Networking Time Machine

Okay guys, this is a tough one and I do apologize for that. I have a Macbook Pro 13" (Mid 2010) running 10.7. I have a 2TB internal hard drive on my desktop running Windows7. I unplugged the internal, put it in an enclosure, partitioned a 1TB section for my MBP (as I have a 1TB internal) and a 1TB section for my desktop, figuring I could back up both of my computers on one drive (less to carry in case of a zombie invasion . Well, TimeMachine ran just fine (as expected). I then plugged it into my desktop, backed it up, and then tried running the second TimeMachine backup (an hour or so after the original backup) and my desktop could NOT recognize it, and therefore my MBP wasn't able to pick it up as a network drive. I wanted the initial backup to be via USB2.0 for the transfer speeds, as I have to be able to use my laptop basically 24/7. Now I'm willing to do anything to make it work, but before I invest cash in another HDD or invest time, I wanted to know if anyone has accomplished something like this before.
Notes:
-My other concern is that my MBP can't really access my E: and F: drives on my Desktop, and my desktop can't access my MBP at all....and I think that that could also be part of the problem/solution.
-Also, I did run the terminal code to allow TimeMachine to view Network drives. That's NOT the problem.
Thanks in advanced, guys.

Similar Messages

Reset network Time Machine Server Settings

Does anyone know how to reset the settings for the Mac Server Time Machine service? Somehow it is jacked up. I can backup to a network Time Machine and restore files through Finder but when I boot into recovery mode and try to do a restore, I can see the backup drive, I authenticate but then get an error saying it can't connect to server name.local. Doesn't appear to be issues with DNS. I have tried setting up a new external drive that hasn't been previously used before and it does the same thing. So I wanted to reset the settings without having to reset all the other services. Does anyone know where these settings for just the Time Machine Service are?
Thanks,

Richard,
I am running a headless mac mini with Lion Server. Same setup as yours, except externals are connected via USB. I have no problems backing up our macbook pros over newtork via Time Machine. My current backup drive is an old 500GB WD Book-whatever. I have also successfully used a 2TB drive in a generic Rosewill JBOD external enclosure. Both were freshly formated HFS+ (journaled) with GUID map prior to TM use. Make sure you format journaled using GUID.
I also get the "This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network." popup but after ignoring it am able to add the disk (don't bother following the information link in the popup...hello 2005!).
Not much help, but a note to say that it can be done and don't give up.
Of note...if you are successful and one day you suddenly can't mount the backup volume on your server, fire up the Terminal and disable then reenable journalling on the volume using diskutil. The Disk Utility app will check the drive/volume and say it they are fine, but the volume won't mount until you play with the journaling.

Networked Time Machine Backup in Yosemite (10.10.1)

Hello Everyone!
I am having issue using a networked Time Machine volume with my Debian Box. Prior to 10.10.1 Yosemite update Time Machine was working just fine. Even issuing the command sudo tmutil setdestination "afp://<Remote Server Address>/Time\ Machine/<sparsebundle>" and defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1, Nothing seems to work. Time Machine doesn't recognize the drive. I am able to connect to the drive by going to Go, but Time Machine still doesn't see the drive. My Debian Box is using Nettalk in conjunction with AFP. I followed this link as a guide. If anyone know a work around that would be greaaaaat.
Thanks!

A "Netatalk" server is unsuitable for use with Time Machine, especially if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want. I know Time Machine accepts the server as a backup destination. I know that the developer says the server will work with Time Machine, and I also know that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
Apple has published a specification for network devices that work with Time Machine. The incomplete, obsolete Netatalk implementation of Apple Filing Protocol doesn't meet that specification.
If you want network backup, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external storage device connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
Otherwise, don't use Time Machine at all. There are other ways to back up, though none of them is anywhere near as efficient or as well integrated with OS X. I don't have a specific recommendation.

Can I network Time Machine with my Dlink DI624

Hi:
Maybe the answer to this question at first glance may be an obvious NO. I have a USB Firewire drive enclosure made to hold an IDE drive. I would choose a 160 gig. Now that configuration will work for 1 computer, my Macbook with 10.5.2. My wife has an iBook 1.3 gig and Leopard. On a non network config could she just disconnect the drive enclosure from me and use time machine as well or is it restricted to just 1 user?? Because there may be another computer G4 if she switches to Leopard, could both daughter & wife share my 160 gig enclosure? Because sharing in this manner has its disadvantages such as plugging and unplugging and moving it to many places and finding room for it.
Now you can see the advantages of networking Time Machine. We have a DLINK DI 24 with many computers networking wirelessly. We have a Dlink DP G-321 Print server as well as a Dlink DWL-2100AP to cover the second floor and provide the same signal to computers upstairs as the DI 624 provides on the main floor. Sorry for such detail. Now I know that the Airport extreme would fit perfectly because it has a USB port which neither the DI 624 or it repeater the DWL-2100AP but the wireless DP G-321 Print server does. It has 3 ports 2 USB and a parallel port: one of the former being used by my laser printer so I have 1 USB port port. Would it work? If not would an Airport Extreme (with USB port) replace my DI624? Would the print server and DWL-2100AP fit perfectly with an Airport Extreme? The DWL-2100 AP is a hard wired wireless extension of the DI624 (sorry if I have the terminology wrong)
Thanks
Ted

Thank you

Restoring selected files from a networked Time Machine backup

My wife's laptop logic board failed 2 days ago. It is backed up over our home network to a separate partition on a second hard drive in my MacPro. I'm trying to recover a few specific files from the day the machine failed.
When I try to mount her sparsebundle image, I get a message that the image could not be mounted "Reason -- not recognized".
Disk Utility claims the sparsebundle appears to be okay.
Using "Browse Other Time Machine Disks..." only shows the partition on the backup disk associated with my machine's backups.
Suggestions?

I have found a way around the issue. My wife's user account on my machine is set up as Sharing Only (just so her Time Machine can write files to the backup drive). So I went to my daughter's machine, turned off her TM, disconnected daughter's machine from mine, and then reconnected from daughter's machine as my wife's username. Then I could mount my wife's sparsebundle on my daughter's machine.
DR

After partitioning external drive network Time Machine instance can't back up

This is a re-post with additional background information requested by several responders:
I recently added a G-Speed Q RAID array to my MAC PRO to use exclusively for back-up with Time Machine. I purchased this RAID array from the Apple store, so assume that means it's acceptable to use for this purpose. Maybe that's a bad assumption on my part. In any event, it worked great with Time Machine on my MAC PRO. The G-speed array is connected to my Mac Pro via Firewire 800 port for now. I am awaiting delivery of an eSATA expansion card for the Mac Pro which I intend to switch to when it arrives. In any event, it is not configured or capable of acting as an NAS device. It is a shared external drive on the MAC PRO.
My next step was to share the external device over my hardwire gigabit LAN with my wife's iMAC so she could back-up with Time Machine as well. It also worked great. Both Macs are connected via hardwire gigabit, supported by an Actiontec Q1000Z router. The LAN performs flawlessly for all other purposes, including over 30 network devices connected via either hardwire or 802.11n. Both machines are running Lion 10.7.4. (not server)
I then started reading posts that suggested the two Time Machine instances would compete for space on the back-up array and eventually it would fill up and I'd have problems. The solution, everyone says, is to partition the external drive and assign one to each Time Machine back-up. It makes perfect sense to me. I did this following the step-by-step instructions (#22) from Pondini's site. Both partitions are formatted with MAC OS Extended (journaled). Everything seemed to be working great until the remote client tried to run back-up. The remote Time Machine instance fails with the "Disk does not support AFP featues" error message.
Current status is as follows, local time machine back-up works fine on its partition. Remote machine finds and connects to its assigned partition once I provide correct user name and password, but fails while Time Machine is "searching for backup device" with the AFP error message. The remote (sending) machine is connecting as a dedicated user and not as "Guest".
I can write test files directly to the remote back up partition from either mac and I can read, modify and save files directly to this partition from either mac.
Please let me know if any additional information related to configuration is needed. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

In my "dispute" with Pondini in the other thread, I came across some information that will certainly explain things, but not in a good way.
Apparently you cannot use an external drive as a Time Machine repository. People who use Snow Leopard and Lion Server to provide Time Machine services have already discovered this.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3327294
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2472139
It may work better when your eSATA card comes in. My theory is that a Thunderbolt RAID would show up as an internal drive and would be useable as a Time Machine repository. There is a chance that an eSATA card would do that too. You'll find out. Apparently, one of the things you get with Lion Server is a warning pop-up if you try to use an external drive with Time Machine.
While I'm a big fan of Time Machine, I still consider it Apple Black Magic. You can use it, but don't get too clever. I don't like to take chances with backups. Simple is usually better. Time Machine isn't simple, but it is so convenient that I like to ignore the incredible complexity of it.
If the other machine were a notebook with local snapshots I might say you could manually plug it in to do backups. With two iMacs, I would recommend just getting another external drive.
Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.
- Gandalf

External hard drive to network & Time Machine

I set up a network in my house with a new Airport Extreme as the base station and an Airport Express for extended range (also plugged into the home stereo). Computers consist of an iMac G5 running 10.5.5 and a Sony Vaio running Windows.
Today I plugged a Western Digital My Book hard drive into the Airport Extreme. Time Machine does not see any hard drives, even though the Airport utility sees the disk. How do I access the hard drive for Backups?
P.S. Happy Veterans' Day to any vets monitoring this forum.

Ensure it's formatted as Mac OS Extended, FAT16, or FAT32, connect it to a self-powered hub, and plug it into the Time Capsule's USB port. If the drive is Ethernet and not USB, ignore everything else and just plug it in.
(71787)

Network time machine stopped

network computers suddenly stopped backing up. Typical console log is
25/08/08 2:35:23 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4987] Backup requested due to disk attach
25/08/08 2:35:28 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4987] Backup failed with error: 18
25/08/08 2:35:29 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4987] Ejected Time Machine network volume.
25/08/08 2:58:16 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Backup requested by user
25/08/08 2:58:16 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Starting standard backup
25/08/08 2:58:16 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Network mountpoint /Volumes/WHP_bak2 not owned by backupd... remounting
25/08/08 2:58:17 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Network volume mounted at: /Volumes/WHP_bak2-1
25/08/08 2:58:17 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Volume at path /Volumes/WHP_bak2-1 does not appear to be the correct backup volume for this computer. (Cookies do not match)
25/08/08 2:58:17 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Backup requested due to disk attach
25/08/08 2:58:22 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Backup failed with error: 18
25/08/08 2:58:22 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5016] Ejected Time Machine network volume.
I have even reformatted the drive with no luck. Looks like a permissions error. Any ideas? thanks

reformat with a different name seemed to do trick

Networking time machine to airport express

i am trying to extend my wirelass to my barn.
i bought a 328ft cat6a patch cable and am planning to bury it.
i want to keep the time machine (A1355) in the house and have the express (A1084) in the barn.
before doing so, i plugged it into the back of my time machine in the second port (i have a microcell cellular booster plugged into the first) and then into the airport express.
ignorantly, i thought it would be that easy.
now, when plugged in, i can't use either network. i'm sure it's some setup procedure that i just can't figure out.
i unplugged so that i can beg for help. Bob Timmons, you seem to be the answer man. Please help.
thanks

Do you have another Mac there that is using the Leopard or Snow Leopard operating system, or a PC?
One of these computers will be needed to set up the AirPort Express A1084 that you have, since Mavericks (10.9.1) does not support the older versions of the Express.
Apple, of course, wants you to buy a new Express, which would provide about twice the performance of the older A1084....and it will ony take a minute or two to setup with your Mavericks Mac.

Network time machine backup not showing on Yosemite

Hi,
One of the people within the office is having a problem with their Time machine backups. The password had been changed on the computer where the hard drive is shared but they where not concerned with their backups as they are using a Macbook so they back up at home and we also use a time capsule as a backup backup drive incase the main drive has stopped for some reason.
Now they are wanting to use the main drive to back up to and I can not seem to find the drive in time machine but when I connect to the computer where the drive is attached to I can gain access to the drive but Time machine can not find it.
The host computer is running Mavericks and the computer that is having problems is using Yosemite Beta could this be why time machine is having trouble trying to find it?
The drive in question is a SmartStor DS4600 6TB no one else is having problems backing up to it, they are using Mavericks.
Thanks,
Bruce

Hi philravens24!
I have an article here for you that can help you troubleshoot this issue:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
Further articles addressing Time Machine issues can be found here:
OS X Mountain Lion: Time Machine problems
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11194
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities!
Cheers,
Braden

Networking Time Machine 10.6.8/10.7

Okay guys, this is a tough one and I do apologize for that. I have a Macbook Pro 13" (Mid 2010) running 10.6.8 (soon to upgrade to Lion). I have a 2TB internal hard drive on my desktop running Windows7. I unplugged the internal, put it in an enclosure, partitioned a 1TB section for my MBP (as I have a 1TB internal) and a 1TB section for my desktop, figuring I could back up both of my computers on one drive (less to carry in case of a zombie invasion . Well, TimeMachine ran just fine (as expected). I then plugged it into my desktop, backed it up, and then tried running the second TimeMachine backup (an hour or so after the original backup) and my desktop could NOT recognize it, and therefore my MBP wasn't able to pick it up as a network drive. I wanted the initial backup to be via USB2.0 for the transfer speeds, as I have to be able to use my laptop basically 24/7. Now I'm willing to do anything to make it work, but before I invest cash in another HDD or invest time, I wanted to know if anyone has accomplished something like this before.
Notes:
-My other concern is that my MBP can't really access my E: and F: drives on my Desktop, and my desktop can't access my MBP at all....and I think that that could also be part of the problem/solution.
-Also, I did run the terminal code to allow TimeMachine to view Network drives. That's NOT the problem.
Thanks in advanced, guys.

No one has any clues at all?

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.

Time machine on a network drive

The situation:
We have a Mac Pro with a Time Machine volume on an external drive that is attached to a networked Mac. I don't think this is a very common scenario, but it works just fine over a gigabit network. We do not automount any drives on the networked machine but mount (or connect to) this remote machine manually whenever the Mac Pro in question is restarted (which is not often).
The question:
Due to some renovation, we'd like to temporarily connect this external drive to the Mac Pro and mount the Time Machine Volume. Will Time Machine find the correct sparse bundle on the external drive, recognize it as an existing Time Machine backup and update that as long as needed. In other words, the external drive will have a different unix path name, but the sparse bundle will have the correct name. And when the renovation is done, we will resume running Time Machine over the network, and I hope that Time Machine will again do the right thing.
I want to avoid having Time Machine's creating a new backup when the unix path changes.
Thanks.

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.

Time Machine can't connect/use shared network volume

Hi All,
I have a Mobius2 external USB hard drive connected to my iMac (10.9.5). It has two partitions (Disk Utility 13 does not seem to allow more that 2 partitions now), one partition is for Time Machine backups of my iMac. The 2nd partition (as required by Time Machine is a shared AFP volume). I want to backup my MacBook (10.9.5) but I can't get Time Machine to use the partition I set up for it on the Mobius2. Even though I have the volume (named "Mobius RAID 2") mounted on my MacBook desktop, and I added it to Time Machine (entering both the password to connect to the iMac the Mobius is connected to and the password to encrypt the backup with) I still keep getting the error below!
"Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “Jeffrey’s iMac”.
The network backup disk could not be accessed because there was a problem with the network username or password. You may need to re-select the backup disk and enter the correct username and password."
I have removed the shared volume several times from Time Machine and added it back....still get the same error above, even when the volume is already mounted to my MacBooks desktop! I don't know what else to try. I used to Keychain to verify the log in password is correct and it is.
....I can even copy files to the (2nd) partition on the Mobius2 (connected to my iMac) when the volume is mounted on the MacBooks desktop.
So I don't know why Time Machine keeps saying the "networked backup disk couldn't be accessed". Can anyone help? (see attached screen shots)
Jeff
Screen Shots:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/22p4f7uu5x8suoh/AABfX-t8_sW7IVSmjgVT7jB4a?dl=0

Hi Eric,
I was able to change the permissions for "everyone" on the iMac for the connected USB drive partition. But not on the MacBook when this partition is mounted on the MacBook desktop. I get this error saying I don't have the necessary permission to change it from "No Access" to "Read & Write":
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aq3zme6ew7oatgg/MobiusTMbackup6.tiff?dl=0
I don't even understand why it says "No Access" for "everyone" when I gave "everyone" Read & Write privileges on the iMac for this drive/partition!
You said "Apple officially only supports Time Capsules as NAS backups." but on the page you sent me it says:
"You can use Time Machine with a Time Capsule, and with USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt disks. The backup disk can be directly connected to your computer or be on a network. If the backup disk has been divided into partitions, you can use one of the partitions."
....."directly connected to your computer or be on a network" = NAS? If that's what it means Apple needs to be more clear, as my USB drive and its' partitions ARE on a my network, and I can put files on them and access them across my network.
I am trying to get a 2nd network Time Machine backup going as the Time Machine backup of my MacBook became corrupted and I could not restore my mail, even though my mail files were in there, I could restore files but I could not access my mail directory no matter what I tried, Apple has some kind of lock on it now and hides it. I had to resort to my BackBlaze backup to restore my mail, luckily BackBlaze does not hide the mail directory.
So it seems I have a $3000 iMac with a RAID 1 drive (with two brand new 4TB HGST drives) connected to it (that I bought just to improve my backups) and Time Machine and the vaunted "OS X" ("the world’s most advanced desktop operating system") can't handle it. Great.
But I do appreciate your help Eric...
Come on Apple, FIX THIS.
Jeff

Non-Time Capsule network hard drive as Time Machine drive? (D-Link DNS-323)

I'm considering burying a D-Link DNS-323 and plopping a few internal HDs into it to use it as a networked Time Machine backup system.
As far as I've been able to tell, the D-Link DNS-323 will format the hard drives as EXT2, not GUID. Will I still be able to use it as a Time Machine backup drive? Has anyone gotten this setup to work?
Thanks for any and all advice!

his 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 http://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!
MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Mac OS X (10.5.6) NetGear ReadyNAS, Linksys Routers,

Networking Time Machine

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for