NAS, network drive & Time Machine

[stingray]

I am looking for a new NAS (any type of network drive). My plan is to have our two Macs (iMac & MacBook) use it for Time Machine backups and also be a file share location (for pictures and documents). I am guessing that I would need to break up the network drive into 3 partitions (with the correct Mac formatting done on them).

I found an Iomega drive that I am interested in, but there web page is confusing me a bit. They state that a network storage drive is not compatible with Time Machine. Linky to info They stat "Time Machine requires a direct-attached hard drive". I find that strang since Apple sells Time Capsule, and it essentually does what I am wanting.

Am I looking into this to much? Or will my plan work? Here is a link to the drive I am thinking of getting... Drive Link

 

[umang7888]

Apple does not officially support the backing up from Time Machine on any Network Harddrive except Time Capsule..

I haven't looked very much into the subject, but as I can recall my memory, I had once read something like, Time Machine might sometimes fail to back up! But there is a simple work around to it..

Click here to see how to enable time machine to work on unsupported volumes

 

[Thyamine]

I just got a Time Capsule myself, and so far it's great. Very easy to setup and use for Time Machine, but you can also browse to it and use it for storing files.

 

[stingray]

So I am guessing from the comments and my research my idea may be much more work then it is worth. I guess I will just have to pony up double the money and get a Time Capsule.

Will the Time Capsule support 2 Macs for backups?

I do have Time Machine running with an old Maxtor usb drive. I to have trouble with it, it seems that about every other day I lose the connection to the drive. The only way to get it back is power off and reconnect the drive. I assumed that it was trouble with the drive, I is about 6-8 years old and has been though a lot.

 

[lifeafter2am]

So I am guessing from the comments and my research my idea may be much more work then it is worth. I guess I will just have to pony up double the money and get a Time Capsule.

Will the Time Capsule support 2 Macs for backups?

I do have Time Machine running with an old Maxtor usb drive. I to have trouble with it, it seems that about every other day I lose the connection to the drive. The only way to get it back is power off and reconnect the drive. I assumed that it was trouble with the drive, I is about 6-8 years old and has been though a lot.

Yes it will.

 

[NeilP]

So, what has happened, did you get a Time Capsule, or Find a NAS box?

I was wondering the same thing about Time MAchine and NAS. It seems to be possible using FreeNAS. I have not even got a MAC but do have two FreeNAS servers on the home network for music and backup storage.
FreeNAS is flexible enough that you can just add another drive to the machine. I have just been told that iSCSI is the service to use on the FreeNAS box to get Time Machine to work with it. I imagine the iSCSI client runs on the MAC and you then use the iSCSI 'drive' as the Time Machine drive.

 

[brettyboo]

I'm somewhat unimpressed that Apple haven't provided an obvious option to use an AFP or SMB share as a Time Machine target location. I feel compelled to highlight other non Time Capsule options. It took a little trawling through forums to find a solution, and this entry at Apple Clinic is probably the best way to do it:

Getting Time Machine to work on an Unsupported NAS « Apple Clinic, the FAQ Repository


@Neil,
It worked great for me using a FreeNAS server, and I used an AFP share. I also run an rsync script on the music so it's accessible by other iTunes libraries and also via DAAP

 

[smallwhale]

Hello,

I have a little bit of question about the above link.

Has anybody tried the steps specified in this link ?

Getting Time Machine to work on an Unsupported NAS « Apple Clinic, the FAQ Repository

The questions I have is :

1) If I use these steps then can I really recover the old files using the time machine feature ?

2) If I upgrade my Mac OS version of time machine software version then do I need to follow the steps again ? If yes then what will happen the the backups already taken by time machine ?

 

[NeilP]

Not yet, but may have a play with it later out of interest.
I now have finally got the Mac (8 week delivery). Have had it for a month

Had planned to use TM to NAS drive, but have now installed 3 extra internal 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD's in the Mac, so using one of thoses as the TM drive.
I was then going to try RsyncX, or Chronosync or ......whatever to back up just my data HDD to the FreeNAS box.

Will probably try out using TM to external NAS just for the interest value. If and when I do, I'll try and remember to post the results here.

More important things to learn about the Mac at the moment....like how to use the bloody thing without it freezing all the time !! and I thought Windows crashed a lot

 

[louishen]

I haven't tried an NAS box, but I have got Time Machine to back-up to my Old G4, which is sharing a 250 gig hard drive.

The G4 is running OS X Tiger so getting it to share the hard drive requires share points HornWare: SharePoints

As has been said, the following terminal command will allow Time Machine to select a shared drive as the back-up disk

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

That's not the end of the story, though, when time machine runs for the first time it will fail to write the Sparse Bundle file that TM uses as a back-up. A previous link showed how you can create a sparse bundle image using your Macs name and MAC address, but if this seems complicated there is an easier way.

Since TM failed to make the Sparse Bundle file, you will have to create it yourself. First open up the Console from your Applications > Utilities folder and you should find a line that looks like this

Creating disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine/computername_0014e3856bd0.sparsebundle

That's the name of the file you will need to make. Use disk utility to create the file, using whatever settings you like, but make sure you use the exact name you got from the console.

Dont worry if you do not have 200 gig free, the Sparse Bundle file should only be about 100 meg. Once done, copy the file to the remote drive and next time Time Machine runs a back-up everything should work.

By the way, some of this info is taken from the following article, useful for anybody who might want to use an Ubuntu server as a Time Machine server

HowTo: Make Ubuntu A Perfect Mac File Server And Time Machine Volume [Update6] › Blog › kremalicious.com » Matthias Kretschmann | Photography & Design

 

[wmprice1240]

As to the original post, what I have setup is:

Airport Extreme Base Station (previous model from the current one being sold)

3 external hard-drives connected to the AEBS via USB and USB Hub

I was able to setup TimeMachine to use any of these volumes by enabling the the unsupported drive option listed above.

This works well and would essentially save you some money versus the TimeCapsule route.