Will Time Machine work with any NAS?

[mcfly2]

Does anyone know if Time Machine will work with any NAS? I found this from a 2008 article:

Doesn’t Use AirPort Disks If you have a hard drive attached to your AirPort Extreme Base Station—or for that matter, any network-attached storage (NAS) device except the Time Capsule—Time Machine won’t recognize it.

Is this still true with Snow Leapord? Specifically I'm considering this drive:
http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-Networ...5JM2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288379723&sr=8-1

 

[skorpien]

No, Time Machine will not work with just any NAS.

Although the statement you quoted no longer applies for AirPort Extreme Base Stations, the NAS is required to have AFP for Time Machine to recognize it as a target disk and to back up to it.

I'm not sure if that Iomega drive is capable of having a program installed to enable AFP, but from the product specs page it seems it has only SMB by default.

That said, there is a little Terminal hack to get Time Machine to back up to an SMB NAS, but I'm not sure if it will be very easy to restore a backup from an SMB NAS with a fresh install of Leopard or Snow Leopard. I admittedly haven't done much research on the subject, but if you're wanting peace of mind, go with one that supports TM out of the box or one with the ability to have AFP enabled.

WD makes a NAS that's TM ready out of the box, just as an example.