Can Time Machine backup another NAS drive?

[karajabola]

Hey folks,

I just picked up an airport extreme a few days ago to move my two USB drives over to the airport extreme

Drive 1: iTunes Library
Drive 2: Time Machine

When these were connected directly to my MBP, time machine would backup my iTunes Library as well. Now that they are both remote, Time Machine will not backup my iTunes Library, only my local hard drive. Does anyone know a way so that Time Machine will backup my "remote" iTunes Library like it did before? I find it silly that Time Machine preferences have only a "do not backup" dialog. A "backup these folders" dialog sure would be nice.

btw, it took me awhile to set up my Mac so the remote drives mounted automatically, but Automator was quite useful for this.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I'm not sure of how to do this, but you maybe could use terminal to create a symbolic link between your NAS drive and your boot drive. Then time machine maybe would back up both.

PS: as for creating the sym link I'm not that talented in terminal, but I think there would be some tutorials online.
PPS: I'm curious about your automator script. What is it?


*NOTE* if I accidentally mess up your computer you can't sue me. However I don't see any risk in using this command, after all there's no 'sudo' involved.
EDIT: alright I figured it out. What you do is open up terminal, then type 'ln -s' (without quotes) then drag the directory that you want to back up into terminal (this would be your NAS drive) then type '~/Desktop'. This should create a new file on your desktop that looks like an alias. Now drag that to somewhere on your computer (through the finder now, you're done with terminal) that gets backed up.

 

[karajabola]

I'm not sure of how to do this, but you maybe could use terminal to create a symbolic link between your NAS drive and your boot drive. Then time machine maybe would back up both.

PS: as for creating the sym link I'm not that talented in terminal, but I think there would be some tutorials online.
PPS: I'm curious about your automator script. What is it?

Basically I created a text variable in that represents a url to the drive:

afp://<SSID>._afpovertcp._tcp.local/iTunes%20Library

where <SSID> is your airport name.

and send that to the 'Connect to Servers' action. I do the same for my Time Machine drive. Seems to take 30-60 seconds to mount during login but does not slow down the boot process.

I will try the symbolic link, as I was thinking about that too. I'm a bit new to Mac's, I assume the symbolic link is the same as an alias?

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Basically I created a text variable in that represents a url to the drive:

afp://<SSID>._afpovertcp._tcp.local/iTunes%20Library

where <SSID> is your airport name.

and send that to the 'Connect to Servers' action. I do the same for my Time Machine drive. Seems to take 30-60 seconds to mount during login but does not slow down the boot process.

I will try the symbolic link, as I was thinking about that too. I'm a bit new to Mac's, I assume the symbolic link is the same as an alias?

it is sort of the same as an alias. If you make an alias in the finder it won't work the same way as the unix symlink that is made when you use the terminal.

 

[karajabola]

tuffluffjimmy, no workie for me. The alias was created correctly and functions, but Time Machine doesn't seem to care

lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 <user> staff 24 Aug 25 21:56 iTunes\ Library -> /Volumes/iTunes\ Library

I did notice the alias breaks on bootup (likely because the NAS drive does not mount soon enough. Even after I fix it and trigger Time Machine, no dice. Let me know if you have other ideas, thanks. And to anyone else, if you are currently doing this, wanna share your secret?

I may just resort to a manual backup, or something with Automator

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

tuffluffjimmy, no workie for me. The alias was created correctly and functions, but Time Machine doesn't seem to care

lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 <user> staff 24 Aug 25 21:56 iTunes\ Library -> /Volumes/iTunes\ Library

I did notice the alias breaks on bootup (likely because the NAS drive does not mount soon enough. Even after I fix it and trigger Time Machine, no dice. Let me know if you have other ideas, thanks. And to anyone else, if you are currently doing this, wanna share your secret?

I may just resort to a manual backup, or something with Automator

For my final cut editing I have an external scratch drive. Everyday when I'm done working with it I plug in another drive of equal size to back up the scratch drive using carbon copy cloner. The only thing that I can think of that would work would to do something like that. Just back it up manually every week. An automated way would be nice though...