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How to set up a NAS box?

fireshot91

fireshot91

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 31, 2008
4,721
1
Northern VA
I have a Thecus N4100Pro connected to my router. I'm wirelessly connected to my router (Via a "N" only network).
How do I set up OS-X to mount that hard drive on my desktop? (Or anywhere for that matter)
 
If i understand correctly, you'll have to connect to it via afp or smb...

Easiest way, is use your finder, it should show up in the shared section on your finder window... Just navigate to it. Or press command+k and type in the address...
 
ddoonie said:
If i understand correctly, you'll have to connect to it via afp or smb...

Easiest way, is use your finder, it should show up in the shared section on your finder window... Just navigate to it. Or press command+k and type in the address...
Click to expand...

What's afp/smb?

When I open finder, and go to Preferences, the connected servers box is checked, yet no server is showing up on the left pane.

I typed in the IP address correctly of the server (I double checked) after I pressed command+K and it said it couldn't find it or something along those lines.
 
If you indeed have the right IP address then the following should work:

command+k (In Finder)
smb://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

-OR-

afp://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

SMB (samba) and AFP (Apple File Protocol) are different protocols for exchanging data with devices. Does that help?
 
One last question:
How do I make a Network Hard Drive a Time Machine if isn't a Time Capsule.

I go into Time Machine Preferences, and (When it's mounted on my desktop), it doesn't show up as a disk. I click on Time Capsule, and it doesn't find anything.
 
I believe Time Machine will only work with AFP (Apple File Protocol) and not SMB. So you will have to see if your NAS supports AFP or if it's something you can hack. I use a DLink DNS-323 NAS and I used this popular hack called Fonz Fun_plug that lets you add packages to the NAS and I added an AFP package so that it works with Time Machine. I'm not sure if your NAS can support this or not.
 
Time Machine with NAS

I have used the instructions on the following link successfully to use an external NAS for Time machine. Whilst the instructions specifically refer to a Netgear device, I have used them for a Thecus N2100 and now a Western Digital ShareSpace.

http://www.readynas.com/?p=253

Follow them exactly and should not have any probs.

Also covered in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/701934/
and potentially others, searching "Time Machine NAS" gives a good list of threads.

I use it on a Mac Mini (on all the time) and my wife's MacBook. The MB is often put in Standby by closing the screen, not rebooted very often. The only issue I have discovered is that the MB occasionally can't find the backup volume even though the destination is clearly connected as normal. Rebooting sometimes fixes it. On other occasions, I have had to delete the Time Machine backup and re-copy the initial file you create in the instructions to the NAS (I now keep it in its own special root directory - telling Time machine not to back it up - in case I need it in future). The Mac Mini has never missed a beat.
 
I followed the steps in that thread exactly.

I even copy/pasted the commands, yet it doesn't work. Is there a specific place I have to look for the sparsebundle it creates?

In Terminal, after I press enter on the third command, it just makes it like I opened Terminal new except with the previous commands on top.
 
fireshot91 said:
I followed the steps in that thread exactly.

I even copy/pasted the commands, yet it doesn't work. Is there a specific place I have to look for the sparsebundle it creates?

In Terminal, after I press enter on the third command, it just makes it like I opened Terminal new except with the previous commands on top.
Click to expand...

When I say "exactly", make sure you substitute your names for devices, user, directory etc in place of the examples such as "Magpie".

Also, in terminal, a common error (including me) is mistaking the "$" as something to enter, it is actually Terminal's prompt. Also, I don't think any command has a fullstop at the end, pretty sure this is just punctuation to end the sentence.

The sparsebundle is created in the user's root directory.

I just had another look at the page and the way it renders to me (at work on a Windows machine tried IE8 & Firefox), the videos on RHS seem to obstruct at least one of the instructions. The command for step 3 should read:
$ hdiutil create -size 140g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of magpie" magpie_0016cbaf91d7.sparsebundle

I found that printing to PDF solved it, printing direct to a printer didn't work for me.

Keep experimenting, it really does work.
 
Ah, sweet Thanks.

I was substituting my MAC and my computers name.

Its just, I guess those other ones are wrong.

I copied/Pasted yours exactly (Without the $) and exchanged your name with mine, and MAC addresses accordingly, and it worked. Thanks.

Is there a way to choose how many times you backup your computer?
 
Great to hear.

From Apple's site http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html :

"Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the Time Machine hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term."

Eventually, you will get a message that says your Time Machine disk is full. That's no problem. All that has happened is that keeping the history of your file changes has now reached the limit you set (eg 100MB), so future backups will be done at the expense of the oldest, therefore you always have the most recent backup of your data and versions from months ago will now be deleted to make way for the new stuff.
 
fireshot91 said:
Well, I just got an error that says "Time Machine Disk Could Not Mount".
Any way around that?
Click to expand...

This is the one I was referring to that the MacBook gets. Try rebooting.

Failing that, delete the sparsebundle on your NAS and copy (rsync) the one you created (or recreate) using the instructions to the NAS again.

Its odd that this message has occurred so soon.
 
On my first backup the message appeared.

I restarted, and it's backing up now. I need to go to bed, so I'll see if in the morning its fine or not.

Thanks for all your help!
 
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