Time Machine on network drive?

Can Time Machine work on a network drive? I don't see how to do that right now. If it does, then it could be perfect for our small office, which now uses Retrospect to back up every machine (6 of them) to one massive (1 TB) backup disk. If not, then we can't really use it. Can someone shed some light here? And if it can't currently do it, Apple, please consider this for a near future update to Leopard.

"It took a half-hour for TM to backup the first time, on an 800MHz FW drive. I assume you are using a gigabit network - even a 100MHz network would take 4 hours for the first backup, assuming no other network traffic. And that would be for a single machine. I can't imagine it's very fast or even reliable.
What happens to a backup if you get a network crash? Can TM pickup where it left off? "
FYI, It's not MHz. I believe Mega bits per sec (Mbs) is what you're looking for.

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Time machine with network drive?

I heard I could use time machine with the hard drive I have connected to my airport extreme. Problem is I can't get the disk to appear in the time machine set up window as an option

Unfortunately Apple does not support Time Machine backups to a HDD attached to the AirPort Extreme USB port. Doing so is not recommended as most users who attempt this end up with corrupted backups over time. However, you could use a different backup solution with this configuration, just not Time Machine.

HT3275 Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP feat

Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive. "Could not complete backup to media share. The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features." What are AFP features and how do I get Time Machine to backup to my current external backup?

This means that your NAS does not support the required encryption. Update your NAS to the latest firmware or ditch it and buy a Time Capsule (they are the most reliable when using TM).

Time Machine with 2T drive connected to Airport Extreme base via USB

I got this to work - Time machine recognizing the drive in its "choose backup disk" menu.
I used it to store Apple Lossless audio on a big iTunes library, as well as for my Time Machine backups.
Whole system ran fine for 4 months until last week: while I was using iTunes with that remote library, adding audio to it... "Airport has detected a disk error"... My 2TB of disk turned into a very expensive brick.
The disk had to be recovered with Disk Warrior, detecting "19,753 directory entries with incorrect text encoding value" as part of a nice one-page-long list of other errors.
SINCE THEN: no matter what I do, the disk does not show up in Time Machine, even though I can access it via the network exactly as before.
Any ideas are welcome!

Apple does not support Time Machine backups to an AirPort disk (a USB drive attached to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBS)). (ref: Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks) Although folks, like yourself, have gotten this to work initially, the long-term stability of the TM backups is highly suspect and why Apple doesn't support it. Sorry!

Time Machine sees my drive but will not use it.

I am running mountain lion on my MacBook Pro. I have an external WD DD that has 1TB partioned for mac and 1TB for PC. When I hook the DD directly to the mac via USB TIme machine uses it no problem for backing up. But moving forward I want to have the backup DD on my wireless network. When I then disconnect it from the mac and instead connect it to my wireless rounter (again with USB) Time Machine is not happy.
Time Machine find the drive and recognizes it that is has Mac backups on it, but it will not let me "choose disk" to use it forback ups going forward.
Anyone know how I can fix this??
I orginally formated the the backup drive with an iOS older than mountain lion..
I have done some searches in the support communities and don't see this exact issue listed.

No, pondini has enough to keep himself occupied with apple routers.. getting TM to work on non-apple routers maybe simply impossible.
Here is Netgear version.
http://www.netgear.com/assets/landing/readyshare/readyshare-time-machine.pdf
Do not be surprised if you have issues. Many non-apple NAS and routers that supported TM were broken by Lion changes.
\BTW, Netgear does not list the WNDR3700 as compatible with TM.
Supported Router:
Centria WNDR4700/WNDR4720, WNDR4500, WNDR4300,
WNDR3800, WNDRMAC
Supported DSL gateways:DGND4000

My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help!

My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help would be appreciated.

This can be done easily with ethernet.
Please follow the instructions strictly.
To make it easier I want you to do this overnight so you can turn off all your current connection to the internet.
Just go to the airport fan in to the top right and turn airport off.
Get ethernet cable and connect the laptop to the TC lan port.. ie <-> ones.
Press and hold the reset on the TC for about 10sec. until the front led flashes rapidly.
Open the airport utility.. go to manual setup and change the wireless to off. (so other people around you cannot join your network of one).
Ignore all the errors.. they won't stop the backup working.
Go to the TM and reselect the backup target disk as the TC.
It should start after 2min and run through to completion.
That is it.. for a backup of many GB it might take a few hours.. so make sure the laptop has power plugged in and the sleep is off.. (on early ones I think this is needed but I am a late arrival to the scene).. sleep doesn't affect later OS.

Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??

Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd.
Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set.
1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price.
I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there.
Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB?
Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopard
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009
where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.

I'm suddenly getting the kernel panic message and constant restarts when connected to the time machine wireless network. if is switch to the BT network, all fine. no help found so far as to what's wrong or how to correct, anyone have any thoughts...

Recently upgraded to mountain lion in order to buy the new tall tower for time machine backups. had to get technical support to help with set up as it wouldn't play ball with two computers. all working fine up until last week when the iMac started getting backup error messages. then system restarts independently when using time machine on the time machine wireless network. only stops restarting when I switch the wireless network back to he bt one, which is a pain obviously as can't back up to time machine then. it has to be a problem with airport utility or something wireless but all says all up to date with software etc. all still works fine backing up from laptop on the wireless network, just the iMac is not happy. any help or thoughts very much appreciated.

Hi, many thanks Bob, what you say is not unthinkable at all, although it does answer the question
"what could I do *instead* of ..." rather than the one I actually asked, but seriously ...
Shutting down might be an answer, although it would clear out my tmp directory - which I might not want to have to sort through looking for things I want to save every time I go to work, and also, now that nvram doesn't seem to work for disabling the boot chime, it can get a bit embarassing booting up in a busy meeting if I have forgotten to mute before I shut down. There are all sorts of other issues, such as editing documents, loading web pages and so on that I would have to set up again.
Your suggestion of letting Apple know is a good one - thank you for the link.
Take care,
Mark

Vault & Time Machine on same drive?

Hello,
I was wondering if there is a way that an Aperture vault can be created on an external hard drive that is already used for Time Machine.
The drive is of size that I would not use it all and would like to back up my Aperture pictures which are excluded from the Time Machine backups.

Yes, you can store a vault (and anything else) on a drive used for Time Machine. Mine's set up this way and I've had no problems.
However, once Time Machine fills up all the free space (as it will eventually do) then you'll be unable to update your vault without manually deleting older Time Machine backups.

How do i use airport as both time machine and hard drive? currently on Yosemite 10.10.1

how do i use my 3TB airport time capsule as both time machine and hard drive? currently on Yosemite 10.10.1.....Many Thanks.

Choose Computer from the Finder's Go menu and double-click it. If needed, use the Connect to Server command to log into it.
(119763)

How do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved from old computer and system

how do I access my iphoto library on time machine backup external drive using Lion, originally saved off old computer and system. It's not letting me open the folder???

Once again here's how to restore an iPhoto Library from Time Machine:

Defrag Time Machine Back Up Drive??

getwellroad
Level 1 (0 points)
Jul 6, 2011 9:50 AM
i previously posted this question, but I mistakenly clicked my own comment as the correct answer. i think this makes the thread appear to be finished; so, because i'm still not completely sure what to do, i have attempted to copy and paste the discussion here:Sorry.
Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented. is it wise to do this or should i not??
Grant Bennet-AlderWest of Boston, USALevel 7 (27,805 points)
If your backups take a few seconds longer, so what. I say leave it alone.Beige G3, G4/867, G4/dual 1.25 MDD, MacPro'09 w cheap SSD, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, and 9.2, 10.5 and Server - LW IIg, LW 4/600, ATalk ImageWriter L
The hatterLevel 8 (42,475 points)
Let's hope a couple things: that you have bootable clones of your drives also; that the backup drive for TimeMachine has over 3x capacity of the data you plan and are storing. I would also switch TM backup drives so you have a 2nd. Fragmented free space affecting performance happens when the drive is too full which may mean there isn't enough free space for a full backup set. 1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price. I'd be worried about the integrity and directory, and whether you can afford to lose that drive. Defragging is also a very slow operation. the ideal: to just clone a drive, or start over with another drive and wait. cloning TM volumes has not been done or has it? SuperDuper hoped to but I don't think they or Bombich's CCC made it there. Trouble with highly fragged is when free space gets to 20% normally, 1/3 or so though for TM volumes, and finding where and a chunk of space for the file being written. Does TM use large spare image files of like 2GB? Best would be to ask in the TimeMachine section Snow Leopardhttps://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.
getwellroad
my boot drive is my internal hardrive which is a 250 GB drive. The drive i am using for TM is 500GB, but you are saying that is really too small. TM, as i understand it, creates a copy of everything, and then subsequent backups record any changes that were made since the last backup. and what do you mean "bootable clones" and do you mean for my internal hard drive AND each of the 3 external hard drives that i have? i'm using one of the three for backup using TM, and i am storing movie files on the other 2. i work at a church, and we use many short films that we purchase online. i then import that file into iMovie to give my volunteers a consistent second and a half of black before the clip and 4 seconds of black at the end of the clip. This provides smoother transitions, i've found, than trying to use most of the clips in their original form. i then have been filing these away in folders on the other 2 hard drives. Regarding the TM drive. Drive Genius is telling me that "the used space on the volume 02 [that's the name of the drive] is 25% fragmented (59.14% of total space).
btw, Time Machine keeps:hourly backups for the past 24 hoursdaily backups for the past monthweekly backups for all previous monthsand the oldest backups are deleted when your disk becomes full.
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB external driv

1st) A fragmented drive is not evil. It will not hurt anything. At worse it might slow down reading a file. However, as has been pointed out by others in this thread, who cares as this is a backup device, not a device you are going to be reading a lot.
2nd) The time you spend defragmenting the drive will far exceed the time you will save when writing new data to the drive.
3rd) Defragmentation will just increase your energy consumption, as all the reading/writing needed to move the files around in order to defragment it, will cause the drive to consume more energy than if it was just sitting idle waiting for the next hourly Time Machine backup.
4th) Defragmentation (if done frequently) may shorten the life of your drive. Not mentioned in "3rd" above is that the extra energy used translates into heat, plus you are moving the read/write heads back and forth all of which affect the drives mechanical and electrical components.
NOTE: There are situations where having a defragmented drive is useful, but mostly it has to do with needing to stream media at a high rate of speed, and fragmented files can affect that. However, a backup drive being used for incremental Time Machine backups is not in that category, and most home Mac usage does not need a defragmented file system either.

Has anyone successfully used a "WD My Book for Mac" via NAS (plugged into USB port on router) as a Time Machine back-up drive?

Has anyone successfully used a "WD My Book for Mac" via NAS (plugged into USB port on router) as a Time Machine back-up drive? Apple support tech tried to tell me it wasn't possible and that the only NAS Time Machine could back up to is the Time Capsule, but I'm not buying it. I know it's doable, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which External HDDs will work and which ones won't. If not My Book for Mac, is there an External HDD that will work? (Running OS X 10.9.1 - Mavericks, btw...)

Given the nature of backups, my recommendation has always been to use a strategy that is unequivocally supported by Apple. As you already determined Apple Support unequivocally informed you that your proposal will not work, unless your router is an Apple AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule.
The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected to your Mac
That is all.
Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless when they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

Running more than one time machine back up drive

I have a back up drive assigned as my offices time machine back up drive.
I need to set up an off site back up drive too. I know that time machine will only allow a connection to one back up destination at once.
What problems could i encounter if i set up a off site drive as another time machine drive, disconnect on site drive and connect the off site drive to back up.
Thanks

That will work just fine, other than the hassle of having to tell Time Machine every time you swap.
Give the drives at least slightly different names (that's for you; Time Machine knows they're different).
Each set of backups will be complete and independent. When you do a backup to either one, it will contain all the changes you've made since the last backup +*to that drive.+*
The first backup after a swap may take a bit longer than usual, as there may be more changes to "catch up" with, but otherwise there should be no troubles.

The disk drive in my iMac 8,1 has stopped working, so I now use an LG 8x Slim Portable that works. However, every time I use the LG drive, I lose contact with my Time Machine back-up drive that has to be deleted and reinstalled. Help!

The disk drive in my iMac 8,1 has stopped working, so I now use an LG 8x Slim Portable that works. However, every time I use the LG drive, I lose contact with my Time Machine back-up drive that has to be deleted and reinstalled. Help!

It's not Logic that can't find them, it's your Komplete apps, though if you did exaclty as you say I can see no reason why they can't.
Do you know where the apps installed them in the first place? I chose a non-standard locarion for mine, but I'm sure it installs sounds to your documents folder/native instruments/name of app.
Go into the prefs of each app and choose the library location button on the library tab and point it to the relevant folder in documents/native instruments and see if that works
jake

Time Machine on network drive?

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