Network Shared Drive From Within Windows - Time Machine Help

[Corndog5595]

Hello everybody. I couldn’t think of a proper section for this so I figured I could post it in the MacBook Pro section since that is the computer I am using.

I currently have a wireless router with a functionality called ReadyShare and I also have a 320GB external USB HDD. I would like to be able to plug my HFS+ formatted HDD into my router and be able to use it as a wireless backup solution for Time Machine. The problem is that the router doesn’t even detect the HDD so it is unable to share it throughout the network.

Another solution I had thought of was to connect the device to a Windows tower downstairs and then share it throughout the network. The problem here is that there is no free (read: FREE) software that I know of that allows Windows to detect HFS+ formatted drives in Windows Explorer in order to share them.

I do know of software that lets Windows read them but there isn’t anything that I know of that lets them be mounted in My Computer and treated like a normal drive.

This got me thinking... What if I install the Boot Camp drivers onto the machine downstairs. If I recall correctly, the Boot Camp drivers let Windows do exactly what I am trying to do. But I don’t know if this is possible due to hardware differences, etc.

Sorry for the wall of text, but if anybody could help me, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Eidorian]

It's probably going to be a wonderful adventure with NTFS or ext something over SMB or NFS and enabling unsupported network shares for Time Machine by flipping the boolen value.

 

[Corndog5595]

I am in the middle of attempting a method. I mounted the NTFS HDD over my network and enabled Unsupported file systems.

First I tried creating the sparse bundle myself, putting it on the drive, and then trying to backup. It creates a .tmp.sparcebundle and then right when it is about to remove the .tmp, it says “space bundle could not be created.” I had assumed this was because there was already one with the same name. So I went ahead and deleted the existing one and tried again. Same error.

 

[Corndog5595]

Alright, apparently the .sparsebundle that I have to manually create also has to have my Ethernet ID at the end of it. So it should look like this:
MacBookPro_f81edfe383da.sparsebundle

Let’s hope this works.


Edit: No go here. I just cant figure this out. I think I will just use a different backup program.