Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

Never really thought about it. Why would I want my users to have access to the TM share?

A good view times I have wanted to browse a backup for an older version of a file or for something I've "lost". By being able to access the TM backup via Finder it is possible to quickly view & compare multiple versions of files, or perform searches, and then simply drag & drop to another location the data I find/need. Far easier than dealing with the full screen TM interface in my opinion - which looks nice, but is not as flexible. Having to now disconnect from the NAS and reconnect to do this is a bit of a pain.

Second, while not a big deal for my needs, having all the backups on a share with a shared username/password gives all users access to all backups does it not?. Would not seem to be a good idea in a business scenario. Perhaps it would have been better to support an option to allow users to store their TM backups in, for instance, their home folders or limited somehow via permissions so that 1) they can access more conveniently as I describe and 2) users cannot access other peoples backups. (Note: I realise a common share is how Timecapsule typically works)

<Beware - rant mode on>

My 'feeling' is that the Netgear team has solved the basic technical problem of enabling the NAS to be used as a TM storage device without resorting to manual hacks (ie sparsebundle creation), which is to be commended. But there seems to be an opportunity here to provide even better support for TM and Mac users than can be achieved through the likes of TimeCapsule which would be a significant capability the Netgear team could promote and I would certainly like to see.

But to offer that I think how the TM backups are stored and accessed needs to be better thought through - Other examples in addition to what I have already described: why, when the TM service is enabled, do I get a 'timecapsule' icon in Finder that doesn't do anything? (A bug in the beta yet to be fixed?) Why is the TM service advertised over Bonjour as <hostname> such that it will prevent the CIFS service appearing in Finder if also enabled? (some users do use both and may unnecessarily hit issues because of the changes which are not documented). Less significant but further illustrates: Why has the naming convention for advertising the AFP service been arbitrarily changed? Changing naming like this without good justification surely is not good practice and for those who say this won't cause issues: Anyone who upgrades to 4.1.5 but continues to run with the manual TM hack will get failures if then ever disable & re-enable AFP support. Then there is the issue you raise of managing the TM backups - it's incredibly slow to delete a backup.

There needs to be more thought put into the practical usage scenarios to realise full TM support and to not cause existing NAS users potential problems, however remote, rather than just solving the technical issues. But do that, and the ReadyNAS products could be a superior solution for Mac data storage.

<rant off>