Time Machine (or alt)

[iRooney]

So I went by Best Buy today and picked up a dual band router with USB port. The router advertises that it supports NTFS and FAT drive formats - neither of which Time Machine supports. I did manage to get the router to recognize the drive formatted in Mac Journaled, but every time I tried to write to it from OSX Lion it told me I did not have permissions. So my question is...is there a way to make this work...or does anyone know of a router that supports HFS+ besides the AirPort? I don't want to spend $200 on this.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Is there a reason you can't connect it right to your Mac?

Also, it should work fine in NTFS. Network shares have no format, in a sense... have you tried it with the drive formatted NTFS?

 

[iRooney]

Trying to use network share gives afp errors. It's a MacBook so the whole set it and forget it aspect of time machine would be gone if I had to remember to plug in a hard drive.

 

[maflynn]

Just because the router supports NTFS means it has the software to allow time machine to connect and write to the volumes.

Usually NAS has the proper software and drive formats to allow TimeMachine to work as expected.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Just plug in the HDD when you plug in the power adapter. That's going to be the easiest thing to do. TM is set and forget, but part of the "set" is plugging in the drive.

 

[iRooney]

I went ahead and sprung for an AirPort Extreme. Plugged a MyBook into the USB port on it and Time Machine went and did its thing. Kind of wish I had done this to begin with. Speeds on this thing vs my old N300 router is insane. My modem is on the other side of my house (genius builders only put one jack in the house and I wasn't paying AT&T $95 to put a new one in). On the old router, I'd be lucky if I could transfer a GB in 30 minutes. AirPort did a GB in 3 minutes.

 

[Macman45]

We all learn by our mistakes. It's what makes us human. I have NAS and TC backups....I'm not paranoid it's just that losing data is NOT an option in my line of work.

In 20 years I have yet to l use a file.......