Time Machine Help

Hi all,

I am a converted iHater and as of last Thursday a new MacBook Pro owner.

I am having a problem backing up with Time Machine to a NAS device on my network. I have already enabled Time Machine to back up to "unsupported network volumes" and can select the backup destination in Time Machine. When the backup starts, Time Machine sees the drive/share and shows the correct amount of available space and shows "Preparing" and then fails with the error "The backup image could not be created". I read on another forum that I might have to dismount the volume because Time Machine needed full control, but got the same error when I tried that. While Time Machine is preparing, I can open the backup destination with another PC and see the backup volume being created, but then it fails and the volume disappears. Has anyone run in to this issue before? Any suggestions?

Thanks,

HM

 

You cannot just use any NAS device to backup with Time Machine. You used to be able to, but Apple has disabled it since OS X 10.5.2. In order to backup to a NAS, you will have to setup an iSCSI target, and use an iSCSI initiator to mount the target and then format it to HFS+.

Note that using iSCSI yields faster transfer rates than SMB/CIFS/etc.

 

Thanks for your response Budding. I think I found an article answers my question, but unfortunately I can't post the link. I haven't tried it yet, but I will post the results. I'd love to buy a Time Capsule, but that's just not in the budget after the MacBook Pro purchase.

HM

 

It took a few Google searches and some trial and error, but I was finally able to get Time Machine to back up to a ordinary NAS or network share. Below is the process I used.

First, enable time machine to see the unsupported network volumes by entering the following the command into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

(To hide unsupported volumes again, change the 1 to a 0)

After entering this command, connect to the NAS or network share and open Time Machine. The NAS or network share should now be visible.

Now comes the more difficult part, at least for me as I had no prior Unix experience and thus took some trial and error to get it right.

A sparsebundle must be created and named specifically for the Mac being backed up by using the machine name and Ethernet ID (MAC Address). Here is the command I used to create the sparsebundle for my specific machine:

hdiutil create -size 80g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs HFS+J -volname Time_Machine_Backup ~/Desktop/MacBookPro_002332f6c5f6.sparsebundle

The -size option can be set to any size, but will not grow beyond that size. There is a resize command that can be used to make it bigger if needed. Use a g for GB and an m for MB

The -type option needs to be SPARSEBUNDLE

The -fs or file system option should be HFS+J

The -Volname option is what the volume name will be. This shows on the desktop as Time Machine mounts the backup volume and begins to back up. There can not be any spaces in the volname or the the process will error out with a messages that says multiple images can not be created at the same time.

The final section of the command line is specifying where to create the sparsebundle (the desktop folder) and naming the sparsebundle. As mentioned above the sparsebundle must be named in the following format: machinename_ethernetID.sparsebundle

I would suggest building the command in a text editor and then pasting it in to terminal when ready. Once the sparsebundle has been created, copy the file from where it was created to the NAS or network share.

Next, configure Time Machine to point to the location of the sparsebundle and start a backup. The backup image should be mounted to the desktop as the backup proceeds. At this point all should be good to go.

If the backup fails, open the network location of the sparsebundle and start another backup. If you see a second sparsebundle being created with a different name or ethernetID, the original sparsebundle was created with the wrong machine name or Ethernet ID. Create a new sparsebundle using the correct machine name or Ethernet ID from the second sparsebundle following the same steps from above.

I have been backing up to my NAS for over a week without any issues. I hope this post helps anyone else who is trying to backup to a network share. All of the information posted above came from other forum posts or articles found using google, but none of them put it together in a easy to follow process. All the credit goes to the authors of those other post/articles.

Enjoy!

HM

 

Thanks for that comprehensive guide. I'm actually in the same boat here. I do have one question though: so every time you run a backup, do you need to do all that again? Or it is automatically, as if you were on a local drive?

 

It's automatic, just like you're backing up to a local "supported" volume. Time Machine stores the path to the network backup location and mounts the volume automatically as it begins the backup. Glad it helped!

HM

 

Do you have problem with the external HDD going to sleep and fail the backup? I tried 3 different HDD: LaCie, Seagate, and Western Digital and hey ALL went to sleep after a period of time, hence Time Machine failed. Unless I backup every hour...

 

I'm trying to do this to a NTFS Win XP network share and all is well to a point (after installation of MacFUSE and NTFS-3G to be able to write to the share) and the share resident sparsebundle does mount to my MacBook (a miracle in and of itself) but then I get here:

And the Time Machine preferences doesn't list that mounted sparsebundle to back up to.

All my XP shared disks appear but the reason I'm in this forum asking is because Time Machine fails the creation if I try to backup to one of them directly.

Any ideas?


Thanks

 

When I posted this guide I thought I had it all figured out, but was proven wrong when I ran out of space in my backup volume and needed to resize. Every time I used the following resize command It would either time out or fail with errors.

hdiutil resize -size 100g /Volumes/Time_Machine-1/MacBookPro_002332f6c5f6.sparsebundle

After a lot of trial and error and more Google research, I discovered that I omitted one important option when creating the original sparsebundle that was keeping me from resizing my backup volume.

The original, incorrect command is this:

hdiutil create -size 80g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs HFS+J -volname Time_Machine_Backup ~/Desktop/MacBookPro_002332f6c5f6.sparsebundle

The corrected command is this:

hdiutil create -size 80g -layout NONE -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs HFS+J -volname Time_Machine_Backup ~/Desktop/MacBookPro_002332f6c5f6.sparsebundle

By not specifying -layout NONE, the sparsebundle was created with a layout (format) that is not able to be resized.

I had to create a new sparsebundle using the corrected command and create an entirely new machine backup, but I am able to resize my backup volume as needed.

My appologies if my omission caused anyone backup up issues.

HM