Note: there is a also a second posting on this topic:
Use Time Machine with a Network Drive, Part 2
Recently, I decided to check out Time Machine, the backup utility that comes with Mac OS X Leopard. I have a 2TB Lacie storage device on my network that I use primarily for backups. Naturally, I wanted to have Time Machine use it for storage. Much to my dismay, I quickly found out that Time Machine is meant to work only with drives attached directly to your Mac. As you can see in the following screen capture, Time Machine didn’t recognize my Lacie drive as a drive that was eligible for use as a backup drive.
I know that Apple has announced a wireless network drive (named Time Capsule) for use with Time Machine. So why can’t I use my NAS with it? After some research, I found the solution. I opened Terminal and entered the following command:
When I opened up Time Machine again it recognized my NAS shares as “drives” that could be used for backup storage.
I’ve now been using Time Machine with my NAS for several days, and it appears to be working perfectly.
11 comments ↓
I use my network drive to backup my windows PCs right now. Can I use this method and start backup up my macbook w/ Time Machine without having to reformat my network drive?
Possibly. What I did with my NAS is I created a share (or “public folder”) specifically for Time Machine. I created a user that had access to that share, and specified the user would be a Mac user. That set the network protocol to CIFS. Please note that I’m describing how I set up my Lacie NAS. I don’t know whether yours would be similar. BTW, if Time Machine can’t use the share because of the format, in the “change disk” dialogue it will indicate that the drive would have to be formatted.
Thanks Ron. I also have a Lacie NAS (although 500 GB). can you describe how you set up the share, was it HTTP, FTP or some other method? when I log in through my IP address, those are the 2 options I see under “Shares”
On my Lacie drive’s web administration site, there’s a menu item named “Shared Folders.” I clicked that and then clicked the “Add” button. It prompted me with “What type of users will be accessing this shared folder?” The two options I had at that point were: 1) Windows/Mac OS X users (CIFS), and 2) Linux/Other Mac users (NFS). I chose the first option (CIFS), though I have no reason to think NFS wouldn’t work just as well.
Ron,
I’ve been trying to do this with my LaCie 500 GB ethernet mini drive for some time. I used the terminal command and TM sees the drive but once TM starts the following happens. TM says “Preparing” and a progress bar starts. After a few minutes the backup stops.
While TM is preparing I can look at the Lacie drive on the network and see that the file “Mikes Computer 125_000a95c47b6e.sparsebundle” size 125.7 mb is there. After TM prepares for a few minutes, the sparse bundle file on the Lacie drive disappears and I get an error from TM saying – “The backup disk image could not be created”. At this point is says that the backup failed. Is your drive formatted in EXT3 or FAT32?
I’ll try the shared folder trick. Any help would be very appreciated. Is your backup still working?
Yes, my backup is still working. I got that “The backup disk image could not be created” error at one point. Unfortunately, I don’t remember which drive I was working with at the time. Does your Lacie drive have the “shared folders” functionality?
Ron,
yes. I created a shared folder but I don’t get the “what type of user” question you got. I can see the shared folders that are set up but still get the disk image error. Any ideas from here? How is your drive formatted?
Thanks for you help.
Mike
I checked and double-checked, looking for how the drive is formatted and couldn’t find that information. I read the manual and searched through the administration console. I was able to determine my NAS is running some flavor of Linux. But that’s all I could determine.
If I remember correctly, I had a problem with an external USB drive that might be the same problem you’re having. In that situation, I let my Mac format the drive and then it worked as expected.
Note that for the NAS I have, it’s a RAID with 4 drives. It’s a network appliance with its own OS and network interface. Using the NAS is different than using my external USB hard drive.
I am having exactly the same bahavior as Mkel described, in my case with a Western Digital MyWorldBook network drive.
Until now I have been using TM with an external USB drive with no problem.
The WD NAS drive is readily accessible from all flavors of other computers – Mac, PC, and Linux.
Oh, and the USB drive can be plugged into these other computers and the backup structure is visible to them. It’s not at all clear what relevance the internal format of the NAS has; the WD also uses Linux in its controller board.
Any ideas on what to try next?
GK
The answer might be in my second post on this topic:
http://roncox.org/12
Hey Ron, thanks for your article, if you could give me a quick bit of advice it would be much appreciated.
I’ve set up my NAS to as an FTP server and SMB server and I can connect to both from the Finder:
http://tinyurl.com/ams8lr
I’ve executed the command you detail in Terminal but the drives are not showing up in the Time Machine list!
I’m not sure if I’ve set the drives up wrong somehow as I have a different icon to the one you have on your screenshot.
Any help much appreciated.
Thanks,
r0cker