@jerclarke, just wanted to check back in to say that things are still working fine after several weeks with two Macs backing up to a cheap portable USB drive formatted as NTFS plugged in to my...

@jerclarke I saw that suggestion earlier in the thread, so that's what I did. It was successful with the NTFS formatted USB drive attached. In fact, I was able to add the excluded directories back in...

@jerclarke This time I'm trying it using NTFS file system, since that's what was suggested by @Kevin_Z in #12 in this thread. Obviously, the file system used inside the sparsebundle will still be Mac...

@jerclarke Well, first attempt is not looking good. I formatted the drive as "Mac OS Extended (journaled)" and was able to get it set up, the backup started and I left it overnight. It backed up over...

@jerclarke, ok, thanks for responding and sharing your experience. I'm going to give it a try and let you know how it goes. Even if it does technically work, I'm a little nervous about how reliable...

@jerclarke Sounds like the drive failed. Are you suggesting that the router may have caused unusual wear-and-tear on the drive that caused it to fail? I just ordered a USB drive that I'm hoping to be...