Have been successfully using Time Machine with my EX485 for well over a month and no issues. Yesterday I noticed that Time Machine quit backing up about a week ago! Arrgggg.

I spent about an hour on the phone with HP tech support today. They had no answer. The call concluded with me emailing them a copy of the output of my System Profiler on the Mac.

The basic problem is that the volume we need to have mounted is nowhere to be found on my Mac. Time Machine is ready to backup as soon as it sees the disk.

I've been accessing the shares through the Finder on my Mac without issue all along. I can browse and copy and whatever the files and folders in the Public share, no problem.

There's only a few changes I've made recently to my systems / network that may be notable.
- update to 10.5.7 of Mac OS X
- installed 1st additional hard drive to server
- recently enabled the Guest account on the server

The HP guy was wondering about a service that was supposed to be running. Don't remember the exact name. It started with com* I think. I couldn't find any reference to it on the server in services.msc and nothing in the Activity Monitor on the Mac.

Here's some screenshots of potentially relevant info:

Working!

Did an uninstall then a reinstall of the HP MediaSmart Server Software on the Mac. Authenticated again and now it's OK.

I'm relieved that it's working again.

I'm disappointed in that now I don't have a lot of confidence in my backup system.

Mainly - I'd like to know what the hell happened so I can avoid it in the future.

One other thing that may help. I travel a lot and sometimes when I come back home my MBP does not see the Time Machine drive and sometimes it finds it right away. What I have found to work is to either restart or just log off and log back in. That tends to work for me and it mounts the drive right away.

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Marc

EX475 - 5.5 TB Total - 3.5TB MSS w Rosewill RSV-S5(2TB Backup Pool)- LE-1640 (AMD X2 BE-2350 unstable) - 2GB Ram
2.5 Unofficial Software Update/Time Machine Backup
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24" iMac, 2 MacBook Pros
2 Apple TV's

The screenshots are definitely of version 1.0.xx. Just update to some of 2.5.xxx, which is more stable and more functional.

My wife is having the same problem described here with the new 17" Macbook Pro that we purchased for her a few months ago. She regularly transports the device between home and office and TM will periodically stop seeing the disc on the EX485. Rebooting either her MBP or the EX485 fixes the issue, which I should add is very worrisome and annoying as she has gone over a week with no backups this way.

My 24" iMac, which is hardwired with Gig-E on the network with the EX485 never seems to have this issue and my Mac Mini 2009 box never had the problem either. I am therefore suspicious that something happens with the portable MBPro where it eventually stops seeing the networked TM disc and simply gives up trying to back up to it.

I should also mention everything is on the latest version. Macs are all running 10.5.7 and the EX485 has the very latest updates. The Mac client software is also the new one that came as part of the 2.5 update.

I have a MacBook that I have been using Time Machine with for a while without issues. You can try to add the Time Machine drive to your Login Items on your account. First you need to be on your network and have the drive show up in your finder. Then go to Apple, System Preferences, Accounts. Then click Login Items. In the middle of the screen you will see a plus sign. Click that and select the backup drive under Devices. This worked for me.

It might sound strange, but I never put Backup disk into Login items and everything work. Goldfinger, why did you do that? - just in case, or as a solution for some specific problem. Just curious - to be prepared (knock-knock-knock).