Ok,
Go into terminal and type the following command:
Code:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Now, as long as you have a connection to your windows computer shared drive, you should be able to see it in time machine. Reboot if you don't.
To connect to that shared drive, use: finder > go> connect to server
type in the ip address or network name of the computer, you may be prompted to log in or you can press "connect as" and log in with your windows username/password
Configure time machine to use the drive, and try creating a backup.
This is where it gets a little hairy, its going to try to create a sparsebundle image on your shared drive and i guarantee it will not to this effectively.
In spotlight, type "console" and open it. Check the system.log
In the error messages it will say the filename it was trying to create.
In my case, the file name is ".MacBook Pro_00254bd7abe8.sparsebundle"
The numbers are based on your computer's mac address, and is specific to you. You will need to create this disk image and put it on the hard drive manually before the backups will work.
To do this, in spotlight type "disk utility"
you should find the disk utility application. I have attached a screen shot of what you should fill in after hitting "create image"
set the size as big as you can, btu keep in mind that it will limit you to what you have available on your current hard drive. Don't worry because the image will only be about 110 megs initially, it will just be formatted for whatever you set as the max.
Make sure you have no partition map, sparsebundle disk image selected, and whatever else i have in the screen shot.
Though the file on the hard drive will need to begin with a period, you will not be able to do this right away through disk utility, so just call it whatever without a period.
you can then change the name of the file once its on the drive you're going to use for time machine THROUGH windows, not mac osx, or you can change the name in terminal as root or with the sudo command prefix. If you don't know what im talking about, just do it through windows. you can use windows remote desktop for mac (free from MS) online to do it, so you dont need to physically go to that god awful mess of a computer (just kidding, humor.)
If everything is done right, you should now be able to use time machine with a windows shared drive.
bookmark this, because I don't know if I'll feel like ever typing it again.
And by the way I didn't have to do ANYTHING other than share the drive through windows. I did not need to do any other formatting. sparsebundle images appear as folders in NTFS but the mac writes to them just fine so dont worry.
by NO means should you have to reformat, lose any of your data, or buy a new drive if you have one already.
Good luck and regards