I want to use time machine on a network drive

i know in the past Apple holds us hostage to buy their time capsule. With Lion now launched, is there a work around to allow families to buy there own hard drive and use it for multiple macs for time machine?
Im fairly new to Mac, convinced my wife to switch, now here we are held captive to buy a TC when we already have a fantastic 2TB drive we purchased for a fraction of the price of a TC. I dont care about wifi, I just want to save our Mini time machine to our MBP networked drive (or vice versa).
I currently have Lion on the MBP, and Leopard on the Mini. After installing and hating Lion on my MBP, i have not "upgraded" the mini. (although I am currently following the "upgrade back to Leopard" threads)
Thanks for any help or ideas.

In the past Apple was not holding you hostage by requiring you to use a Time Capsule for network Time Machine backups. Search on Google for Time machine NAS OS X (or something like that) You will find a number of drives that were working with SL.
Now, they did change the file protocol in Lion, so some of the NAS servers won't work with Lion, at the moment. So long as it is a decent company that makes the NAS they should be releasing a firmware update to get their NAS working with Lion.
One of the companies that put out a press release was Western Digital. They said they would be working on an updated firmware so that you could use it as a Time Machine drive.
Just look around the interwebs and I am sure you will find several that will work.

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Using Time Machine with a network Drive

I recently bought a WD My Book Live network drive to use as my Time Machine backup. I was previously using a USB external HD for Time Machine with no problems. I have set up the new network drive but when I go in to Time Machine to select it as the drive to back up to, it is not showing up. The only drive I see is my old USB external HD. I have the latest firmware for the network drive and I am running Mac OSX10.5.8. Any suggestions?

If you bought the WD in a USB enclosure it probably came formatted with NTFS (Windows). Time Machine can't use NTFS drives or SMB (Windows) network shares as a backup destination because that format does not allow the proper permissions to be set. If this is the case with your drive, open Disk Utility and reformat your new drive (NOT you system drive!!) with HFS+ aka 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' and then the drive should show up as a target selection in Time Machine.

How can i use time machine with a network drive

I have a Western Digital Net N900 wireless router with a 2TB internal H/D. How can I get Time Machine to reconize it?

Relying only on TM to me is iffy but I would bet you have clones in addition to TM like I do. I agree with everything you said but to the OP question, it is possible. A time capsule or AEBS+HD are pretty similar but one is officially supported while the later is not.
Since I'm rambling a bit I will add this. I only use TM for the times I delete something and then wish I had it back. All my restores or migrations are done from my clones. One clone is made weekly and is a snap shot of my system. One clone I keep remotely located and is updated monthly.
My system:
Internal 1TB
Ext HD1 2TB (1TB data, 1TB clone)
Ext HD2 2TB time machine backup (internal + HD1 data, not the clone)
Remote 1TB clone
I'm fully redudant with my method and it has saved me before.

Can't use time machine with a network drive anymore

I am not able to use my network drive any longer now that I loaded Lion OS. Does anyone have have a work around. I tried the sharing of a folder trick that I had for snow lepard. I have a HP media smart server and 2TB of storage available it seems like a big waste not to be able to backup to a safe place.
Al

Here is one from Pondini, who was the foremost Time Machine expert in the world.
http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html
And another from Apple. Info near the bottom.
AirPort base stations: About USB disks
And another miscellaneous from Apple:
AirPort base stations: Time Machine hard drive compatibility

HT201250 I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

I want to use Time Machine to back up my pictures because my hard drive is full but I'm wondering if once I back up the pictures then delete them will time machine delete them off the back up too?

Evetually yes.
If your pictures have been in the same location (same folder, same subfolder, ...) for more than a week, then copies if them will remain in your TM backups until it fills up. They are then vulnerable to being deleted.
If they've been there for less than a week, TM could delete them as early as a month from now. If they've been there for only a few hours, chances are TM will delete them tomorrow.
This is why TM is not the best tool to use to archive data that you will be deleting from your main hard drive. Copy them to a dedicated external drive, or burn DVDs.

So I can't use NAV if I want to use Time Machine?

I just want to make sure I comprehend what I am reading on here and the internet in general: If I want to use Time Machine without lags, I need to disable Norton Auto Protect. So does that mean I can't have virus protection if I have TM in the "ON" setting?

If you want to use NAV, disable Auto-Protect during the initial Time Machine backup to speed things up for that initial backup. After that, turn Auto Protect back on if you'd like. You can judge for yourself, but I doubt you will notice any significant slowdown compared to when you had Auto-Protect turned on prior to using Time Machine.

How to use Time Machine with an external drive?

Hi…I’m new to this, I hope someone can help me=)
I’m trying to back up my Macbook Pro 10.6.8 using Time Machine with an external drive Seagate Backplus Slim. I’ve tried several solutions that I’ve found through different forums but still wouldn’t work.
Every time I opened Time Machine, it has this appearance:
Then when I click “Select backup Disk”, it goes on like this:
And after I click “Set Up Time Capsule”, it has this:
It keeps saying that it couldn’t find AirPort wireless, even though I have good WIFI connection.
Anyone know what I should do? Please help….Thanks everyone

Ayuphie ~ In your Time Machine Preferences panel, slide the OFF-ON switch to the ON position:

Restore using Time Machine to new hard drive, but last "full" backup was 2012. how do I restore the rest of the Time Machine backups, particularily IPHOTO libraries for each user?

Restore using Time Machine to new hard drive, but last "full" backup was in 2012. How do I restore the rest of the Time Machine backups, particularily IPHOTO libraries for each user?
I entered Iphoto for my user and only photo up until 2012 were in the library. I thought the restore would do the incremental Time Machine backups too.....
Running 10.8.2

It usually means you are running Mavericks but have an earlier version of iPhoto. Open the App Store and upgrade your version of iPhoto to the Mavericks version.
The iWork apps are free with a new iOS device since 1 SEP 2013. They are free with a new Mac since 1 OCT 2013. They are also free with the upgrade to OS X Mavericks 10.9 if you had the previous version installed when you upgraded.The iWork apps are free with a new iOS device since 1 SEP 2013. They are free with a new Mac since 1 OCT 2013. They are also free with the upgrade to OS X Mavericks 10.9 if you had the previous version installed when you upgraded.
iWork and iLife for Mac come free with every new Mac purchase. Existing users running Mavericks can update their apps for free from the Mac App Store℠. iWork and iLife for iOS are available for free from the App Store℠ for any new device running iOS 7, and are also available as free updates for existing users. GarageBand for Mac and iOS are free for all OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 users. Additional GarageBand instruments and sounds are available for a one-time in-app purchase of $4.99 for each platform.

Cannot install Mountain Lion as the installer provides message that my target drive is using Time Machine. My target drive is my internal drive and I use an external drive for Time Machine. When I check the Time Macine set up under system prefereces it sh

Cannot install Mountain Lion as installer sys the target drive I have selected is using Time Machine. The target drive I selected is my internal drive. I have an external drive that I use for Time Machine backup. When I go to System Preferences and look at the Time Machine set up it shows my target disk is the external drive. What to do?

Yes, you’ll be able to do that.
(116841)

Can you use time machine on a networked hard drive

Can you use time machine on a networked hard drive?

See if this helps: Using Time Machine with a networked hard drive

HT204057 is there a way to use time machine with a backup drive connected to my AirPort?

is there a way to use time machine with a backup drive connected to my AirPort Extreme?

Unfortunately, this is not officially supported by Apple......if you still have the 4th Gen AirPort Extreme that you list in your equipment profile.
However, the new "tower" shaped version of the AirPort Extreme does now officially support Time Machine backups to a drive at the USB port of the device.

Time Machine and a network drive combined

I figured out how to connect Time Machine with a network drive (like LaCie Mini). It works great, the only thing is, everytime I restart the mac I need to re-connect manually to the server in order TM can run.
I wondered why OS X gives not the option to connect to certain servers AUTOMATICALLY when starting up?
thanks for help

Well,
PLEASE can you tell us how you figured out how to backup to a network drive because Apple tech told me you could not do that!
To your question though, on those LaCie drives, you have to log in with a password, right? On the drives I have used with clients, although the password was filled in for me, we had to press OK every single time to actually connect to the drive... I could not bypass the login procedure on the drive, it had nothing to do with OSX. You might serve yourself well to see if LaCie can offer you a way to connect to the drive automatically?
Although I know nothing about scripts, could you just get a script to run automatically at startup to connect you to that drive?
I'm interested in this topic so please feel free to share what you know and your experience with it. Thanks in advance.
I was also frustrated to find out that I couldn't even back up via Time Machine to a drive connected via USB to my Airport Extreme... I mean come on!

Time machine restore from network drive kernel panic

I had a late 2013 macbook pro 15" retina, I was backing up with time machine to a network drive (western digital my cloud). All of my backups are there and the data looks valid. In April I ended up selling the macbook pro, then recently I bought another one and attempted to restore from the network drive.
I chose the option to restore on boot from network device, it properly detects and lets me browse my previous backups. I choose restore, the restore will run for a few hours and then reboot with a kernel panic.
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff00184c0ac1): "Unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI\".\n"0/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2422.90.20/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp: 1541"
I've tried a few different backups, one from April, one from march...both result in the same error. Any ideas why this would happen?

Time Machine full system restores only work if the backup disk doesn't need drivers separate from Mac OS X to mount. To make a long story short, you CAN'T do a full system restore with the disk your backups are on.

Just got ext HD and want to use Time Machine; questions first

I finally purchased an ext. HD with enough capacity to actually start using TM. My question is, the main reason for getting it was to back up media, mainly videos and such, things that I'd have quick access to. So, my question is, is okay to partition the drive? And if so, about how much should I allot to it? The drive is an Iomega ego and is 320GB. My iMac is a 250 GB HD with only about 100 GB's used.
Also, when I first plugged in the Iomega, it automatically took me to a Time Machine screen asking me if I wanted to use this drive for TM. I guess it's formatted for mac right out of the box. Should I click yes on this? Will it allow me to format after the fact? OR, do I need to hit "cancel" and then go into Disk Utility and set up my partition?
Many thanks. I know this is probably pretty rudimentary, but it's my first time using Time Machine.

Yes it's OK to partition a backup drive in order to use part of it for storage and the other part for TM backups. But your external drive is not large enough for both. A TM backup volume should be at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. In your case that means the TM volume should be at least 500 GBs to back up a 250 GB drive (it's really less important how much space is currently used then how much space could eventually be used.)
If I were you I would get a second larger external drive for TM backups. Or adopt a different backup strategy that does not involve using TM such as a simple cloned backup that you update periodically with backup software. This would only require a 250 GB volume on your external drive leaving about 70 GBs of a storage partition.
For backups you could use one of the following:
Backup Software Recommendations
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. Tri-Backup (Commercial)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

Can I use Time Machine as a backup drive for my Vista 32 PC?

I cannot see any of my Mac computers or Time Machine on my network through my Vista PC, even though I have a wireless card in the PC which can connect wirelessly. I have my PC sitting next to my Time Machine that is the hub for my network. I am connected to the internet via ethernet connection daisy chained through my Time Machine which is connected to my cable router.
I cannot figure out why my PC cannot "see" my Imac, emac, Time Machine, and macbook that are all connected to my wireless network. The PC and Time machine are the only devices with an ethernet wired connection.
I would like to use the Time Machine's 1 terabyte drive to back-up my Vista PC.

I would first set up my mac and vista to do simple file sharing and then work my way from there. If you are unable to figure out simple fire sharing i would go look on other forums or advice. Its rather simple to do but it can also cause a lot of headaches. I have wanted to connect my mac and windows server to my network for a while and just recently figured it out.

I want to use time machine on a network drive

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