Asus AC2400 Dual Band Gigabit Wi-Fi Router Apple Time Machine

Mightywhites1971

I have bought this router and am looking to wirelessly back up my Mac using an external hard drive.  Is this possible with this router?  If it is, can someone give me a noobs guide in how to do it please?

Neil_Jones

The router is just a networking device, it doesn't do backup on its own, it just connects a whole bunch of devices together by cable or wireless.

I believe Apple no longer sell Time Machine hardware (which would have done what you wanted with the router), and having had a quick look they haven't done these since 2018.

You should be able to use any external drive connected to USB to make use of the Time Machine software built into MacOS; apparently it may be possible to use a USB port on the router as well.

Mightywhites1971

Thanks for the update, but I am sure there are routers that give the facility of wirelessly backing up using an external hard drive.  I have looked online, but can't seem to find a guide for my model of router.  I have contacted Asus, but have not received a response yet.

datostar

I think if you insist on using Time Machine via your router you would need some kind of NAS Drive connected via a spare Ethernet port on the router. There would be problems with this though. These devices can be slow and do a lot of internal housekeeping. A full Time Machine backup will be thousands of files, many very small, and many versions of them over time. By far the best solution is a directly connected USB drive preferably at least twice the capacity of your Mac's boot drive.f 

Mightywhites1971

Managed to sort it out with WD My Cloud.  Got it in the sales on Amazon.  Works just like Time Machine.