Comments on: Getting Time Machine to work on an Unsupported NAS

By: jschrand

jschrand — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:49:10 +0000

Great article – this worked great for me.

The only issue I had was when the motherboard on my MBP had to be replaced due to a bad video controller. This, of course, resulted in a new MAC address which made the SPARSEBUNDLE file unaccessible. I ended up deleting my file and starting over. Not sure if there would have been an easier way to deal with this?

Thanks again for the great advice for Time Machine!

By: Harvey Ramer

Harvey Ramer — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:19:26 +0000

Thank you very much. I followed this exactly and now have TimeMachine backing up to my Western Digital MyWorldBook drive.

What a huge relief! I thought I’d have to buy the Apple drive.

By: mgjbond007

mgjbond007 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:55:35 +0000

BIG PROPS on writing this article. I got TM to start backup up on my NAS using OS 10.5.8 in no time at all. I haven’t tried restoring anything yet, but it looks like everything is working for now.

@1stmac I think the problem is you forgot to escape the ‘ character… this will be interpreted by the command line. Try this instead, should work for you:

“sudo hdiutil create -size 60g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname “MacBackup” -fs “Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+” -verbose ./Kenny\’s MacBook_001f5be69e79″

By: r093r

r093r — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:22:35 +0000

Hey Voxacana, thanks a bunch for the help. Worked on my 500GB Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini. Had a little trouble with it recognising case sensitive journaled, so just cut the case sensitive part out. Works a treat!

By: snakeamine

snakeamine — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:10:50 +0000

Hello,
vinnycoyne wich server are you using?

By: vinnycoyne

vinnycoyne — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:23:47 +0000

Worked perfectly. Thanks!

By: nicovalin

nicovalin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:02:15 +0000

Thank you very much for this post. Super useful and it works… even though I am not an expert!

By: davidpomar

davidpomar — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:51:42 +0000

Hi there

I followed all of your instructions and I started the back-up. After a few minutes I got an error message:

Time Machine Error
The backup disk image could not be mounted

I can read/write to this drive through the finder, but time machine keeps giving me this error…I am using a Linksys NAS200.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated…

By: voxarcana

voxarcana — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:55:43 +0000

My apologies for the late replies… I’ve been busy and not tracked back as often as I would’ve liked.

@shorty0927, replace the quotation marks with the proper “”s. When you copy/paste from the web site, you will get a different set.

@brettyboo, thanks for the kudus. Congrats on getting it to work!

@1stmac, Your command looks okay. Retry it again, perhaps?

By: dbmgreen

dbmgreen — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:16:55 +0000

Can I copy the old bundle from my usb drive and use that?
And can I automount network drives at login?

By: 1stmac

1stmac — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:15:20 +0000

Hi There,
When you executed hdiutil command, how long did it take for mac to create sparsebundle?

When I execute this command all I see is a “>” cursor. Not sure if the script is running or what. Even after 4 hours it was the same. Please see the output of my terminal window:

kennys-macbook-3:~ kenny$ sudo hdiutil create -size 60g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname “MacBackup” -fs “Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+” -verbose ./Kenny’s MacBook_001f5be69e79
>
Do you know what am I doing wrong???? Thanks!

By: brettyboo

brettyboo — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:45:58 +0000

Brilliant post! I think Mac users should use the typical workflows that are provided by Apple software, but NOT be pushed toward using specific Apple hardware as a result.

I have a FreeNAS server which does backups of all my machines, inc Vista, Linux and now, thanks to this post, a Mac

By: shorty0927

shorty0927 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:42:44 +0000

I’m having some trouble getting the hdiutil command to work for me. I’m getting the message:

hdiutil: create: Only one image can be created at a time.

I entered it just as you have written out in the instructions. Any ideas?