Time Machine share can't be found

My Cloud OS 5 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX Series
1

I’m a new user of a WD EX2 Ultra. I setup a Time Machine share, configure it in the NAS Settings, tell my Big Sur laptop to backup there, and it runs for 100 GB then stops. When I try to tell the backup to recommence, Time Machine reports “Looking for backup disk…” and never finds it. I get an error to try again when the NAS is available.

If I go into “select disk,” my Time Machine share shows up twice, once with “_smb_tcp” appended to the device name, and the user/pass prepended.

I’ve tried this several times, deleting and recreating the share. I’ve tried it logging into the NAS with my username/password, and also with the NAS configured to be public and logging in as Guest. I get the same thing every time.

Help?

1 Like
2

a tech said that I needed to change the SMB support level on the NAS from 1-3 to 3 only unless I had a specific need to support older SMB levels.

BUT

I still have your problem on my M1 silicon Mac min under Big Sur when I do the second backup to the time machine files on the NAS under OS5

did see some notes about connecting to NAS ( a non WD nas ) using AFP and not SMB but that was not related to time machine backups

3

I appreciate your message but I’m not sure if you’re saying you have the same problem, or have a solution?

Does anyone have a solution? Or the same problem?

4

Setting SMB3 only made a slight improvement, and I am where you are. So I think this is a problem for everyone with an M1 Big Sur mac.

Is there a way to disable SMB completely?

5

I having an issue connecting getting my Time machine to connect after grading to WD OS5. The machine is currently indexing (21%) - is that why I cannot use my TM to connect because of the indexing? Any ideas?

I am running Catalina 10.15.7 on my machine.

6

While typing my first reply ( I got an e-mail there was a new Big Sur beta 1-13-2020) wanted to test that first.

I used afp://10.0.x.x to get to my WD os5 deviceand opened the timemachine -use the user name and password ( not GUEST ) and on the mac made an alias to the desktop ( like shortcuts in windows)

If you use get info you will see AFP:// xxxxx and NOT smb

SMB will not work it seems.

I made a new backup and 2 additional timemachine backups and they worked
They seemed a little slow but I was backing up 95 GB

notes;

  1. I have not tested if the backup actually will restore ( i have always use carbon copy cloner )
  2. not sure if SMB not working is Apple of WD ( or both) problem
  3. I am only testing Big Sur as that is the only OS that works on the new M1 Mac Mini.
  4. For mac/windows backups - I use Acronis and super duper and move those files to the NAS
7

I am testing now with Catalina ( 6 hours to finish the first backup to NAS )

using a afp://ip and not smb path to the timemachine on the nas

seems ok like the Big Sur backup reported above.

8

How far did you get? I was able to complete the first backup, but subsequent backups never work.

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Extra second backups did work but
I think I had to make a new alias when I rebooted Big Sur the next day.

I jump to many apple systems version during the day but Catalina and Big Sur latest beta did work.

I did have to re-enter the account name and password as Guest default always came up.

10

Hello,
Sort of the same here.
Time Machine well set up with SMB on TimeMachineBackup share (as public share, so with “guest” access).
First back up went fine.
Now TM says it can’t find the share.
Private shares are accessible from Finder (as a logged users) but TimeMachineBackup share won’t load (despite being public). It makes an error and the Finder’s windows crashed with an error (“can’t fond the element…” here in French.
Very annoying.

image

11

OK… I think I might have NOT nailed it.

My oh my… @WDStaff

If you follow KBA, you should use Time Machine as Guest user.

However, it seems that if you are logged into your Shares as a private user then Time Machine will not start the backup. In this article below, WD even tells you to unlog from your private shares for Time Machine to work. How seamless…

But, then I tried to set up Time Machine with your private credentials. However, it seems in this case that Time Machine reverts to AFP as a guest user, whereas I want to use it with SMB.

@WDStaff Can you confirm? AND tell us how to both use Time Machine and private shares concurrently over SMB.

Nevertheless, it looks broken either from Finder or Terminal:

image
image882×548 65.8 KB

image

Finally, there seems to be an issue with the guest access to the TimeMachineBackup share, the logs from the MyCloud reads:

I have created a case number: #210124-000820 and just sent logs.

12

have to use AFP for now
and it may be part Big Sur problem

__
I am testing on Silicon M1 mac mini Big Sur 11.2 RC beta
still need some brave person to see if a restore over AFP works.

1 Like
13

Have the issue on both Catalina and Big Sur.

14

AFP is indeed a workaround.

For this, one needs to remove the network share destination from the Time Machine preference panel and then add it again. It will silently fail on SMB and then offer to put credentials (choose guest) again but this time with AFP. It should then work.

How good for an update that is supposed to bring Time Machine over SMB for better reliability.

1 Like
15

I’m having the same issue! I’m on a 3TB MyCloud trying to get my time machine backups to work again, before os5 I was able to backup no problem (using afp over a vpn too!) now I can’t even get it to work locally

1 Like
16

Similar Guest Account authentication issues in setting up Time machine – Mac OSX 12.3.1 Monterey, My Cloud EX2 Ultra 16TB with OS 5.21.104.

Time Machine worked in 2020 and 2021 and then in March 2022 with the OS 5 firmware update, TM stopped working.

In the WD docs I found “Apple File Protocol (AFP) is no longer supported on My Cloud OS 5 firmware 5.19.197 and higher.”. I think their switch back to using SMB for TimeMachine has led to lots of unresolved issues.

Anyone know if it is possible to downgrade the firmware to an OS 5 version before 5.19.197 ?

I will post a new question in a few days with more details and the specific steps I have tried to resolve this.

17

downgrade is not an option - no cloud access from phone and from outside local networs

18

you can downgrade to 5.18.xx and perform a “system only” restore on the WD Dashboard afterwards … this will restore cloud access to your device

alternatively you can leave your firmware as it is and set the timemachine share to 100% storage access, then it will work over SMB

limiting share capacity causes this bug through the SMB server software, which was resolved in SMB 4.12 … unfortunatly WD uses 4.9 in their firmware :confused:

we had this discussion already here: Timemachine stops working after update to FW 5.19.117