Backup NAS drive via Mac

Can anyone recommend a backup solution for me which'll help me with the following issue..
I have a Buffalo NAS drive with approx 1.5GB of data written to it. Once every couple of weeks I backup the drive by copying EVERYTHING onto an external 2TB USB drive. This is all well and good but takes a very long time. Especially when there's only about 50MB worth of new data to write!
Ideally I'd like something that can recognise the newer files and write them to the USB drive on their own whilst ignorring the previously written data.
(I should add that the software that comes with the Buffalo isn't an option as I already have another USB drive attached directly to the NAS that is taking up that option)
Can anyone help?
THANKS

I'm backing up a load of data that is held on a network attached storage drive. This drive needs backing up every couple of weeks onto a USB drive and kept off site.
I'm looking for something that could manage incremental backups of this drive rather than write the entire 1.5GB of data to the USB drive every time.
My Mac is backed up separately using Time Machine.
THANKS

Similar Messages

HT201250 Is their a way to only backup my photos on my Backup Plus Drive for MAC?

Can anyone tell me if and how to only backup my photos on my "Backup Plus Drive for Mac" by Seagate, through Time Machine?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We're all users here.
In my opinion, Time Machine is a general program to back up 'everything', on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis, not really intended to back up only specific files or folders. In fact, Time Machine preferences are designed to help you EXCLUDE certain files and folders, rather than specify which ones to INCLUDE.
There are many alternatives. These are two I've used successfully:
Though not specifically designed for backup, iPhoto Library Manager from Fat Cat Software can duplicate, move, and also rebuild your iPhoto library file. It is available for US$29.95 from fatcatsoftware.com
For backup, I use an older free version of a program called Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich Software that will permit you to back up files, folders, and and even create a bootable 'clone' of an entire hard drive. The current program release is no longer free, and is available for US$39.95 directly from Bombich Software Store. http://www.bombich.com/

One USB HD = Time Mach backup + NAS drive?

Greetings -
I have scoured the Apple forums and the net. My brain is full. May I ask a Yes/No question?
I have an iMac running the latest OSX. I have an AEBS (it runs 802.11/n, so I assume it is one of the latest available, but don't hold me to that) running 7.5.2 (a horrible firmware version, BTW - I need to downgrade it to 7.4.2 any time I want to make just about any configuration changes to it..).
I also just got an AirLink101 AICN777W wireless security camera. This camera has a web-server built-in, and I have successfully joined it to my wireless network (by MAC address only).
One of the features of the camera is it's ability to record video to a NAS drive. To set up a NAS drive, it wants to know:
Samba address: (Enter IP address here)
Share name: (Enter volumne name?)
Path:
Username:
Password:
So, I have a single external USB/FW WD disk drive. I want to partition and use this drive for both Time Machine backups for my Mac and my wife's Mac laptop (which currently works dandy), AND as a "NAS" drive for the security cameras. Obviously, I'll need to set up that NAS drive to the same logon data as above.
So, assuming my iMac is always given an IP of 10.0.1.2, is it possible for me to use that external USB/FW WD drive as a NAS drive for the cameras?
Oh - and how would I go about doing that, if it is possible?
Thanks -
Mike

Well, I'll tell you what could go wrong.
I repartitioned the drive to allocate a small 50G partition to the NAS. Drive was connected to the Mac via FW, and disconnected from the AEBS.
I started a Time Machine backup via FW to a different, non-NAS-to-be partition.
The moment I plugged in the USB to the AEBS, the drive became dismounted from the Mac, I got the helpful "you didn't eject the drive" finger-wag, and Time Machine (duh..) stopped cold.
So it looks like there might be circuitry in the external Seagate (I was calling it WD above, because I'm an idiot) to favor the USB connection should the user be stoopid enough to plug more than one interface cable into it.
Fair enough. Next is to hang both a USB and FW cable from the back of the external drive, use it primarily at night/weekends as the NAS for the security cameras (USB physically plugged into the AEBS), and during the day as a Time Machine drive (FW physically plugged into the Mac).
In the meanwhile, any suggestions on a nice, cheap, reliable, Mac compatible 1G+ external HD?
Mike

Unable to write to Seagate Backup Plus drive on Mac

I just installed a brand new Seagate Backup Plus drive on my laptop with the goal of being able to use it on Macs and PCs.Seagate's web site says this:
Using the drive under MacOS and Windows
If you want to use the drive under Windows and MacOS, simply leave the drive in the NTFS format that it has when shipped from the factory (say No to "Do you want to use this drive with Time Machine?", if prompted). Install the included software which has a special driver that will allow the NTFS partition to be read and written under MacOS:
Plug in the drive.
Open the Seagate Backup Plus or FreeAgent GoFlex icon that appears on the desktop.
Double-click the Seagate Dashboard Installer.dmg (Backup Plus) or Mac Installer.dmg (GoFlex) file on the drive and follow the prompts.
If the driver is not installed, then the drive will be read-only under MacOS.
The installation process seemed seamless, but I was never prompted to download an extra driver and it would appear that the driver either didn't install or doesn't work as advertised.
I've found a user forum via Seagate addressing the inability to write to a GoFlex drive on a Mac:
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/crawl_message?board.id=UPHD_and_PU&message.i d=3360
One solution was to download a different driver (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g), however when I tried this I got an error from NTFS-3G that said "NTFS-3G could not mount the Seagate Backup Plus Drive because the following problem occurred: /Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) link error; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8). the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)"
I opened up the user guide, which instructed me to download MacFUSE, but the driver still wouldn't mount.
In the end, I simply re-formatted the external HD with ExFAT in order to be able to read AND write. Has anyone else had a similar problem, or found a different answer?

I thought that those particular Seagate drives shipped with the Paragon NTFS for Mac utility? If not, it's a $20 investment that you need to make.
Download and install and then format the drive as NTFS on your PC. Your Mac should then be able to both read and write files to the drive.
Clinton

How can I backup NAS drive to Time Capsule using Time Machine?

My itunes library is on a USB HD that's connected to my time capsule, essentially turning the drive into a NAS drive. Is there anyway I can include this drive in time machine backups? So basically, time machine would be backing up the hard drive connected to the time capsule... to the time capsule.
Thanks. Steve

Sorry, but not possible. The Time Capsule can only backup an internal drive on a computer and an external drive that is attached directly to a computer.

Problems accessing iTunes media folder on external drive via Mac

I have recently got a Mac Book Pro and assumed it would be easy to access my iTunes library - which I store on a Buffalo external drive and normally access via my Asus vivobook laptop running windows 8 - by simplying plugging the external drive into the Mac Book Pro, opening iTunes while pressing on the Option key (as I understand it is called) and then selecting the iTunes library .itl file when invited to choose a library. However, when I do this, I get a message saying that "the .tl file is locked, on a locked disc or I do not have write permission for this file".
If I click on the .itl file in the external drive via my Mac, it takes me straight into iTunes but, of course, without any of the content of my iTunes media folder.
I can access the media on the external drive when it is plugged into my Mac and am not aware of ever having introduced any restrictions on the library .itl file (I normally switch the external hard drive between my Dell desktop and my Asus laptop).
I have restarted my Mac Book Pro and quite iTunes etc. I also have the media folder correctly identified on the external hard drive in my iTunes preferences, Advanced Settings.
I would be most grateful for any ideas as to what could be the problem here.
Thank you (in anticipation).
Best,
Michael

Get info on the drive. Check the format. If it says NTFS it is a format that Macs cannot write to, only read, unless you install special software. It is a common issue with using Windows drives on Macs. "Locked" may mean iTunes cannot open it for full use since it needs to write to the library file as well as read it.
Your solution may be to reformat the drive to something a Mac can use fully too, such as FAT (beware file size limits with large video files). or trying to work with a NTFS driver for Mac.
NTFS drivers for Macs (there may be others):
Paragon NTFS - http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ - recommendation: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18708633
Tuxera NTFS 2012.3.2 - http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33122/tuxera-ntfs
NTFS for Mac OS X 9.5.3 - http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26288/ntfs-for-mac-os-x
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/ and http://i.vishalagarwal.com/post/30387627819/ntfs-write-on-lion-or-mountain-lion

Connect nas drive to mac

We have a CoolMax NAS drive CN-330; all the PC's on the network can access it just fine.
However we have a MAC, which opens up the shares just fine... however trying to save anything on the NAS from MAC gives the error "action could not be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges" we have tried using protocols including SMB; however it still gives the same error message.
Please advice.

You may be connected as guest. To write files, you probably will need to be a registered user and log in.
Try connecting in the usual way, then open a Finder window and click on the mounted drive in the Finder window sidebar. It will open a window showing the shared device, with a header inside the window saying connected as :<username> or <guest>. There are buttons there to connect as a specific user, or disconnect and re-connect as a specific user.
Some other articles remind us that the firewalls beteen computers can cause problems if all the correct ports are not opened. If you are using DHCP on a Router you control, you do not need the firewalls on individual computers.

How to backup NAS Drive to Time Machine

My iMac, early 2009 model has a 1TB HDD which is now full with a few GB to spare, but not enough for any kind of video edited etc.
So, I purchased a NAS drive to use as an external storage device, so I can move and free up disk space on the iMac..... An other reason why I got a NAS drive instead of a regular external drive was because the WD My Cloud let's me create my own Cloud storage and also stream audio, image and video files directly to my TV, eliminating the need for an Apple TV or to keep my iMac/iTunes turned on.
Anyways, my issue is, I need Time Machine to backup my NAS drive and I don't know how to do this. Because once, I delete the files off my iMac, TM will not be making any future backups of the files I've moved.
There has to be a solution, any script/software? Any commands I can enter into Terminal for TM to see and backup my NAS?
ONLY IF, it was easy as upgrading the iMac ram, to upgrade the Hard Drive, I would have upgraded the internal HDD instead.
Please help, urgent.
Thanks in advance.

My question now is, is it worth keeping the NAS My Cloud drive and backing up My Book to the NAS My Cloud drive instead of to Time Capsule ?
Or shall I just stick to backing up to TC ?
This is more an opinion question.. IMHO the WD MyCloud will not be as reliable as the TC.
Apple build stuff with lots of tricky bits and one of those tricky bits is when you try to use non-apple products they simply have more issues.. Apple do not support TM to a WD mycloud.. they support it to a TC.
If you want reliable backups.. use CCC to the MyCloud or the TC.. that is not a problem.
Or use Time Machine to the Time Capsule.
If I needed to recover a file, I would use the TM backup.
If I lost a disk, I would use the CCC backup to restore it.
They are different.. they have different strengths and for reliability with Mavericks in particular.. I would rate CCC as top of the class and TM as the dunce in the corner.
So IMHO for the $40 cost of CCC I would do both. It is not hard.. nor expensive.. and if your data is at all valuable to you.. the extra cost is fairly small. You already have all the hardware.

Is iPhoto '09 compatible with a NAS drive (non mac OS formatted)

Since I upgraded to iPhoto '09 (8.0.2) iPhoto freezes at opening (empty window with spinning wheel).
This happens with a huge (10K photos, 50GB) library on a RAID server stardom raidon SL3620-2S-LB2 under linux formatted as ext 2 and connected as a NAS (via gigabit ethernet)
The same iphoto library on the macintosh HD drive is working fine.
A small iphoto library is working fine on both the macintosh HD drive and the NAS.
For info:
I am not a designer playing with fonts.
After I upgraded to iPhoto '09 from the DVD, it converted my library and I started to look at the animation which crashed in the middle (face recognition was running in the background).
Any attempt to restart iPhoto failed (empty window with spinning wheel).
Then I downloaded the last version of iPhoto.
I restarted from a clean copy of the iPhoto library.=>Same failure.
I try to rebuild everything (except the database which was not an option).=> same failre

With the understanding that iLife '09 is not compatible with non Mac-OS extended disc (it was almost OK with iLife'08), I have applied the following workaround solution:
1/ I have created a new virtual disk formatted as Mac-Os extended: using disk utility, new image; name=myVirtualDisc, size= more than you current file size, volume format= mac os extended, image format=sparse (faible densité in french) note: (sparsebundle was not possible / necessary for me),
2/ whenever you want to use it, you have double click on the file named myVirtualDisc. It mounts as a disc appearing on the upper part of the left pane.
3/ copy the file in the disc
4/double click on the file name the first time you use it so that iPhoto knows where it is.
5/ enjoy
6/if latter you want to resize the maximum size, as it is a sparse image, you can do it after you have ejected the disc and using again Disk utility. Note that a sparse image only takes the place necessary on your disc (based on its content) and not as declared at the time of the creation (which is the maximum until which it can physicaly grow).
Disclaimer
- it worked at the first attempt but
- I got a disk corruption which was detectable but not correctable by Disk utility. I had to create a new virtual disk and transfer the file. After that the faces were no more appearing on the corkboard, I had to delete the face databases inside the package to re-initialise the face recognition process (see separate discussion about this).
QUESTION to experts:
is a sparse image a reliable solution? in other word was it an unlucky / uncorrelated coincidence?

Read/Write rights connecting NAS drive via USB

I made it. The AEBS is working with my external iomega hard drive, different users and an iTunes library with 130GB data. All files are shown correctly and I am having full access. Just one thing, which I can't handle actually: I connected the formatted harddrive to the AEBS, configured the users. I copied all files into the shared- and some into the user folder. When connecting the usb drive directly with the mac via usb, I don't have access to the folders (permission denied). Since I can't change the right when it's connected to the AEBS, how can I get access to my files with a direct connection? Just worried, in case that the AEBS makes problems, so that I can still access my files when connecting the hard drive directly to my mac.
Thanks for advice!

I haven't dealt with this yet, but my guess is you might have to plug the drive back into the AEB and remove the Users and Passwords. Once you plug that drive into the AEB and setup security on it, that information, I would assume is used like File Vault. It's setup on the actual drive, not the AEB.
Hope that helps,
AL

Music Files on NAS drive

I recently moved all my music to a NAS drive which I access wirelessly from iTunes on my laptop.
My iTunes Folder location is still on my laptop, so the xml/itl files there simply refer to my NAS drive (via a network share, G:\) for all it's song paths. I have "Keep iTunes Music Folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Music Folder ..." both turned OFF.
This setup works fine, except that I have serious performance issues when adding new songs (that I put on the NAS) to the iTunes library. It takes about a minute PER SONG! Setting this up first time took all night, but it's still unacceptably slow to add new albums.
Now here's the odd thing: if I add songs from my local C: drive it STILL takes ages, and seems to be accessing the NAS quite alot, but why? If I add songs from my C: drive with the NAS turned off, it's much faster. So what is it doing accessing all the OTHER song files when I add to the library?
Incidentally, I also had to downgrade from iTunes 7 to 6 since the gapless determination loop took several hours to run when involving songs on my NAS drive.
What can I do to alleviate my problems ? Any guidance gratefully received.

I have a network storage device too and I've used it for a long time. I have the iTunes library files (the XML and ITL) on the PC with the library on the NAS device. I have two issues, one of which is a huge pain...
1. I would like to place the XML/ITL files on the NAS drive too, but I see no option for doing that. If I want to use the iTunes library on my other PC then I first have to copy the XML/ITL files to that PC, and then copy them back again at the end. That is annoying to have to do.
2. Recently my iPod Video 60Gb caught fire and burned out. I replaced it with an iPod Video 80Gb and also upgraded iTunes to v7. Now, although the 80Gb machine only has exactly the same content that the 60Gb one had, with 57Gb spare, it now takes 48 hours to sync whereas before it took around 20 mins. I'm guessing that this is a factor down to iTunes v7 and am thinking of re-installing iTunes v6. However, I noticed when I installed v7 that it said it was converting my library - does this mean that v6 would no longer work with my existing library?
Kind Regards
Steve

Shared NAS Drives - problems auto-connect

Running Lion
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro6,2
Processor Name:          Intel Core i5
Processor Speed:          2.53 GHz
Number of Processors:          1
Total Number of Cores:          2
L2 Cache (per Core):          256 KB
L3 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          8 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed:          4.8 GT/s
Connect to NAS using SMB
When using Snow Leopard I always had issues with auto-reconnecting to my NAS drive at home. I would have to click on the NAS drive the Mac to reconnect to the NAS drive and only then would apps like Picasso or Crashplan see the NAS drive and scan it. I found this unusual as when I was at work I would get a pop up that asked where the NAS drives are and I would have to choose ignore. At home I did not get this pop up, but still need to manually connect.
I was hoping that this would improve with Lion, but no such luck. I still need to go in and connect every time.
Thanks

Thanks, BDAqua, for the suggestion. Unfortunately it did not work for me.
I went to the link and tried to implement the solution outlined there. Unfortunately, once the folders are mounted on my local machine, when I try to go to the next step it is not possible to create an alias as per the directions at the link. The "Create Alias" option is greyed-out so that although I can see it I cannot invoke it.
I fear I am overlooking some basic point, but I also wonder if this is somehow related either to the fact I am mounting virtual drives (i.e., folders rather than a physical disk), or else perhaps to some aspect of the NAS that I am using?
Any further suggestions or imput would certainly be appreciated.

Whats the best way to transfer everything from my old macbook pro to a new mac mini, i have a external hard drive which i backup to regularly via time capsule

whats the best way to transfer everything from my old macbook pro to a new mac mini, i have a external hard drive which i backup to regularly via time capsule

Check out > OS X Lion: How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac

Mac Formatted Time Capsule w/ PC Formatted External Drive Via USB?

I use a Mac-formatted Time Capsule to run Time Machine backups on my MacBook Pro. My wife backs up her PC laptop on a PC-formatted Western Digital "My Book" hard drive which is powered via A/C wall adapter. I connected the Western Digital PC drive to the Time Capsule via USB so it would be available on our home network and my wife could run her PC backups wirelessly, BUT the drive is not showing up on our network. Anybody have any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!
---Tim

My questions continue below in red. Thank you for your patience.
LaPastenague wrote:
Tsac77 wrote:
Thanks for the in depth clarification. A few follow up questions:
1) Are you saying that even though I am only using the TC (in this instance) to make the windows drive available on the network, the drive still needs to be formatted in HFS+?
HFS+ or FAT32.. the later having severe issues with large disk and large files.
Great. I'll do HFS+
2) If I format the windows drive in HFS+, will the windows laptop be immediately able to write/read to it over the network? Or will I have to install some sort of program on the windows laptop that allows windows to read/write to HFS+ (which I've always undewrstood to be a mac only format)?
The format of the disk connected to a NAS is totally irrelevant.. if it offers windows networking file protocol.. ie SMB then it can store files on the hard disk.. it is just like sharing the disk in the Mac.. you can write to that directly from the PC. Try it.. The disk is controlled by the Mac. But it presents SMB to the Network.. On your Mac, go to system preferences.. sharing.. it should be in Internet and wireless.. but on Lion I have no idea. Open file sharing which should be ticked..there should be a public folder by default.. you can add others.. go to options, turn on SMB.. then from the windows computer you should see the disk available in networking. If not fix the names to SMB standard.. you will need to do this on the TC as well.. short, no spaces.. pure alphanumeric names. Copy some files from windows to your Mac.. you have now copied to a network drive.. with the drive format totally irrelevant to your windows computer.
I'm sorry, but I don't know what "windows networking file protocol" and "SMB" mean. Also, when you say "NAS" are you referring to the Time Capsule or another device? Can you please explain things like "The disk is controlled by the Mac but it presents SMB to the network" in a less advanced way. Pretend I'm a child. You won't be far off. It seems like this technique you're explaining is a way for the windows PC to write to the external drive via my MacBook. Is that even close to correct? The setup I must create needs to work regardless if macbook is on/off/out of the house.
3) Does plugging a USB drive into the TC never work properly or is this just a semi-common problem that happens sometimes? My odds of success will probably dictate whether I try this or not. I already own the windows USB drive and would like to avoid buying more hardware if possible.
It is problematic enough that I recommend you try it before committing to it. Even if you have to copy the files off to another location and then reformat the drive. Test it for a couple of days.. the issue happens especially when you are using Lion.. but will also happen with windows. Especially when the disk spins down it will not spin up again and become available to the network.
Got it.
4) What do you mean by files being in "native format"? And what does a dead TC have to do with whether or not they can be recovered to the windows laptop? If the TC dies, can't I just plug the windows USB drive directly into the windows laptop and it will be the same thing as connecting the drive and laptop via network? How does a dead TC make things more difficult?
Thanks for your continued help.
HFS+ is not windows native format... so files stored by the TC on the USB drive.. when the TC dies.. they all die eventually may be difficult to recover unless you plug it into another TC.. as the PC cannot natively read them. If you format FAT32 then the windows computer can read it.. just there are other issues. eg the disk can be slow.. very slow and it has far less protection. eg a power failure can corrupt the drive.. this was an issue before we moved in windows to NTFS.
Why do you say "files stored BY THE TC on the USB drive" Why is the TC storing files on the USB drive? Isn't plugging the USB into the TC just making the USB available on the network to my windows laptop? Why is the TC storing files?

TM Alternative allowing NAS Drive Backup

I have a Buffallo T-byte NAS drive and would like to use it for backups. TM does not backup to NAS drives.
Is there an alternative to TM that allows backups to NAS drive, preferably one that does disk imaging?

This article describes how to get TM work with NAS units (ReadyNAS) - I am currently running this configuration and it works like a charm on wireless. Highly recommended - you just have to modify parts of it for other makes of NAS but on the Mac side you should be fine.
Follow the instructions carefully - it's easy to get ahead of yourself.
Here is the article:
http://www.readynas.com/?p=253
Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS
April 20, 2008 by yoh-dah
Filed under Mac Corner
Leave a Comment
The following is a summary of how to make Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS by DavidB based on initial contribution by btaroli and refinements by sirozha and a host of others on the ReadyNAS Mac/OSX Forum. We are thankful of the Mac enthusiasts who frequent and contribute to the ReadyNAS forum.
Ok I’ve just converted a second machine to use the NAS for networked Time Machine backups, and this time things went straight through without any mistakes. Here’s the run-down:
This example was done using a Mac Mini with a hostname of “magpie”, running OS X 10.5.2 and connected via 802.11g to a ReadyNAS NV+ (RAIDiator 4.01c1-p1 [1.00a041] with AFP patch loaded). I’ve created separate AFP shares for each machine (”TMmagpie” in this case) and set them to be accessible just to the “owner” of the machine. I could have set up one share to contain Time Machine backups for all clients, but then it could be possible for a user to access someone else’s private data within the backups.
Do make sure to keep the hostname simple — i.e. don’t have quotes in it like “Maggie’s Mac”, or the process will fail.
With the share set up on the NAS already, everything else we do is local to the client (magpie in this case). Some of the commands I list here are run within Terminal.app, although there are alternate (GUI) ways of accessing some of the functions.
This machine had previously been doing Time Machine backups to a local Firewire disk, and part of the process outlined here is to copy the contents of that disk to the NAS so that further backups build on top of the existing ones. No need to throw away the old backups!
1. In System Preferences, turn Time Machine off.
2. Find the MAC address of the machine’s internal Ethernet port:
$ ifconfig en0 | grep ether
This should produce a single line of output, such as:
ether 00:16:cb:af:91:d7
Even if the network backups will be done using a different port (e.g. AirPort: usually “en1″) the system will use the address of en0 as part of the system identifier.
In this case the identifier that Time Machine will use is “magpie_0016cbaf91d7″.
3. Make a new “sparsebundle” on a local disk (NOT the Time Machine disk!). This sparsebundle is a virtual filesystem image which we’ll copy to the NAS, and Time Machine will then access it remotely (that way Time Machine’s not limited by the filesystem features of whatever NAS it’s using: all the funky stuff happens within the sparsebundle). By default sparsebundles can keep growing until they fill up the NAS, but in this scenario we keep other things on the NAS as well as backups, and we’re going to limit the sparsebundle size to 140 GB. We called this one “Backup of magpie” as that’s the default name created by Time Machine, but in fact you can call the volume anything you like.
$ hdiutil create -size 140g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of magpie" magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
created: /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle $
This Mac Mini hasn’t had things like developer tools loaded: hdiutil comes with the OS. We make the sparsebundle manually so we can impose the size limit, and we do it on a local disk because of a bug that prevents creation of a sparsebundle remotely on the NAS (although they can be used when in place). The sparsebundle doesn’t start at 140 GB: it grows as more data is put in the filesystem inside it, up to a maximum of 140 GB.
4. If you’re not going to copy the contents of an existing Time Machine disk, skip ahead to step 9.
5. Mount the sparsebundle:
$ open magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle
You’ll see “Backup of magpie” appear as a mounted volume in Finder.
6. Copy the old Time Machine backups to the sparsebundle. In Disk Utility:
Click on Time Machine disk on the left panel, then select the “Restore” tab:
1. Drag the local Time Machine volume to the Source field
2. Drag the sparsebundle volume (”Backup of magpie”) to the Destination field
3. Select “Erase destination” (possibly not mandatory)
4. Restore
This will take a while, depending on how much data is on the drive…
7. If you selected “Erase destination” in Disk Utility, the volume name will have been copied from the local Time Machine disk. Rename the new volume back to “Backup of magpie” (or whatever name you chose).
8. Unmount (”eject”) the sparsebundle volume.
9. Mount the NAS share the sparsebundle will be mounted on (”TMmagpie” in this case). I mount all our shares via AFP, but you can presumably use CIFS also. Once it’s mounted, it will be accessible within Terminal.app as /Volumes/TMmagpie.
10. Copy the sparsebundle to the share:
$ rsync -avE /Users/david/magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle /Volumes/TMmagpie/.
Depending on your network (802.11g, 802.11n, 100bT, 1000bT, etc) this can take a long time!
rsync is smart enough to only copy the new bits of a file, so you can stop and re-run that command if necessary without re-copying everything.
In the meantime you can go ahead and use the machine. Just don’t turn Time Machine backups back on yet.
11. If the local copy of the sparsebundle is in an area that will be backed up by Time Machine, remove it before proceeding. We don’t want to double the size of the Time Machine backup for no good reason!
12. In the Time Machine System Preferences panel, select “Change Disk…”. It will display a list of volumes you can backup to. If the share containing the sparsebundle isn’t listed (you did mount it, right?) it’s probably because it’s not mounted from a Time Capsule or another OS X machine. To show the share in this display you’ll need to have executed the following command in Terminal:
$ defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
You’ll need to log out and in again for this to have effect (select “Log Out” from the Apple menu: you can Restart, but logging out will do). Now mount TMmagie again, then try Time Machine’s “Change Disk…” again.
13. Select the share on the NAS (”TMmagpie”) as the new destination for Time Machine backups.
Time Machine will automatically turn itself back on and schedule a backup to begin in two minutes. If you didn’t populate the sparsebundle with the contents of a local disk, this first backup will be a full backup and can take a very long time (depending on things like your network infrastructure). If you did pre-populate the sparsebundle, this backup will be an incremental backup and shouldn’t take long at all (depending on how much has changed on the machine since you turned Time Machine off in Step 1 of course).
Once the backup has started, keep going with the remaining steps in this list while the backup is running.
14. You can now eject the TMmagpie share. Time Machine will automatically mount the sparsebundle file directly (during backups you’ll see “Backup of magpie” mounted).
15. Unfortunately Spotlight will try to index the contents on the “Backup of magpie” share, which will slow down the backups significantly. To avoid this, as soon as the share is mounted for the first time go to Spotlight’s Privacy panel in System Preferences. Use the ‘+’ button at the bottom, select the “Backup of magpie” share, and Spotlight will then ignore it. If Spotlight has already started indexing it, it should immediately stop and the backup will speed up.
That’s it. Congratulations! New Time Machine backups should happen every hour, and you can access all the backup files via the usual Time Machine interface.With magpie this has allowed us to disconnect the local 200G Firewire disk previously used for Time Machine backups: this drive was significantly noisier than the Mac Mini itself!
GOOD LUCK!

Backup NAS drive via Mac

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