It is indeed possible to get Time Machine working with NFS, SMB and AFP. The fix was mentioned in Digg here.
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Note: Do not do this as root, or prefix the command with “sudo” or anything else.
As a test, I created the following shares on my ReadyNas system.
- An AFP Share called AFPTEST and shared it out using AFP
- A SMB Share called SMBTEST and shared it out using SMB
- An NFS Share called NFSTEST and shared it out using NFS
After mounting these shares using Finder, I verified that they are all mounted using the correct protocols.
sh-3.2# mount | grep NFSTEST
192.168.1.5:/c/NFSTEST on /Volumes/192.168.1.5-1 (nfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by ******)
sh-3.2# mount | grep AFPTEST
afp_35Bf8d35Bf8d35Bf8d35Bf8d-1.2d000084 on /Volumes/AFPTEST (afpfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by ******)
sh-3.2# mount | grep SMBTEST
//192.168.1.5/SMBTEST on /Volumes/SMBTEST (smbfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by ******)
Control-Click on Time Machine in the Dock and select “Time Machine Preferences”. Click “Choose Backup Disk” and voila!
Interesting alternative to time machine:
http://www.crashplan.com/features/timeMachine.vtl
It’s cross platform, and has many more features while remaining quite easy to use.
That does look very interesting! This could be a very cool combination if I can get crashplan to install on my NAS box (ReadyNAS). That is technically another computer :)
I was looking for a Crashplan free vs CrashPlan paid version differences. Is there such a thing ?
I wonder what happens if you have a HD crash. Will you be able to do a system restore from the SMB drive?
Once you get the new HD, you must install the OS and perform the trick again to allow the new OS to see the backup drive. You can restore your applications/data from the backup then.
In other words, it does not create a bootable volume.
Do not used TM on an SMB partition.
See my post on this thread…
http://discussions.apple.com/thread….918065#5918065
You have been warned.
Felix’s comment has an invalid link.. Here‘s the actual link where he found out how he was unable to get the space reclaimed using SMB file share.
Hi there,
Following your instructions, my SMB drive/share appears in Backup Disk list. Unfortunately Time Machine still doesn’t work. A message appears on my screen (translated from Dutch language): “The Backupdisk cannot be activated”.
Any ideas about how to solve this problem?
Some details:
- I have a MacBook;
- My network is wireless;
- And the network attached storage is an Iomega Home Network Drive.
Thanks,
Emile
PS. I am fairly new to the Mac OS. I just bought my first MacBook four weeks ago.
In Leopard 1.5.2 not work smb volumes. . .
The unit is show in time machine, but still “preparing copy”, and “error”. . .
The only safe way to use TM over NFS or SMB shares, is to create a large enough .dmg partion-image on the share, mount the image locally and use that as your Time Machine drive.
Be warned….
Do NOT use any other partitions than native OSX hfs or hfsplus for TM backups.
The problem with time machine on a non-HFS+ (mac native file system) volume is the lack of a feature they added specifically for time machine: directory hard links. Any directory (or top directory of a nested hierarchy) which contains no changes will be hard linked to the same directory in the previous time machine backup. This is arcana beyond most users, but file systems normally support hard links to files but not directories (and a hard link amount to the exact same file [inode] being linked into more than one directory, or under more than one name within a directory).
The comment above from “burner” is related to this point. A DMG file with an HFS+ file system mounted from it would support directory hard links, but an NFS or CIFS mount most definitely will not.
If anybody is running Time Machine on an NFS mount I suspect that either 1) it is not working, or 2) it is consuming dramatically more capacity than would be needed on an HFS+ time machine volume.
Rajeev,
What are your entries in your /etc/exports file on OSX?