Time Machine and NAS storage units

[Flybymac1023]

This may be a premature question, since TM isn't out yet but. . . I don't own a Mac yet, but we're creeping closer. I currently use a 1TB NAS unit for live uncompressed backups and Retrospect for nightly local backups.

The NAS drives are formatted FAT32 and, from what I read about TM, it needs a HFS+ formatted drive. I would like to use the NAS and not hang another drive on the Mac. Does anyone think this is doable?

Thanks in advance, I hope to be joining your ranks soon.

 

[italiano40]

yea but you may want to format it to HFS, and it sounds like a good drive

 

[QuarterSwede]

yes, a NAS drive will work fine. It's what I'm considering actually, I just need to find a good quality drive with a decent price.

 

[/dev/toaster]

I have actually done this during my testing ... it will work on FAT32 drives and also works over SMB. However, it will be much slower then doing it over HFS+. The reason is, it actually creates sparseimages (~3GB per slice) and puts the data in there.

If you can do it with a HFS+ partition, I would recommend it. Not to mention, you won't need to defrag it

 

[Flybymac1023]

Thanks for your input. I haven't worked with HFS partitioning before since I am on a PC platform. Does the mac os have partitioning software built in or is 3rd party software better for the job?

I want to try to avoid having to partition the NAS since I have so much stuff on it but I have a couple of free-standing USB drives attached to the NAS that I assume would work as well.

Is it possible to HFS a drive in a PC to act as a TM device? I have a few unused drives in the doomsday machine which is part of the same network.

Thanks again.

 

[rockstarjoe]

Xfs?

My NAS is formatted in XFS... does anyone know if this will work with Time Machine? I don't think I can change it without destroying the Raid array, and even then I don't think HFS+ is supported.