Time Machine problems with Mac names and NAS storage

[ewi]

I just bought a new iMac, and want to buy a NAS backup solution (connect my iMac and a MacBook to a Giga subnet) (thinking about the Lacie 5big Network 2).
However I was told that backing up to a NAS will cause issues with naming (as Max OS allows names not allowed by windows). Who can shed some light on this?

Thanks

 

[Mal]

How could that cause an issue? You're talking about backing up to a drive that's only going to be used for Macs, right? It does have to be formatted as HFS+ if you're going to use Time Machine, and only a few NAS systems are officially supported, but it will certainly work.

jW

 

[Hal Itosis]

If the filesystem on the NAS isn't HFS+, then Time Machine will create a "Sparse Disk Image Bundle" (.sparsebundle) which is HFS+... and backup to that mounted volume instead. That's how Time Capsule itself works.

Correction: i believe that Time Machine actually creates a "HFSXJ" filesystem, aka Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)