2nd computer cant find my book live

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

i have set up my book live and it is connected via network to my iMac and it appears to be working fine

when I run the mybook live setup .app on my mac book air (via wifi) it cannot find the my book live.

if i enter the ip address directly into the browser then i can find it and see the dashboard.

What is the problem that I cannot discover it?

I jusr downloaded and updated with the latest firmware.

both the imac and macbook air are running Mac OSx 10.7.2

2

When you say latest firmware do you mean 02.10.09-124?  If you were previously on version 01.xx.xx.xx - when you did the firmware update - it only peformed a premlimary firmware update in preparation for the 02.xx.xx.xx firmware.  You might need to do the firmware update check a second time - to get the subsequent update.

You also don’t need to use the install software on a Mac.  You should be able to do all the configuring you need from the UI dashboard which you access from Safari.  By default the MyBook Live drive is called MyBookLive - in Safari you would use the following address to open the dashboard   http://mybooklive.local     (on a Mac you must append the .local to the drive name).  Or you can reference the dashboard by IP   http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

To determine your firmware version - open the dashboard - select Settings - then System - then Updates.

If I am reading your post correctly - it sounds like your iMac is wired and your MacBook Air is WiFi.  What if you switch your iMac to WiFi - do you have the same problem?  What is the make and model number of your router?

~Scott

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Hi Scott thanks for your reply

yes its 02.10.09-124

yes I can access the dashboard by typing the ip address (the  http://mybooklive.local/  url doesnt work in Chrome it just tries to open a search)

anyway i cant see how i cn use the dashboard to set up a time machine backup? i think I have to discover the MBL and "install " it first?

however I cannot connect to MBL using wifi on my iMac. 

my wireless router is a Netgear DG834G

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First - Does the http://mybooklive.local url work in Safari?

Second: The Mac should just “see” the MyBookLive - it should show up in finder under the Shared category.  You don’t need to do anything to “discover” it.

Third:  To set up Time Machine to use the MyBookLive - you just open Time Machine Preferences and click on Select Disk - you should see a light blue shared drive icon named Time Machine on “MyBookLive-backup” showing in the list of available backup drives.  Just click on the drive and Time Machine will start using it.

If you are not seeing the MBL in the shared section of finder - or in the list of drives available for backup in Time Machine preferences - then something is probably not correct with your wireless access point setup.  Just wanted to verify that your wireless access point is not set up as a “guest” network (if the DG834 provides that capability) - because if it is - it will only give  internet access to wireless devices but no ability to see other devices on your LAN.

Just looked up the DG834G manual - this router doesn’t have “guest” network capability - but it does support wireless isolation - meaning that each wireless device on the network can only see the internet but has no visibility to any other wireless or wired device on the LAN.   Go into your router config and go to the wirless settings and ensure that the Wireless Isolation option is NOT checked.  If it was checked - then that is probably the cause of your problem.

I included a screen print of the DG834G wireless config settings (not sure if it will show on this forum).

![page50image1904](file:///page50image1904)

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thanks for your reply and further comments, my replies as folows:

no the http://mybooklive.local url does not work in safari either, but entering the ip address does work as it does with Chrome and I can enetr my password and access the Dashboard.

The Mac book air doesnt see the MBL. it doesnt show up in Finder, and I cant see it as a backup disk option in time machine either.

on my iMac after I reboot, I cannot see the MBL in Finder at first, however after I click on the" MBL alias" on my desktop, it then shows up as a shared device in Finder.

I have checked my wireless router and the Wireless Isolation box isnt checked.

I have been using Air Drop to share files between my computers, and also can share drives and copy files between computers using wifi with my current setup.

6

I was hoping the wireless isolation was going to be the cause of the problem.  Aparently not.  Here is a link to another post where the problem is very similar to yours.  To resolve the problem - the person disabled multicast streams (probably also referred to as multicast passthrough) - as well as assigning a static IP to the MyBookLive.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-Live/Macbook-Pro-can-t-find-my-My-Book-Live-2TB/m-p/224604#M2911

I’m not convinced yet why this fix worked in this scenario - but it might be worth a try for you.

Have you also checked whether there is a newer version of your “router” firmware available?

~Scott

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yeehah!.. Im up and running on the Macbook AIr now!

Thanks very much for per persistance and help sbeattie2 !!!

I culdnt find anything on my Router about Mulitcasting, so set the MBL to a static ip address, that didnt appear to work.

So I found the latest firmware for my Router downloaded and restarted it… voila// the MBA found the MBL immediately!

thans for all you help!

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Sorry, but one question, since you are obviously an expert in these matters…

Is it possible to do a Time machine backup over the web to my MBL ??

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Congratulations.  Glad to your issue is fixed.  As far as using Time Machine remotely over the internet - it is not practical to try to do that - all though it is possible.  The only way that I know to use Time Machine remotely (and assuming MBL is local and the Mac is remote) is to use a VPN tunnel.  You would need a VPN router on the home side - and a VPN client on the Mac side (possibly the built-in Cisco IPSEC VPN client).  From the Mac you would establish a VPN tunnel to your home network - basically in this scenario all of your home devices would be visible to the VPN client - but by IP address only.  You would need to know the pubic IP address of your router (or it’s dynamic DNS URL - if you have that feature enabled - as well as having the internal IP address of your MBL.  On your Mac - you would use the Finder / Go / Connect to Server option and mount the TimeMachine share on the MBL by specifying the MBL’s internal IP address as afp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx  (example 192.168.1.100).  You would connect as either guest or admin.

Then you would open Time Machine preferences and select the drive to backup to as the share you just mounted.  Time Machine should then backup to your MBL - as long as the VPN tunnel is up and connected.  The negative side to this is that is it extremely slow - practically unbearable.  For a regular hourly backup - it may actually backup in a reasonable amount of time - but as soon as it decides that it has to perform a verification - or it determines that there is a lot of new data to back up - then it will take forever.  I have actually done this - as I have a router-to-router permanent VPN tunnel between my network and the neighbors - and we were able to use time machine backup across the VPN to  my Time Capsule - however - it was pretty unbearable and more of an experiment than anything.

The other big negative to trying to do this is the amount of uploading that occurs to your ISP account (or the remote sites ISP account) - this large volume of data (upstream on the Mac side) will mostly likely exceed some ISP limitation and possibly result in your internet access being suspended.

This might work acceptably if you had that the Comcast super-high-speed internet where you have download speeds of 50 megabits and greater and upload speeds approaching 20 megabits.  In low speed (typical) internet connections - Time Machine backup is not feasible.

In Lion - for portable mac’s - Time Machine now detects when you are disconnected from your network backup device - and performs hourly snapshot backups on the portable Mac itself - and reapplies those snapshots to the regular time machine backup image once you are back on your regular network.  The interesting thing is this only seems to be supported on a MacBook Pro - and it doesn’t seem to be available on the MacBook Air - at least not on my MacBook Air.

Typically I take the MacBook Air with me when I am out - I don’t typically take the MacBook Pro with me - and therefore I have yet to witness the functioning of this “snapshot” feature.

Please remember to click to the Kudos star at the left side of each post if the information you received on this thread was helpful or actually solved your problem.

~Scott

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OK thanks for your detailed reply.

It seems a little too dificult to setup th VPN thing.

I guess I bought the MBL beleiving it was my “personal cloud” … but I guess it really isnt that, but just a more user friendly NAS.

I didnt notice my MBA doing any backups after it reconnected either…

Anyway thanks very much for all your assistance and advise!

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I noticed there is often a delay with starting the hourly Time Machine backup after the Mac wakes from sleep.  I also have an Apple Time Capsule - and it almost always starts a backup within 30 to 60 seconds from waking from sleep - unless there was a recent enough backup prior to the Mac having gone to sleep.  With the MBL - it is often 20 to 40 minutes before it will start the backup after the Mac wakes from sleep - as if Time Machine thinks the MBL isn’t there when the Mac wake - and therefore it delays the backup utnil the next cycle - or so it appears.  I have a post about this issue - but so far no resolution or explanation for the behavior.  For a while the behavior stopped - but then reappeared again.

~Scott