16 Dec 2009

using osx Time Machine and unsupported NAS storage

osx 167 Comments

Warning about using Time Machine and non-Apple NAS storage…

The disk image used for the backup may become corrupted if it is not unmounted cleanly by the third-party fileserver.
(E.g. anytime the network is interrupted during a backup)
You could end up with journal data not being flushed to the disk image, which may corrupt it.
I’ve read that this is why Apple does not support backups to third party disks that don’t support the changes to file sharing in osx 10.5.

That being said I am currently backing up my Apple snow 10.6 to a Lacie NAS which is unsupported without any problems as follows:

Information you need:

size of the time capsule you want to create in megabytes
Im going to create a time-capsule that is 600gb

614400 megabytes = 600 gigabyte
airport_mac_id: 11:22:33:44:55:66
ethernet_mac_id: 77:88:99:aa:bb:cc
computer_name: MACBOOKNAME

Firstly persuade Time Machine to see your unsupported drive as a Time Machine destination by activating the unsupported network drives feature.

From the osx terminal type

1. defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Next create the disk image

2. hdiutil create -library SPUD -megabytes 614400 -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname “MACBOOKNAME_778899aabbcc.sparsebundle” “MACBOOKNAME_778899aabbcc.sparsebundle”

Then copy MACBOOKNAME_778899aabbcc.sparsebundle to your unsupported NAS

You can now go to Time Machine Preferences and set up backup disk as your unsupported NAS

Comments are closed.