Time Machine-Network drives? what size hard drive?

I am getting Leopard tommorrow and have a couple questions about Time Machine.

1. Earlier I posted about using it through a Airport Base Station drive. It seems it's now confirmed it won't work with ABS drives. I would like to think in the future it'll be updated to support this. I know my ABS drive can be slow and doesn't do well with large file transfers so maybe that's the reason. I see it works with 'network' drives though. I'm wondering,

a. Would it work with a hard drive that is connected directly to a ethernet network?

b. I use my MacBook Pro a lot and don't want to have to carry around an external drive with it. I'm getting a imac within the next month though. If I plug an external drive in that would it work with that drive?

2. What size hard drive? I have two MBP's I want to use with two drives (on a network or on my iMac) and one is using around 140GB of space, the other around 110GB of space. What size hard drive should I use for backup? I know I want at least the amount of the laptop but I've heard the TM doesn't compress so for storing backups since it is storing back in time I'd assume I want at least double if not more, maybe 500GB or more. Is this true? I know the answer is probably the larger, the larger I go back in time and I know with time if you run out of space it starts erasing.

As stated before, Time Machine won't work with a USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme. I'm not sure of the reason but I think it is because the communication doesn't occur with a standard like NFS. For instance, if you connect the APE drive to a Windows box, you have to install Bonjour. If this was done using NFS, you wouldn't need Bonjour since Windows supports NFS natively.

I'm looking to buy a 1TB Buffalo drive. I want to use it as a NAS. That way I can put it in a closet (yes, I have a network drop in a closet in my house) and forget about it. I want to take the FW and USB drives off my desk.

So the real question here is if Time Machine supports NFS or even maybe even SMB (Samba)

What?? I bought an Airport Extreme because of the USB port and using it with time machine. Aww that just sucks.

flowrider said:

What?? I bought an Airport Extreme because of the USB port and using it with time machine. Aww that just sucks.

Click to expand...

I'm still researching this to make sure that is the case.

However I have some verification. Time Machine does work with a network drive but ONLY if that drive uses AFP network starts (*NIX shares) I'm looking to see if that is the kind of share used by APE. If it is, then you're good.

I'm also looking to see what external network drives support AFP.

I'll post any answers I find here...

Check this out, as well as the link to the conversation with the Apple support rep inside the thread.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5581444

T

mac747 said:

Check this out, as well as the link to the conversation with the Apple support rep inside the thread.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5581444

T

Click to expand...

That is still a kind of iffy answer. I agree that Apple doesn't appear to "support" it, but that doesn't mean it won't work. The key is if you can get your AE disk to mount as an AFP share. IMO, if that is doable, then it should work.

Problem is, I can't find any specifications saying what share protocol is being used. I've found several threads talking about mounting the AE disk as an AFP share but nothing showing it is done successfully.....

All that said, I think it won't work until Apple upgrades the Airport Extreme....

I'm going to search for external drives that use AFP. I'll post the brands and models that I find...

The following LACiE drives support AFP and "SHOULD" support Time Machine over a network connection. You may have to manually configure this to connect as an AFP share. I'll post more as I find them....

LACiE Ethernet Disk Mini Available in 320, 500, and 750GB sizes..

LACiE Ethernet Big Disk Available in 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB sizes...

LACiE 2Big Network Available in 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB sizes (has two disks for RAID 1)

I found this hack to get a USB disk shared on an Airport Express to be usable.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1193708&tstart=0

Another post:
From user A@ron posted in MacRumors:
TM working with airport disk in GM
Well thank me later I got it working fellas. It was there in front of our faces with the exception of doing a chown and chmod.

Someone else please confirm I will post steps.
1) disconnect airport disk and plug into computer as a USB drive directly.
2) Set up time machine to use this volume.
3) In terminal cd to volume "cd /Volume/HDD"
4) In terminal "touch .com.apple.timemachine.supported" this will create an invisible file.
5) In terminal "sudo chown rootdmin .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
6) In terminal "sudo chmod 1775 .com.apple.timemachine.supported"
7) In terminal "ls -l -a" the .com.apple.timemachine.supported file should be -rwxrwxr-t
8) eject disk, unplug from mac, plug into Airport.
9) mount at mac using connect to server in finder (command k) and afp://airportname.local./HDname
10) see if time machine now sees the drive and tries to use it.

Best, Fernando

Click to expand...

I found that apple thread earlier. I'm wondering if they will release a firmware upgrade that will allow a usb drive attached to the AEBS to work. I hope so because I also purchased a 500gig Seagate Free Agent drive. Normally I wouldn't worry and just buy a Networkable external case and toss the drive in but the Free Agent needs to be busted open to remove the drive.

I can't get my time machine to even acknowledge my external HD...hmmm?