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Time Capsule Alternatives

K

kamin99

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 5, 2008
35
0
I plan to invest in a wireless backup and thinking of Time capsule as a perfect partenet to time machine ,but have been reading negative comment on the wirless coverage of the apple Airport router and was wondering what other options/alternative wirless NAS you can use seemlessly with the time machine

( I already have a buffalo router ,and a Buffalo NAS 320GB which can not be seen by Time machine)

Thanks in advance
 
The ReadyNAS Duo just had a software update come out that makes it actually appear like a Time Capsule.

This was their old way, which I have been using for a year now flawlessly: http://www.readynas.com/?p=253 It's basically a hack.

This is their new way (as of the software update):
http://www.readynas.com/?p=1097 Very slick - looks just like a Time Capsule. (Even the icon in the OS is a Time Capsule.)

...of course, for all this to work, you'll need to BYO wireless access point. But since you have the Buffalo router, you don't really need another wireless AP.

Also, one poster asked about formatting HFS - it's not a concern. Once you access the drives over a network, you don't need to worry about the filesystem the remote OS is using. Time Machine does take advantage of features of the filesystem which can't be used over a network link, but it works around this by using a disk image file.
 
You can use any NAS as a Time Machine drive using the instructions contained in the link BTGeekBoy provided. I have an $80 1TB Lacie Network Space and it works just fine for Time Machine.

To make your NAS working with Time Machine:

In the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

One of the things you need is the hardware address of your network interface, to find, type in the terminal:
ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether//

Write down that number, as you need it for the next step.

To create the sparsebundle Time Machine needs for the backup, you type in the terminal:

sudo hdiutil create -size 100g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of Kamin99" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ./Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle

This will create a 100GB sparseimage for use with Time Machine. Kamin99Box is the hostname of your machine, and the number in Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle is the hardware address you got from the previous command.

You can now copy the sparsebundle you just created to your NAS, go into Time Machine and select your NAS, and sit back to watch it make your first network backup.
 
throttlemeister said:
You can use any NAS as a Time Machine drive using the instructions contained in the link BTGeekBoy provided. I have an $80 1TB Lacie Network Space and it works just fine for Time Machine.

To make your NAS working with Time Machine:

In the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

One of the things you need is the hardware address of your network interface, to find, type in the terminal:
ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether//

Write down that number, as you need it for the next step.

To create the sparsebundle Time Machine needs for the backup, you type in the terminal:

sudo hdiutil create -size 100g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of Kamin99" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ./Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle

This will create a 100GB sparseimage for use with Time Machine. Kamin99Box is the hostname of your machine, and the number in Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle is the hardware address you got from the previous command.

You can now copy the sparsebundle you just created to your NAS, go into Time Machine and select your NAS, and sit back to watch it make your first network backup.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that info, just trying it on a Windows Server 2003 Server share. I followed your instructions but after preparing the Time Machine backup it stops with "Could not mount volume"

Any ideas where to start troubleshooting?

Thanks
 
Thanks for replying!

Yep, I changed the hostname and Mac Address to my own, but after 5 minutes or so of preparing the back up, my iMac returns ;

The backup disk image could not be mounted.

I have the folder mounted too.

logs show

19/05/2009 11:57:11 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5421] Mounted network destination using URL: smb://markfc@nas1.domain.com/mark_time_machine$

19/05/2009 11:57:11 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5421] Backup destination mounted at path: /Volumes/mark_time_machine$-5

19/05/2009 11:57:14 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[5421] Failed to mount disk image /Volumes/mark_time_machine$-5/iMac24_001b63bbcfc1.sparsebundle (DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35)
 

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I have a new TC and I can thoroughly recommend it. I have not had any problems with TM or with range etc. I must say the dual band and the guest settings are fantastic.

Can't be happier at the moment.
 
So many Thanks!!!

throttlemeister said:
You can use any NAS as a Time Machine drive using the instructions contained in the link BTGeekBoy provided. I have an $80 1TB Lacie Network Space and it works just fine for Time Machine.

To make your NAS working with Time Machine:

In the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

One of the things you need is the hardware address of your network interface, to find, type in the terminal:
ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether//

Write down that number, as you need it for the next step.

To create the sparsebundle Time Machine needs for the backup, you type in the terminal:

sudo hdiutil create -size 100g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of Kamin99" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ./Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle

This will create a 100GB sparseimage for use with Time Machine. Kamin99Box is the hostname of your machine, and the number in Kamin99Box_001ec4b8f9b3.sparsebundle is the hardware address you got from the previous command.

You can now copy the sparsebundle you just created to your NAS, go into Time Machine and select your NAS, and sit back to watch it make your first network backup.
Click to expand...


After two days googling about how to set up my new Lacie Network Space 2 to work with Time Machine, finally I found a direct and clean post that explain how to to that.
It work for me.
I used this: sudo hdiutil create -size 600g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of lcdimac" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ./lcdimac_0022412d9dd8.sparsebundle

And then I copy the directory to /Volumes/OpenShare using the below command:
cp -r cdimac_0022412d9dd8.sparsebundle /Volumes/OpenShare
So, thank throttlemeister!
 
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