Using Time Machine to backup to a disk Image on a Drobo

[dadada2000]

I’m look for some advice on how to use Time Machine and my drobo (fw 800).

I wanted to avoid just letting time machine backup to the whole drobo, since time machine will eventually use all my disk space on the drobo.

I would also like the backup to be encrypted.
I created an encrypted disk image (1.5Tb) that is on the root of the drobo and would like time machine to use that as it’s backup drive, but Time Machine doesn’t recognize the mounted disk image.

2 questions.
1. Is this possible?
2. 2. I saw some posts regarding Time Machine and tweaking the setting so it can back up to a network share -(defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1), is there a setting like this, for using a local disk image disk?

Thanks

 

[rado0x54]

Yes, it's possible and I have the exact same setup. Drobo with encrypted TM Backup image.

Unfortunately I'm on a mobile device but I'll try to give you a short description.

You'll first need to setup an unencrypted sparsebundle on your drobo root with the size you want. There plenty of howtos. You can do this via Terminal or in Disk utility.

The Sparsebundle must be named Hostname_MAC.sparsebundle where the Hostname is your Hostname and MAC ist the MAC Address of your en0 interface.

Try to start an unencrypted backup on your drobo. It should mount the bundle automatically and be running.

->Cancel after you see it's working.

Now you have to encrypt that sparsebundle. Try to google that. You can encrypt already existing ones and write them to a knew sp file..

Replace the unencrypted sp with the encrypted sp.

Try to mount it in Finder. -> Enter Password

Lastly you have to open Keychain and move the Password from your login keychain to the System keychain.

Now Mac os can mount the image for backups.

Try backing up. should mount automatically an run .

Good luck. What you want is achievable