Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

sirozha wrote:
How would I go about restoring files from a Time Machine backup stored on the ReadyNAS to a Mac different than the one from which the backup was made. For example, if my Mac has died and Apple replaced it with a new machine. How would I get the new Mac to see the old Mac's backup on the ReadyNAS?

OK, let me answer my own question, then. I ended up needing to restore from a Time Machine backup after I had my Macbook sent to an Apple repair depot by the local Apple store, and the Mac came back with the hard drive wiped out. So, I booted up with the installation Mac OS X DVD and chose to restore from a Time Machine backup. When I logged in as ReadyNAS (and the password created for Time Machine in my ReadyNAS), I was able to see every Time Machine sparsebundle that existed on my ReadyNAS. I could have chosen any sparsebundle regardless of my MAC address. In fact, I was connected to the network via Ethernet, whereas Time Machine backups were made over Wi-Fi; therefore, the MAC address of the adapter connected to the network when I was restoring was different than the MAC address that figured in the name of the sparsebundle that contained my Macbook's backups.

It took between three and four hours (according to the Time Machine estimate) to restore my Macbook (about 40 GB of stuff). I went to bed, so I don't know how long it was exactly, but I know for sure it was less than six hours. Once the Time Machine restore finished, and I restarted the Macbook, and everything came up like a charm! So, at this point I am happy to report that it was well worth my time to set up Time Machine on my and my wife's laptops. My Time Machine backups were being made based on the ReadyNAS native Time Machine support, not on the older hack. I did not have to issue any commands to get the Macbook to see the sparsebundles, but I did have to reformat the Mac OS X partition that Apple installed when they wiped out my hard drive. So, I loaded from the Mac OS X DVD twice: The first time to erase the HD, and the second time to restore from the Time Machine backup sparsebundle onto the blank HD. When reformatting the HD, I chose HFS+ non case-sensitive. I was never able to figure out if it was possible to run the Time Machine restore over Wi-Fi, but I had no problem doing it over Ethernet. It was probably good that I did not do this over Wi-Fi anyway because it would have taken way too long if it were possible.