# Time Machine - finding a network drive



## aicul (Oct 30, 2007)

(I'm pulling this thread out of the original thread to avoid confusion)

I have my disks on a separate Mac. My plan was to use these (via airport) to do the backups. Unfortunately the "network" SHARED disks do not appear in TimeMachine.

Anyone know if this is a limitation of Leopard?


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## eric2006 (Oct 30, 2007)

If the Mac is running Leopard, you can do this. The shared drives may have to be formated as OS X Extended, with journaling enabled. Also, I found that Time Machine will not recognize my shared backup location until I had opened it - seems like it doesn't mount till you access the drive. The root of the drive needs to be shared, and the time machine access account needs full R&W access to the drive.


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## fryke (Oct 30, 2007)

I thought I had answered it there already... (?!) Connect one (can't use more than one drive for TimeMachine, anyway) via USB or FireWire directly first, select it for TimeMachine, then mount it via the network and see what happens. For me, it at least tried to do a backup. I didn't have the time then, so I stopped the process. For the first, big backup, I'd do it connected directly, anyway. Speed's the issue...

EDIT: Like I thought, I had already answered it. -> http://macosx.com/forums/1421192-post4.html --- Did you simply not see that answer, or didn't it help before? Some say ignorance is bliss...


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## aicul (Oct 31, 2007)

fryke said:


> I thought I had answered it there already...


 You did in a way but ... (sorry if i'm harsh - no harm intended)

Honestly, if the drive is on a server ... it does not have legs ... so there is no logic in walking it to the mac (or the mac to it) for an "activation" connection.

And for the speed issue, why the concern on how long the first one takes, its the following ones that count. And since they are incremental, and the drive will be readily available on the network, the increments will be small if the frequency is high. So no real issue here.

So my drive shows up in the "shared" part of the finder, it is connected (the finder shows the files it contains), I open TimeMachine and try the setup. There the window of available drives remains empty.


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## Captain Code (Oct 31, 2007)

So far I haven't been able to get it to work on network volumes.  I've tried putting the invisible .com.apple.timemachine.supported file on the drive, doing all the permissions changes to it etc.  

I've also tried creating a sparsebundle disk image on the AFP volume and doing the same invisible file on that disk image but no luck so far.  

In the developer betas TM used sparsebundles on a network volume because AFP doesn't seem to support what TM needs.  At least the Tiger version of AFP doesn't.  Apple says with another Leopard machine it's supposed to work but I haven't tried that yet as I only have 1 computer running Leopard.  It's possible Leopard adds something to the AFP protocol that is required for TM, and that they've changed the way network backups work since the betas.

I'm hoping that 10.5.1 will address the issue.


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## aicul (Oct 31, 2007)

I must say the machine with the drives is not yet Leopard either. So that may also be the case. 

Guess I know my next step... good thing I bought the family pack! 

Will post once tested


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## aicul (Nov 4, 2007)

Just an update... for those expecting some response after further testing.

I must dissappoint you all, I cannot provide feed-back as I downgraded. After one full week of hassle I downgraded and will upgrade back when Leopard is more stable. 

I use iMac for business and CANNOT be the technician. Either it works or its out. Apple style one would say.

Problems with TimeMAchine, and many other things made me downgrade.


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## fryke (Nov 4, 2007)

Well... I hooked up my ext. harddrive directly via USB-2 first. Activated TimeMachine.
Then I hooked it up to the server. Accessed it from client.
TimeMachine started to create a sparseimage on it. Didn't use the "normal" TM-backup folder but created another backup as a sparseimage.

So in some way, backing up over the network's working. But it's not like you could simply choose a networked drive right now.


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## aicul (Nov 4, 2007)

fryke said:


> So in some way, backing up over the network's working. But it's not like you could simply choose a networked drive right now.



And that is a pity for a system that lists "Shared Machines" on every finder window...


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## fryke (Nov 4, 2007)

Definitely, yes. You _could_ theoretically restart the server in Target mode and mount it on the client as a harddrive to do what I did...


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## Captain Code (Nov 4, 2007)

Or try this, which I posted a few days ago:
http://macosx.com/forums/1421591-post90.html


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Nov 21, 2007)

Apparently this Terminal command will do the trick:

```
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
```

...but I doubt it would "stick" if you restarted the computer, so you may have to enter it again.  I believe the drive also needs to be mounted manually before Time Machine will back up to it (whether initially or subsequent incremental backups) -- I doubt it would "automagically" mount the drive.


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## Captain Code (Nov 21, 2007)

Guess you missed my post right before yours 

I've been using it this way since Leopard came out and it's working fine except for my own caused problem.  I managed to corrupt the backup image by force disconnecting my VPN connection to my home where the backup volume is when I was at school and time machine decided it should try and back up when I had my drive mounted.  

The setting sticks just fine, you're just changing a preference file.  The back up will start as soon as you mount the remote disk.


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