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!

Similar Messages

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.

Can I use my time capsule as a time machine and a hard drive

Hi all,
Can I use my time capsule as a time machine and a hard drive?
I don't want to store much on my imac, I would like to store it on the time capsule.
If this is possible, how do I do it?
Thanks, Crankyhead.

This is often asked.. and we always have the same answer. have you thought this through?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4830944?tstart=0

Using Mac Mini, Time Machine and External Hard Drives as a Backup Server

Hello...
I own a graphic design studio and have been looking for a long time to create/buy a no-thinker backup system for my macs. I have 4 workstations that I would like to backup to one central "server".
So what I was thinking was buying a Mac Mini, 3-4 external USB 2.0 Hard drives, external Blu-Ray burner and upgrade all our systems to OS 10.5. What I need to know is, will each work station with Time Machine on it back up across the network to a specific drive on the Mac Mini? If I have each workstation automatically mount one external across the network onto the desktop, will Time Machine recognize that hard drive as a legitimate drive to backup to?
Having the external Blu-Ray disc burner will give me the ability to burn data to a disc so I will have a way to take some of my information off-site. Since we are a graphic design studio, we use large amounts of disc space and regular DVD-R (4.6 gigs) is just not enough to back up some projects.
Can someone enlighten me, and tell me if this would work or not. It's the only way I can see me creating something that has enough space, will back up automatically across the network and allow me to make off-site copies of my data without spending $5,000.00.
Thanks for any comments you might have on this topic.
-SoupGFX

I'm a member of a freelance graphic artist team and have been scraping by with my MacMini and CS3. I recently obtained a used iMac (approx. 2 years old) and, instead of painstakingly transferring everything left on the Mini to the iMac, I wanted to know if it's possible to turn the MacMini into a pseudo external hard drive using the FW800 port.
I already had an external attached to the Mini and plan on using that as well, but I tend to hoarde information and run out of space really quickly. So keeping the mini around, preferably in a way that I can access it as an external through my iMac, would be perfect. I have very little experience with networking and don't have a wireless connection (yay modem cables!) so I don't quite know how to figure this out.
Has anyone done this? Would a FireWire 800 work? Would I need to set up a network between the two and use them as independently connected computers?

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.

Can time capsule be partitioned so as to back up osx with time machine and bootcamped windows drive with win 7 ulyimate

have imac 27 inch. I plan to bootcamp the drive and install win 7 ultimate to run AutoCAD. I want to backup the imac using time machine and the boot camped drive to one device. Can time capsule be partitioned to use time machine for osx and win 7 backup for bootcamp drive.

You cannot backup a Windows partition or system using Time Machine. Nor can you partition a TC as far as I know although Airport Utility may allow that now. See:
A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Of course you should carefully read the documentation that came with your TC to find out what options are available.

Time Machine and External Hard Drive

I have a 1T external hard drive and Time Machine has backed up my entire Powerbook G4 laptop on it. I would like to free up space on my laptop by deleting some things that I want to save on the external drive, but don't need on the laptop, how can I do this? Every time I try to delete something from the laptop, it simultaneously disappears from the external drive. Please help!
Also, I keep reading about partitioning - what is this and how do I do it?

Hi
I think the point to address is that an intrinsic part of "backing up" is that you always have two copies of something. One original, and one if you lose the original, either if you accidentally delete it, or the hard drive crashes, etc. What you want to do is backup a file through Time Machine, and then delete the original - which is NOT a sensible backup procedure (because now you still have only one copy of your file).
That aside, Time Machine is designed to be a continuous backup of your system at any point in time. So if, last week, you had a certain file A on your main drive, but you deleted it yesterday, you can check in Time Machine and you'll see it in last week's backups but not in any you made today. You should always use the Time Machine interface to do this - don't go into the backup folder yourself and try to look around (and certainly don't delete anything you find there), since that will be misleading.
If you did want to delete ALL copies of a certain file from your backup, you should go into the Time Machine interface, locate a point in time where that file exists, highlight the file and go to the Action (gear) menu in Finder and choose "Delete all backups of this file".
It seems that what you actually need to do is make an archive of files you don't need on a regular basis (which can then get deleted from your main drive). Burn them to a CD or DVD, or copy them to another hard drive, but don't delete them from the Time Machine backups (better safe than sorry).
Partitioning is a way to convert a physical drive or other storage device into one or more logical volumes, so that the Finder sees them, and displays them, as separate drives. So you could have a single external drive, but create three separate partitions (using Disk Utility) which mount as three separate drives. Under Mac Help, search for "partitions" - there are several useful documents there.
Matt
Matt

Problems with time machine and external hard drive

Hi all
In 2009 with my imac I bought a WD external hard drive which the computer says is 148GB formatted. I recall that the hard drive contained folders with files for the running of the hard drive when I bought it - and after it had been plugged in to a mac and used as a time machine, it no longer worked on windows computers.
Now I have used 195 GB on my computer's internal hard drive and wish to stop using the external hard drive as a time machine and instead use it for swapping files between computers and the like.
How can I wipe the time machine back ups and start using it as per usual again? do i need to obtain the WD files from somewhere?
thanks in advance
Nick

Hi Nick,
Avoid the WD files completely, not needed & often a problem.
You need to erase the Drive, & to use it on both Format it MS-DOS/FAT32, on the Mac or PC, but will have a 4 GB filesize limit, as well as other limitations.
One option not mentioned yet is MacDrive for your PCs... allows them to Read/Write & Format HFS+, so no need to reformat it...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

Help w/ Time Machine and 2 External Drives + Main Drive

I need some help on the best possible setup with the tools on hand...
Currently I have the following:
iMac with 500GB Hardrive
My Book with 2 TB Hardrive
My Book with 1.5 TB Hardrive
What I want to do (in my head anyways) is have my main drive for my normal applications (ilife, iworks and everything else under the sun) and use the 1.5 TB for my iTunes as i have alot of movies and music and then use my 2 TB to back up the main drive and 1.5TB drive that way if my 1.5TB drive dies my iTunes are still in tack and likewise for my main drive with my applications.
before I go ahead and do this... is it best just to use time machine on my 2TB drive? or should I parition it say 1.5TB for Time machine and 500 GB for Carbon copy so I can boot off of that drive if need be?
I have done some research on the subject but just want to make sure I'm not missing a step or if there is a better set up I should do with my current gear (500MB main drive, external 1.5 TB and 2TB drives)
thanks!

Narayan9 wrote:
total data that needs to be backed up isnt that much... probably around 600-700 MB currently
I'm sure you mean 600-700GB
(but it is growing). I'm in the mitts of ripping my purchased DVD's to itunes so I can watch them VIA Apple TV.
The whole reason for me buying the 2 external drives was to ensure my itunes files wouldnt be lost in a hardrive failure as I have a very large DVD collect (around 300) and as you know its very time consuming to copy them to itunes in the first place and if my main drives dies Im not sure if I would have the patients to re-copy everything to my iMac.
you can use the 2TB drive to back up everything you have now via TM. but if it grows much more then I would suggest using a different backup solution as outlined in my first post. TM needs space for incremental backups and some overhead just to operate. most other backup tools don't.

Problems setting up Time Machine using a network drive

I am having problems setting up TimeMachine on my Mac Mini to work with a WD MyBookLive network drive. The network drive came with a TimeMachineBackup shared folder preconfigured. When I first connected the drive to the router and turned on TimeMachine, the TimeMachineBackups appeared as an option when I did "Select Backup Disk" from TimeMachine Preferences.
I managed to successfully connect to the drive and start a backup running. However the backup hit a problem and I started getting an error that the "disk was already in use". I therefore tried to remove the disk to try and start again. Hoever when I now do go into "Select Backup Disk" from TimeMachine Preferences the shared folder on the drive no longer apperas and I only get the option to serach for an Time Capsule.
If I go into Finder, the MyBookLive shows up as a connected Device with all its shared folders showing (including the TimeMachineBackup folder) and my Mac is definitely connected to the drive. How do I get the Drive & TimeCapsuleBackup shared folder to reappear in TimeMachine Preferences so that I can select it as the destination for my backups?

Check around the forum, you are one of very very many. It doesn't matter what WD say, do you see a Certified by Apple notice on it?
Go here, most authoritative site about Time Machine you can find. http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
Specific info on Network Drives are here http://pondini.org/TM/2.html
Post back here and ask for Pondini if you need more.
You can also read some tales of woe here

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 backup on network drive

i have a netgear router with readyshare usb network drive i have a 2TB external hdd that i use for a central location to view files for both my imac 10.7.5 and multiple pc's windows 7 i currently have a external hdd connected to my imac just for time machine however this is only 320gb not large enough. was wondering if i could somehow make an alias of my current time machine bacup and place it in my network drive so that my backup would use this space too or maybe even make this time machine drive larger? or if i delete the connected time machine drive will the alias still be as is? i understand that i can just create a partition however if i understand the process correctly this would erase my files and the only option would be ExFat format from imac for windows then i would make and extended journal for use with time machine. i am not sure i want to do this because i dont know if i could reformat the disk with the default software still on thie 2TB drive. also i dont know if i could use it with all my pc's and imac. currently i can transfer files to either computer.

I have the exact same problem, but I am not using TM over a network... Only my local Mac Pro w/ a 600gb external drive. I recall back when I first got Leopard that time machine did in fact ask me if I wanted it to delete old backups after the drive filled up. Then one day it randomly decided to not delete old backups anymore... Instead displaying the same error message you get.
Can anyone help? (Besides telling me not to back up certain files, and to do it less often. Those are BS solutions! I want my entire HD backed up every time automatically erasing old backups when necessary. Is that too much to ask for?)

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.

Time Machine restore from Network Drive

Hi,
I have a Time Machine backup of my Mountain Lion system on a GoGlex Home wireless network drive. Location is as follows:
/Volumes/GoFlex Home Backup/TimeMachineBackup/AlexHarris.sparsebundle
My problem is, when I try and restore this sparsebundle by either using the recovery menu or migration assistant, the only thing that shows up is Go Flex Home and neither of these can find the sparsebundle.
The root of my GoFlex Home HD contains four folders (one of which is the GoFlex Home Backup). These are created automatically by the preinstalled OS on the HD. I can't move the sparsebundle to the root as this area is read only.
Any ideas? I want to restore my entire system and not just go in and drag and drop documents etc.
Thanks in advance.

This worked fine.

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

Time Machine and a network drive combined

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for