There’s a saying in the tech world that says something like this: “If something doesn’t work, wait till tomorrow and it’ll be fixed.” Well, I’m not sure who said that, but it’s true.

As you read in my very frustrated post yesterday, I upgraded Leopard 10.5 to the latest upgrade, 10.5.3. Whenever I did that, my Time Machine stopped backing up wirelessly to my external HD connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. There was no reason why, to my knowledge. It just wouldn’t work. I tried everything, read every forum and even wrote several frustrating posts on TUAW, Macworld and even Apple.

Earlier this afternoon, I decided to literally unplug my WD Book external HD from my AEBS. I then plugged my WD Book via firewire directly to my Macbook and did a complete format (erasing every backup I’ve done for 4 months) and then I repaired all of my permissions on my Macbook HD (not my external HD, but my Macbook HD). I then went into Airport Setup and re-created my entire wireless network (simply started from the beginning). I reset my Airport Extreme Base Station, re-connected my WD Book to it and then rebooted my Mac.

Low and behold I went into Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” It still gave me the error “The backup volume could not be mounted.” Ugh, I was SO frustrated. So I then went into Finder, disconnected my WD Book HD (ejected it) and then went back to Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” IT WORKED! It began backing up wirelessly! What in the heck???

So I waited for about 2 hours for it to backup my entire Macbook. I then restarted my Macbook thinking it would surely not work again. And as I type, I’m on my third backup via Time Machine (wirelessly to my WD Book!) Woo hoo! It’s back to working again.

So what’s the fix? I have no idea… truly. But for those thousands of you frustrated with the same issue, try to do exactly what I did and see if it works.

Please leave a comment letting me know!

There has been an update to this post (Upgrade Stopped Time Machine Pt 2 – Fixed!) so please make sure you click here to see the fix…

As most of you Mac users know, Apple released Leopard 10.5.3 yesterday. I was a bit hesitant to immediately upgrade because I had read a while back that this upgrade might stop Time Machine backing up wirelessly to a USB HD connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station (aka screw the thousands of us who don’t want to shell out $500 for a Time Capsule).

So I did what I thought was smart. I waited a while, began reading comments from Engadget and TUAW and I even posted a comment asking if the upgrade kills the Time Machine wireless backups. A few said “No.”

I upgraded.

Low and behold, after six hours of major frustration, I no longer can use my Time Machine to backup wirelessly via my hard drive that’s connected to my AEBS. This sucks. And I also lost 4 months of backups because I was advised by a forum reader to delete my sparse file because it must be corrupt, which then would allow Time Machine to work again. Nope, it didn’t.

So this is the first time, in 6 months (I switched to a Mac in January), that I can honestly say I’m pretty pissed off at Apple. I already have an 802.11n wireless router so I have NO NEED for Time Capsule. It’s just ridiculous.

For those who are experiencing the same problem, I’m getting the following error:

So, are any of you getting this error? If any of you CAN use Time Machine wirelessly via a USB Hard drive, please leave a comment and let me know!!!