Is there Time machine compatible PC server software?

I'm a photographer and running a dual hard drive Macbook Pro and I've reached the point where my NAS backup drive is not big enough for Time Machine to backup to. In order for me to upgrade the backup drive I'm looking at about £500 ($750) as I need one big enough not just big enough.
I have an old PC that is currently running Windows Server and is connected to my network, which obviously isn't Time Machine compatible. As buying HDD is cheaper than pre-boxed NAS drives, I wanted to use this instead.
Is there any server software that is compatible with Time Machine and I can use to build a home server? If not, I'd best start saving and hope my laptop doesn't crash or get stolen.
Thanks in advance.

No, there's no supported means to target archival storage onto a Windows box with Time Machine.
As you're likely aware, Time Machine only supports specific devices as targets, and the file server are currently OS X Server, Time Capsule devices, and the most recent generation of AirPort Extreme devices with attached disks. Not Windows Server boxes, Linux or other gear.
More than a few folks and a few discussions and various hackery have allowed random devices to appear to work (and it's possible your NAS device has seen this same hackery), but whether those configurations will continue to work or will react appropriately during the inevitable network and device glitches is very far from certain. Among these sequences, whole-disk installs and related system restorations are key, but are also something that doesn't necessarily get thoroughly tested.
A Mac Mini running OS X Server can host a fair amount of connected storage, if you decide to replace or supplement your NAS.
For more information on Time Machine, start reading here.
It is possible to roll your own backups and to use third-party tools to perform the backups onto remote devices, and one of the more common recommendations here are based on a command line tool known as rsync. Copy your files over, and either acquire or custom-create your own archival processing. (If you're interested, search for previous discussions of rsync and backups for some of the available options, and there are tools and scripts available. rsync is pretty ugly to get going initially — it's arcane — but it works pretty well, and various folks have already figured out the syntax and posted example scripts.) Carbon Copy Cloner is an alternative to Time Machine, and there are others.
On the subject of creating your own custom software for these and related tasks, it's also possible to use software that targets photo studios and their related processing, and that manages the photos and videos and other assets, and that can manage backups and related processing, and various of these will deal with reprints and purchases and related. That's a bit further along than a backup device or a Time Machine backup, but it's something that might replace the requirements. (You probably don't care nearly as much about OS X and most other stuff here as that can be re-downloaded or reinstalled, it's your photos and your customer data that are key here, and that are not replaceable. That stuff is the core target for your backups.)

Similar Messages

What drives are time machine compatible?

I'm trying to purchase a NAS or NAS Enclosure and I'm finding that some devices are compatible with time machine, while others are not. Only a couple of the manufacturers do a good job of highlighting if they are compatible or not and I'm driving myself nuts reading up on each drive via 3rd party sites to see if anyone has commented that this drive or that drive works with TM. So, does anyone have a tip for me on how to spot a time machine compatible NAS (or NAS enclosure)? Perhaps a specific tech spec that would indicate TM compatibility? [I'm looking for a 2TB drive or drive enclosure (single drive or dual 1TB with RAID/1) that is TM compatible and allows Web access to files.]

My experience with TimeMachine and a tethered USB or FireWire drive has been quite good - with TimeCapsule and other networked solutions not so good. When I first read about TimeMachine and TimeCapsule my immediate thoughts ran to network reliability and how that would affect the reliability and speed of both the backup and restore process. After more than 6 months of testing both TimeCapsule and other network attached drives with TimeMachine I gave up in disgust. After a few days, weeks, and in one case several months I received a backup failed error and nothing I tried would get TimeMachine backing up again. Oh, there were fixes that worked some times but never all the time and eventually my only recourse was to erase the backup and start over. Not what I had in mind for TimeMachine.
The other thought that crossed my mind early on was about how one could test the validity of the backup. Basically it is not possible you simply trust that it is. You check to see if there was an error during the backup and if there was not you hope the backup is actually good. On more than one occasion I've attempted to restore a file (or more) and experienced a failure. This has happened more often with a TC or network TM than one tethered. In fact, I've only had it happen once with a tethered drive. A backup that won't restore is as bad as no backup at all - worse since it provided a false sense of security.
The final problem is speed. TC is not fast at backing up or restoring. Of course the hourly backups aren't generally a big deal but that first one, or a backup after installing a new program or an OS update can be a biggie. Be ready for an overnight backup. In short, I strongly urge against TC or NAS drives with TimeMachine and so far Snow Leopard has not changed my mind.

Backups, time machine and share server screen

I've used Time Machine for point in time server backups, and a firewire external drive with Silverkeeper for cloning.
Firstly, Silverkeeper will not be supported in Lion... so maybe I should be mocing to something else? Intego Backup assistant came with the drive... as well as Silverkeeper.... I have no idea how reliable these are for cloning the drive, nor why I would need both... but no doubt Intego is a light version of something I would need to buy... so the quesiton would become... what should I buy?
Secondly..... Share Server Screen...
When I entered time machine using "Share Server Screen" from my imac (running lion).. time machine seems to run ok.. but the graphic interface isnt really usable... the time line down the side for instance..... does not appear.... and neither does the "today" bar across the bottom.... and of course... none of those star trek style flying stars we have all come to love so much.... So... I'm thinking that time machine is not compatible with "share server screen".... or I have doen something silly.... so which is it? :+)
Gaz

A lot of people prefer and use Carbon Copy Cloner for cloning drives, it is Lion compatible.
The animation (graphics) when you enter Time Machine is quite demanding, I have managed to view it using Timbuktu Pro a remote control package similar to Screen Sharing but it did struggle. Have you tried this more than once to confirm it is not working? A smaller screen resolution might help it cope.

Is a Time Machine compatible hard drive formatted with Mac OS?

I have a 1 terabyte Buffalo LinkStation Live NAS, and it says that it's Time Machine compatible; does this mean the the drive is formatted with Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? Thanks.

Probably not but the device supports AFP protocols which is necessary for communication with OS X.

HT201250 Can I do a backup using Time Machine on a server, or it needs an external drive only?

Can I do a backup using Time Machine on a server, or it needs an external drive only?

Time Machine can back up to a server. The drive or partition used still needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
(65169)

Time machine on Leopard server..

I'm considering having my clients (only 10) use Time Machine to perform backups of their User directories using Leopard Server. The current configuration has them using OD Mobile Accounts with Portable Home Directories.
My question is how Time Machine would be implemented.
Would I have to revert to Local Home Directories?
I would like each user to be able to use the Time Machine space view, allowing them to view previous versions of files and/or deleted files.
Thanks!

I'd also really like to know more about Time Machine on Leopard Server. I just purchased a copy of Server and am trying to figure out a good backup system. I haven't yet installed it, but once I do I'm interested in setting things up so that users can have their home directories on the server and log in from any machine. I've never really figured out if that will require Portable Home Directories or what.
At any rate, I'm not sure if users will have to set up their machines individually to target the server as a Time Machine destination (and then I'd just exclude those home directories from the server's Time Machine setup), or if I can just set the server to run Time Machine and then the users will be able to access all of their histories.
I really hope that it's the latter, because that would make changing things like the drive configuration on the server so much easier.
Greg

Time Machine Permissions with Server Update 2.2

I rebuilt our Mac Mini server and did it using the latest version of Server (v. 2.2) just released. I noticed that when I activate the Time Machine service on OS X Server that my clients could not connect in (receiving OSStatus Error (5) on those machines). So, when looking at the permissions for the "Backups" share in File Sharing on the Server (using the Server app), I noticed that there were no permissions for anyone other than the Administrator.
I added a group of employees and then those machines are able to successfully use Time Machine and backup to the server's external Time Machine disk. The problem is that those backups do not appear with the little red "minus" sign next to them. So, someone could grab someone else's backup and copy it.
It seems this new version of Server Update may have changed the way permissions are provisioned for clients to be able to backup to.
Anyone else seeing this behavior or have any thoughts on this?
Thanks,
Bob

Solved this permissions issue. Use the Mac's Disk Utility to format the backup drive - do not use the vendor's supplied disk management utility to format it. I am running a thunderbolt Drobo now and had the same issue using Drobo's software. Once you format the drive using the Mac's Disk Utility, you will see a group of "staff" with read/write permissions. Other network users will not have access to other time machine backups.

Time Machine client on Server?

Can I use Time Machine to back up a file share? I'm thinking of attaching 2 external drives to a mac mini server, the first HD to host an network file share, the second would be a RAID for Time Machine backups of the file share HD.
Does Lion Server come with the Time Machine client software?
Thnx

OS X Lion already comes with all the software you need. If your server is running Time Machine and has a share that's set up to broadcast it's availability, the client will show that there's a disk available when you set things up.
Just select the network share as a backup destination and voila!
HTH
-Graham

Time Machine to Home Server to S3?

I am thinking of getting an HP Windows Home Server to use for my Time Machine backups. I hear that the Windows Home Server can backup to Amazon's S3 offline backups, which would be awesome.
Question is, will this work with the Time Machine portion on the Home Server?
I would only want it to send new data to Amazon, not the entire home server volume.
Does anyone have any experience with how this works?

That statement says absolutely nothing about whether Apple supports Windows Home Server & Time Machine.
The link points to the official Apple statement. Apple does not mention any other type of system as compatible. Forum members are really not in a position to modify that statement.
I have seen a report and advertisements that the ReadyNAS drives are being supported for Time Machine by NetGear. Apple doesn't mention them either, but if the NetGear backs their claim, then at least you have someone to go to for problems or updates. http://www.readynas.com/?cat=13
Pondini also mentions that there are hacks available for non-supported hardware, but we can't really promote non-standard methods here on Apple's support forum. There are many hints and tips sites that can say anything they want. Some of them are pretty good. You might even get some sort of on-going support by some of the larger groups.
I've been using Super Duper for a couple years.. I only recently got Leopard.
I also use it. The paid version allows me to schedule the backups and choose what to backup. It's a great program.
I haven't yet seen the reason to start using Time Machine.
Personal preference. With these 1TB drives selling for so cheap, it's pretty easy to do both. I can quickly restore old deleted files if I need them, and I have a bootable backup in case my boot drive dies and I need to get back to work. We use Time Machine Server in Leopard server on an old Dual G4 tower to our advantage. The users don't know or care that they are always backing up their files, until they need them
I have Windows Home Server to back up my PCs, and to provide centralized storage for my multimedia files.
So with your experience with this solution, have you had any luck with Time Machine backing up over the network to a product like it? Have you tried and failed, or had any success at all? I would have assumed that it wouldn't work unless the company specifically stated support for Time Machine.

How do I switch off Time Machine in Lion Server remotely?

So here's what I want to do:
I have a mac mini with OSX Lion Server running providing wireless backups for the laptops in the house. I want to rsync these backups, as sparsebundle images, to a machine at my work.
I have the rsync working over ssh correctly, and have verified that if I rsync a sparsebundle there and back again then everything works fine. However, this only works if the sparsebundle wasn't mounted at the time of the sync.
I can use 'ssh xxx@xxx "hdiutil info"' to determine if the image is mounted, but I would like ideally to be able to switch off time machine remotely for the duration of the rsync copy.
Does anyone know of a command-line way of switching off Time Machine in OSX Lion Server from the command line.
As an extra question, for bonus marks, is there any way of verifying that a sparsebundle is mountable from a windows machine?

I'm going to answer my own question:
I was more or less completely on the wrong track. When performing a networked time-machine backup the sparse bundle is mounted on the remote machine for one thing. So hdiutil won't tell me if the backup is going on.
Also, backing up the sparsebundle is probably a bad idea in general, since if it's corrupt then none of the files will be easily recoverable.
So instead I've written a bash script that
a) mounts the sparse bundle on the server machine. If this fails, then a backup is in progress. The script exits in this case, but I guess it could always try again
b) Performs an rsync on the contents of the sparsebundle
c) ejects the sparsebundle.
For those interested, here's the script. Note that I had to build rsync 3.0.9 to get this to work, the bundled rsync barfs on the hardlinks in time machine backups.
(go here http://www.behindtherack.com/?p=308 for the rsync build instructions).
And here's the script
#!/bin/bash
user=dave
remotehost=your.home.machine
remoteport=5050
sshkeyfile=~/ssh.key.file
imagepath="/Volumes/tmachine/Shared Items/Backups/machine-name.sparsebundle"
remotepath="/Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/machine-name/Latest/"
localpath=~/Local-backup-path
# mount path
mountresult=`ssh $user@$remotehost -p$remoteport -i $sshkeyfile "hdiutil mount \"$imagepath\" -readonly"`
devpath=${mountresult%% *}
# did the mount work out?
if [[ "$devpath" == /dev/disk* ]]
then
          echo "Mount succeeded, remote disk mounted to $devpath"
else
          echo $mountresult
          echo $devpath
          echo "Remote mount failed, exiting"
          exit
fi
# now run the rsync
/usr/local/bin/rsync -rv --rsync-path="/usr/local/bin/rsync" --rsh="ssh -p$remoteport -i $sshkeyfile -l $user" "$user@$remotehost:$remotepath" $localpath
# unmount sparsebundle
ssh $user@$remotehost -p$remoteport -i $sshkeyfile "hdiutil eject $devpath"

Time Machine OS X server weirdness

Is this anything to worry about?
My external Time Machine drive is connected to a 2014 MBP through OS X sever software and shows file size "zero bytes" for this MBP's sparsebundle when I open the drive in a finder window, yet from within the server program Time Machine Backups it shows the backup size as I'd expect.The other MBP and the iMac show sparse bundle sizes in the finder window that are appropriate.
Details: I just installed OS X server on my 2010 MacPro to use an external 3TB Seagate drive for three other macs (2 MBP, 1 iMac). I "think" Time Machine is working because entering TM seems to work on all three macs. BUT, opening the backup drive in finder is weird. The 2009 MBP shows "Bob MBP 2009.sparsebundle" with 44 GB size, the iMac shows "iMac 2007" with no ".sparsebundle" after it and a file size of 175GB, and the "MBP 2014" shows "zero bytes" also with no ".sparsebundle" following. I've deleted this zero bytes sparse bundle and re-backedup, but get the same results.
All three initial backups were made with direct connection to the MacPro. The older machines used FW800, and the 2014 MBP used a Thunderbolt to FW800 adapter. Subsequent backups are done wirelessly.
All machines have current software versions.

In my experience Time Machine will only work on the same VLAN, unless you have IP helpers on your routers pointing to your TM server. You could always put the sharepoint as an auto mount upon login. Either force it on the local machine, or if your using Leo server with OD, just do it via group control.

Migrating Time machine files to Server

We have installed Lion Server on a system at home and we want to use it to hold all of the Time Machine backups from our other workstations.
I have a iMac that I have recently upgraded from a Macbook Pro and therefore I have a Time Machine backup on an external (USB) disk that goes back for a couple of years.
I've looked around and I can see how to set up the Time Machine service on the server, but I want to transfer the backup I had previously to the server and I can't see any mention of how to perform this migration. I really don't want to start a fresh backup if I can avoid it
Can some kind soul please point me in the right direction?
Thanks
Susan

Time Machine Backups are stored in Sparse-Images. You should use an own partition or a seperate harddrive on your server to store the backups. The problem is, that there's no way to set any kind of quota to the backups of the seperate users or machines, so take care to have enough free space on your backupdisk. I have migrated all timemachine backups from one disk to a new (bigger) one by cloning it with "Carbon Copy Cloner" to preserve all owner and access rights.
Backups are stored in a directory path "Shared Items -> Backups".
Try the following.
Attach a new disk to your server. Configure the TimeMachine Service to use this disk for Backups.
Switch off the TimeMachine Service.
Be aware that there's also the "normal" TimeMachine Backup for the Server itself, but we are speaking about the Service that provides backup for your network
Attache your old USB-Disk to the server and clone your old Backups to the new backupdisk on your server with CCC.
Unmount your old backupdisk and enable the TimeMachine Service.
You will need the same User on your server that you have on the machine where the old backup comes from.
Doublecheck that the Backup-Image belongs to the right user. This is important.
After this configure the Time Machine Backup on your client machine to use the backups on your server.
You should now be able to make new backups to the old Image on the server. Also try to restore an old file from your backup to make sure that you have access to files older then your migration date.
Best regards,
Mario Keller.

Time Machine on 4tb Server

Hi guys,
We're looking at setting up a Mac Pro server with four 2TB HDDs in RAID 1+0 so there'd be 4TB space total.
We'd also like to have timemachine backups of the entire server however how would we be able to do this considering typical USB harddrives stop at 2TB and something like a Promise NAS is pretty expensive...
Thanks!

There are many companies that produce great FireWire and even USB 3 drives that go up to 4 TB for single drive units and much more with a drive array.
Check out the Qx2 drive at OWC.
Also, consider using Crashplan Pro E for backup. It may not as pretty as time machine but is far more capable.
You can even combine it with a SuperDuper! clone to an equally large drive.

Time Machine on Advanced Server

The behavior of clients' Time Machines with a Standard OS X Server configuration is highly desirable: the server sets up a Time Machine share point and the the clients are somehow automatically configured to mount the share, back up/explore time, and dismount. Furthermore, there seems to be a way to limit the total size of the backups. So, my questions are:
1. I wish to obtain the same automatic behavior with an advanced Server configuration. Presently, Time Machine works great but only when I manually mount the backup share.
2. What is the best method for limiting the backup size for each computer? I notice that there is a managed preference in WGM, but I cannot determine whether it is working properly or not.
I deeply appreciate your comments.
Tom

If you are using an Advanced Server configuration I strongly suggest setting up an Open Directory Master and configuring the clients to use that OD Master with Directory Utility. They can then authenticate to the server in the background.
I just set that up a few hours ago and it works like a charm.

Time Machine and Leopard Server

I'm trying to verify the Time Machine works on Leopard Server sufficiently enough to be a reasonable backup vehicle for the Leopard Server to an external backup drive, for example.
I have read many posts where Leopard Server can act as a Time Machine Server for workstations, but my main interest is in using Time Machine, running on the Leopard Server to back up that Server.
My guess is that it will?
Thanks in advance for everyone's input.

Timemachine is not supported for "ADVANCED" Server set up but the SIMPLER setups YES. There are also settings for backing up network computers as well as backing up the server.
Supposed in Advanced not all system files are backed up. There are a number of threads regarding this in the Server section of the discussions.

Is there Time machine compatible PC server software?

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