house, but I wasn’t there to see it. When I got home I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe that this was the case.
Any ideas?
Matt, Your solution works great. I ended up using a static IP address for accessing my time capsule. I am also trying to access a ethernet based network storage device that hangs of the time capsule. I try the following and get an error message that says “a volume failed to mount – error code 6602″
afp://xx.xx.xxx.xxx/yy.y.y.yyyy
The x’s represent my Time Capsule’s static IP and the y’s represent my ethernet based network storage device.
Can you help please?
Sorry, type above:
The correct syntax is afp://xx.xx.xxx.xxx:yy.y.y.yyyy
This address does not give me an error code, however, it ONLY takes me to the time capsule router versus going to the ethernet storage device (yy.y.y.yyyy)
Any suggestions?
Larry,
I don’t know your exact setup, so I’m just going with my best guess here, but I don’t see how your syntax would work. It’s my understanding that the digits to the left of a colon in an AFP address will always be the IP address; to the right of the colon will be the port number. Thus, you can’t specify the ethernet disk that way.
I’m assuming your NAS is your actual Time Machine device (as opposed to an overflow disk for the Time Capsule). If that’s the case, you’ll want to give your NAS its own static IP, then choose a port number to forward to the NAS. Since you are manually typing in the IP address you want to access, you should be able to pick any port number. Then, you’d use AirPort Setup to modify your Time Capsule settings to forward incoming access on that port number to the NAS’s static IP address. You’ll use this kind of address instead: afp://xx.x.x.xxx:yyyy (where yyyy is the port number that points to your NAS, not the NAS’s internal IP address).
John,
As to your issue, you’d want to open up your Console and take a look at the Time Machine messages to see what is going on. Basically, if you click on “All Messages” and do a search for “backupd” you’ll get backupd’s console output (backupd is Time Machine’s service). See if there are any error messages there and let me know if you can’t figure it out.
If you’ve restarted your machine since you last tried it, those messages might be gone. You’ll need to try using it again. I’ve noticed that I had to re-select my Time Machine disk in the System Preferences after I updated to 10.5.6, so you might try telling Time Machine to use “No disk” and then choose your Time Capsule again.
Hi Matt,
I have a ethernet storage device which is connected to the time capsule. It is a NAS200 and Linksys told me the port #. I tried:
afp://xx.x.x.xxx:[port of external drive]/[vol] as [user name] with password [password]
I get an error -36
Larry,
Can you open your Console log and do a search for “backupd” using the “All Messages” log? Let’s look at the last few lines to see exactly what the error message is.
Hi Matt,
Appreciate your continued willingness to help me out here. I was successful dragging and dropping the following into my Time Capsule Folder:
ftp://username@ While this does permit access to my ethernet storage device, I can only drag and drop the files onto my desktop, however, after making my changes the files cannot be placed back on the my ethernet storage device until I get local access.
I called Linksys and they tell me that their drive does support the SMB protocol.
I tried connecting using SMB:// and it takes me back into the time capsule and not the external drive. I am getting closer. I just would like to have read/write access to my ethernet drive as well.
Thoughts?
Getting Closer….
Matt,
I am now able to access the Ethernet storage device through time capsule, however, only when I am on my home network. In other words, I can see the storage device via the “Network icon” in time capsule along with the other devices on my network.
When I go to an internet cafe, for some reason, the network icon does not show my ethernet storage device. This leads me to believe either the storage device is not visible due a setting on the device, or time capsule is not set-up correctly for WAN access for devices hanging off the Time Capsule.
Any other ideas Matt?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the great tutorial. I am trying to setup an Airport with a connected USB drive using the same method. I can find all the settings you mention (most of them are in the Base Station tab of the airport instead of the time capsule tab) and have followed the instructions exactly, however, I cant seem to login remotely.
I managed to get time machine to find the drive over my local network. I then did a share screen to my Bro’s Imac at a different location (using my mobileme account back to my mac) and i can see my mac i just cant see the airport? Does my Bro’s mac need to connect to the Airport locally before it will connect remotely?
I have a Sky netgear router/adsl modem which is connected to my airport as i dont have an indipendent adsl modem. Do i need to setup port forwarding on this router?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated
Hi Matt,
It appears the only way to access computer or hard drives using the Time Capsule is via VPN? Apparently since I have file sharing turned on at the Time Capsule level when I try to port map 548 and 139 I get a conflict since these are the ports I would need for the ethernet storage device.
See my posting in the Apple Discussion Group below:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8716831#8716831
Any other ideas?
I am having trouble getting this to work., and I believe I’ve followed your instructions perfectly. I’ve tried using the “Go” menu to navigate to xxxx.xxxx.members.mac.com while on a remote networl, and get a “Connection failed” error message. However, I can navigate to xxxx.xxxx.members.mac.com when I’m on my home network.
I am using a family me.com account, and I am not the primary account holder. Does this matter?
Larry,
VPN is not what you want here. You’re right in your assessment of the port assignments, since any device on your network is going to want to use port 548 for AFP. There is a way around this, however. With the Airport Utility, you can establish port maps where the private port (meaning the port *inside* your network) is different than the public port (the port *outside* your network).
This means you can specify that you want the private port 548 to be mapped to the public port (for example) 5480 on IP address 10.0.1.9 (or whatever). When you want to connect to that address from outside your network, you’d add :5480 (colon 5480) to the end of the IP address (e.g. larry.dyndns.org:5480).
This kind of setup will allow you to use as many AFP servers as you’d like, provided you map each one to a separate, unused public port. Here’s the rub: I’m pretty sure you will not have any luck with Time Machine unless your Time Machine disk has the *public* port of 548. That means you’d need to remap your other disks, not the Time Machine disk (or Time Capsule). Of course, feel free to experiment and see if that will work.
Another Matt,
It does not matter that you’re using a family account for MobileMe. You do, however, need to make sure that the username you specified in the AirPort Utility global hostname is the same one you are using when connecting under the “Go” menu. I will say, however, that if the username specified for the global hostname *is* the same as your MobileMe username, then it should appear in the “Shared” section of the Sidebar in Finder.
I don’t know anything about your set up, but my first thought is that if you can use the hostname to connect from inside your network but not outside of it, then the Time Capsule is not your only router in your network. Is that the case?
Simon,
I don’t have a great answer at this point. You should not have to do port forwarding, since you were able to screen sharing from your brother’s computer. That being said, if you have File Sharing turned on with your own Mac, then you might try turning it off (although I don’t think this really should matter in your case). If you want to be certain, you can forward ports 139 and 548 on your Sky router to your AirPort Extreme’s IP address and try again.
Have you tried connecting under the Go menu in the Finder? If this doesn’t work, I’d be curious to know if you could turn on File Sharing with your home computer, forward 139 and 548 to that machine, and then try connecting to your home machine from your brother’s computer. You’d need to know your public IP to connect to your home computer (get this at http://checkip.dyndns.org).
Let me know what happens.
Hi Matt,
When connecting using the following:
afp://:5480 I get the following messages:
The server may not exists or is not operational and then I get an error code -36 and says “the finder cannot complete the operation because some data in afp://:5480 could not be read or written.”
In the time capsule set-up for this mapping I did not use the UDP ports and made the Public TCP port 5480 and the private TCP port 548.
I did call Apple Technical support and they indicated AFP is not designed to be a routable protocol (different private and public ports).
Thoughts? Is there another way of accomplishing this task?
Thank you.
Larry,
It’s hard to offer additional advice without being in front of your machines to take a look at your network setup. The only other advice I can give is to try turning off your other file server temporarily so that you can use port 548 with your Time Capsule. That way, you can at least see if the way your network is configured will allow the Time Capsule to work at all outside of the network (without the other file server’s encumbrance). If it works, you’ve nailed the issue down to the fact you have two file servers. If it doesn’t work, then there’s some other issue (probably a port routing issue/firewall issue).
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the response, I did try the ‘Go’ method without any success.
I have discovered that I can achieve my goal using idrive synced instead.
I think your tutorial would work using a airport extreme + usb drive with a little more tinkering however, I think it would be too volatile for my needs. I’m going to look at setting up a fixed ip and a Wan instead (probs finder a cheaper NAS solution to boot!)
Thanks again for the support
Matt,
As it turns out, the Linksys NAS 200 only supports the FTP protocol. I found a wonderful third party application called Fetch which has a fantastic GUI interface and makes read/write access to my ethernet storage drive very easy. Between your wonderful solution (and technical support) and Fetch I have my remote needs covered.
Thank you.
Matt,
My Time Capsule is my only router; it’s plugged directly into the cable modem. Do you have any other thoughts on why there’s this discrepancy between how this works when I’m on my local network and how it works when I try to access it remotely?
Matt,
First of all, thanks for this post. I came across it when trying to set up basically the same thing (except using an Airport Extreme + USB Disk, not a Time Capsule).
I seem to be having the same problem as “Another Matt” — I can “Connect to Server xxxx.xxxx.members.mac.com” when on my home network, and I can ping xxxx.xxxx.members.mac.com from a remote network (and the IP address resolves correctly), so it’s not any type of DNS issue. But I cannot “Connect to Server xxxx.xxxx.members.mac.com” from the remote network – I get the same error code -36.
My home network consists of a DSL modem/router (Westell Versalink 327w) and the AEBS. The Versalink is in full bridge mode, however, so the AEBS should be doing the PPPoE authentication and all the routing functions, so I believe this should all work — but it doesn’t.
One other note: my MobileMe account is “xxxx.xxxxx” — in the system keychain this shows up as “xxxx\.xxxx.members.mac.com”. (Note the extra backslash.) To get the hostname to resolve correctly, I had to preserve the backslash in the AEBS dynamic global hostname and username fields. I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s worth noting.
-Vilas
Well, I thought Vilas might have provided the solution for me: As it turns out, xxx.xxx.members.mac.com was not remotely ping-able as I had it set up before. So I changed my DNS from the one provided by my ISP to OpenDNS’s, which fixed that problem (I’ve since discovered that this is a common problem with Time Warner/Roadrunner, so I would recommend everyone with this ISP do the same). But now I really am in the same boat as Vilas: I’m on a remote network right now, I can ping my Time Capsule, but I cannot connect to it with the Finder, and I cannot connect to it with Time Machine.
And ideas?
Thanks Matt and everyone else for helping, by the way…
Matt,
Using SMB I am able to access the Time Capsule and the attached USB which works terrific on my MAC. Is there a way I can access the Time Capsule Hard drive and/or the USB drive on a windows machine. I have file sharing turned on and the workgroup setting is set to workgroup. I also tried to FTP the Time Capsule drive setting up the default gateway with port 20 in the port forwarding section, but none of these ways worked.
Thank you Matt!
Larry,
From Windows, you need to create a new Network Place. Check the IP address of your Time Capsule (it’s listed in the Airport Utility). Also, remember the name of your Time Capsule shared folder (on my Time Capsule, it’s called “Data.”)
Then, when creating a new Network Place in Windows, use this for the address:
\\ip.address\share_name
For me, it looks like this:
\\10.0.1.188\Data
That should be all you need to do, unless you’ve required authentication to connect to the Time Capsule. If you need a user/password combo, you’ll have to enter that. If you just set up a password (no user name), then the user name is simply “user” and your password is whatever you set.
Note: Your Time Capsule already has the built-in ability to share with Windows. You do not need to turn it on from your Mac.
Matt,
Sorry, I left out one important piece of information.
I would like to access the Time Capsule remotely from a windows machine and read/write files.
Thanks
Hi Larry,
This is just like trying to port forward with FTP or AFP. You need to forward port 139 (and add 137 and 138 if it still doesn’t work) to the Time Capsule in the Airport Utility, then follow my previous instructions above using your external/WAN IP address rather than the Time Machine’s local address.
Just like before, you’re going to have difficulty with this setup if you want to remotely access two different machines via SMB that are on your home network.
I followed your instructions and I can connect to the Time Capsule remotely (It appears in the Finder under “Shared”). I see the Time Capsule disk as well as the USB hard disk I have attached to the Time Capsule. However, if I try to initiate a Time Machine backup, the backup fails with the error messsage “The backup volume could not be mounted”. This is odd, as I can copy files to the Time Capsule. Any suggestions?
Thanks.
Rich,
Two things come to mind:
1. I use a disk password for Time Capsule, and sometimes, if I don’t try connecting to the Time Capsule first in the Finder (under Shared), it won’t want to do the backup. This is rare.
2. I’ve found that if you want to do the remote backup, you may have to re-select the Time Capsule disk when you actually are on a remote network. Do this in the System Preferences. I change the disk from from my Time Capsule to no disk, click OK, then go back in and change it to my Time Capsule. The difference, though, is that now the address to the Time Capsule is using the global hostname address, rather than my local Bonjour address. You might try that too.
Interestingly, when I am now on my home network, and I try to change the Time Capsule backup disk, I see two Time Capsules and two of the usb hard drive I have connected in the list. When I was outside of my network, I only saw one of each. It seems like my Mac thinks there are now 2 Time Capsules. I checked this from another computer on my home network, and I also see 2 Time Capsules. Have you ever seen this before? Thanks.
Yeah, your system is seeing the local, Bonjour broadcast of the Time Capsule’s availability as well as the global hostname broadcast (which comes from the MobileMe server, not your Time Capsule) of its availability.
So does it matter which one I select? Or should I just wait till I am outside the network and select that one? One other question. How do I configure my daughter’s laptop to backup from outside the network? She also has a MobileMe account. Since I’ve already entered my password into Time Capsule, and I am the MobileMe administrator, is that going to allow her to connect?
Rich,
If you can tell which Time Capsule is the global hostname version, select that one. If you can’t, and you then leave your home network, then you’ll just have to reselect it then.
As far as setting up your daughter’s machine goes, this can be done, but it is a pain. You actually have to establish the *same* Back to My Mac key on her machine as you have on yours. It’s not good enough that she’s part of the same family pack. It’s been a while since I have done this, but you could try creating a new keychain item in your daughter’s keychain on her laptop. You’d need to copy all of the settings from your Back to My Mac key, including name/kind/account/where/password. She’ll end up having two Back to My Mac keys: one for her MobileMe user name and one for yours. That’s the only way her machine will be able to see the Time Capsule.
The reason you’re copying *your* key is that you’ve used your key to set up the Time Capsule, so only machines that have your key will be able to get Time Capsule’s location from the MobileMe server.
Matt,
How do I open up ports? My Time Capsule is not my router. I was not sure on where I could find step by step instructions on setting the Time Capsule as the DMZ (as Time Capsule does not support UPnP, so all ports would need to get forwarded there).
Thanks and great article!
-Nick
Nick,
You do not need to configure your ports on a Time Capsule for this function. Your problem can be one of two things:
1. You have another router in between your Time Capsule and your internet connection. Assuming you have cable/DSL, you need to know whether you have a cable/DSL *modem* or *router.* If it’s a router, then you have to set up the Time Capsule’s IP address as the DMZ on THAT router, not the Time Capsule’s. If you have a modem, make sure that it is already forwarding all the ports (which it probably is).
2. The router at your remote location does not support NAT-PMP or uPNP. In your email, you indicated you were at Starbucks. Starbucks has almost assuredly disabled uPNP access in their routers because BitTorrent users and gamers will hog all the bandwidth if it’s available. I doubt you’re going to get uPNP access with public wi-fi if the company knows what they’re doing in setting up the routers (your local coffee shop may be different).
Thus, you need uPNP/NAT-PMP on *both* ends of the connection.
As you said in your comment, the Time Capsule is not your router. One easy solution is to make Time Capsule your router. Then there’s no worrying about the DMZ. If you don’t want to do that, then you will need to use your router’s web management tool to change the DMZ settings. You can go to your router’s manufacturer’s site for more information on how to do this.
Hey – What if your mobile me account has a PERIOD in it? my account is ryan.fernandez@me.com
How would I type in the host name with the period in it in the Time capsule preferences?
Now that Time Capsule has the MobileMe addition to the firmware, is there an easier way to set this up using the MobileMe remote access features in the firmware update?
That’s really a good question. You can now engage back to my mac access to your time capsule. So why isn’t the remote access option for time capsule more straightforward? Then people could engage and disengage the remote service as their circumstances changed-say turn it on if they’re on-campus all day working on papers, or business traveling. And turning local access back on when they get home. It could be incorporated into the Time Machine Drop Down Menu. Sorry that I can’t actually provide you with an answer, but in the least I hope this updated reply will bump the thread and the google rating of this fine work-around.
Just an add-on. Having a dependable routine back-up routine anywhere is almost a substitute for autosave on open files. I’ve been using ForeverSave, but now that they have a pro version, I’m not confident of the extent of their light version features. Furthermore, their latest install for snow leopard is not working for me. With remote backup, it’s like getting an autosave on the hour wherever you are.
Matt, Thanks for the great tips! I had been looking for this exact solution, but Apple doesn’t publicize this as a capability of the Time Capsule when used with MobileMe. Your instructions worked perfectly.
One question: there is a checkbox in the Airport setup menu for the Time Capsule (Airport->Time Capsule) that says “Allow setup over the internet using Bonjour.” Do you know if that is something for non-MobileMe users to use, or is there a reason I might want to use it even though I use MobileMe?
Thanks!!
I had been able to make remote backups on the first couple of attempts, but now there seems to be an issue. When I start the backup, the remote Time Capsule is mounted, but now it appears to be stuck at “Making Backup Disk Available”. It has been an hour and a-half since Time Machine started and it is still trying to make the disk available.
Has anybody else had this problem? Any ideas for a solution?
Finally I could configure Back to My Mac by typing in the Terminal the command line mentioned at the bottom. This works fine from outside the network, but not from inside, as it does not detect the disc location automatically as it was before, and now every time I want to use the time machine I have to select manually the location of the disc. Therefore I wonder if you could please let me have the command line to undo the instruction to the previous status. Many thanks!!
One huge caveat: these remote backups are easily susceptible to corruption. I am not certain if making one of the backups, or accessing them remotely through time machine was the cause, but I do know that the sparsebundle was corrupted by remotely accessing the backup. I suspect it became corrupted when I mounted the remote drive with Time Machine in order to try and retrieve an old file from a remote site. I was unable to repair the image file using DiskWarrior and was forced to reformat my Time Capsule. A year’s worth of backups went down the drain. It was not worth the trouble to do these backups remotely. Furthermore, the backups are so painfully slow as to be impractical, not to mention the risk of corruption and loss of data. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
Thank you. It worked : )
Thank you very much, Matt!
You can also try the use dynamic global hostname using an account from mdyndns at a fraction of the costs if accessing to your time capsule remotely is all that you need.
So guys, how’s this all working with iCloud? Anybody tried yet?
I tried the same with iCloud but I did not get it to work. Has anyone else succeeded in this?
how can you enable this all with iCloud
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