Time Machine server will not let me use external disks to share over network

Question

Hi Apple land,
Im running a lion server from a headless MacBook Pro, its running install and diagnostic netboot images well.
I have added an eSata card via the expresscard 34 slot.
drives connected to it work well, nice and fast.
Now, i can mark the drive for timemachine and it will change the icon and get ready for backup, no worries, for the local system only.
but going through server.app to make it a timemachine destination for others over the network give me an error:
"This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network."
there is a link to this error, but it simply says make sure you dont remove the power to this drive as it could cause backups to fail.
It still lets me select the drive, shows 'writing time machine settings' but then the big switch flicks itself to OFF
I have searched and found the exact message posted in 2008 on this site, without resolution
so i guess i want to know, for lion server to have a drive available for others, does it have to be internal? or is it because its running through an expresscard then eSata thats confusing it?
would any of the terminal command tricks work (the ones that force compatability)
I didt want to breaking anything just in case
thank you in advance.
Richard

Answer 1

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.