Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

So I faithfully followed the step by step instructions but...every time I get the same error:

Time Machine Error

The time machine image could not be created.


Help! Any thoughts?

des wrote:
So I faithfully followed the step by step instructions but...every time I get the same error: Time Machine Error The time machine image could not be created. Help! Any thoughts?

Are you creating the image on your Mac or on the network volume?

On my mac and then rsyncing it over to the NAS volume.

its werid, my backup aint working at all anymore ;-(

- created new share on nas
- followed guide step - by step
- backup starts
- goes as far as 12.77 gb
- does not go any further.

weird.

anyway, I am using Super Duper now with no issues.

would liek to use Time machine as well tho.....

Time Machine on the Readynas is sweet!

Did a totally new clean install of Leopard--erased the disk--and it was so simple to restore files. Restoring apps is a little more difficult, since you have to restore both the app file as well as any other related--preference files etc. For most apps, I just reinstalled them, then just restored the settings file.

Two issues I came across: After I installed leopard, I tried connecting to my TM share on the ReadyNAS, but TM couldn't see or connect to the sparsebundle. Then it occurred to me that my new computer name was not the same as I had previously--now it was "Yachtmans Power PC G5". I changed it back to my previous name "Power PC G5" and woila!--TM connected to the bundle and my old files were visible.

The other issue was that my previous leopard install was just "HFS+ Journaled". So when I went to turn on TM to start adding to the backups, I got an error saying that my machine was "Case sensitive" while my backup bundle was not. Okay. So after getting all of the files I needed, I started over and created a new TM bundle that is now "HFS+ Journaled Case-sensitive".

Time Machine is in my opinion, leagues above any other backup solution in simplicity and features.... Go Apple!

hey,

I've followed the step by step on Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS religiously... everything went smoothly untill the actual backup... time machine schedules the backup for the next two minutes and when it gets there starts "preparing..." but this only lasts for less than five seconds... after that, time machine just stops without giving any error message, without starting the backup and scheduling a new backup for approximately one hour from then.

Any ideas? Thanks.

btaroli wrote:

sphardy wrote: teeruku, By default TM will not show network volumes for selection when specifying the backup volume - this setting enables that feature so that TM can back up to a NAS device rather than just an external drive / Time Capsule etc It is disabled by default as Apple do not support this functionality ///P This is no longer true with later 10.5.x releases. I haven't had this option set in my installation since 10.5.3, and i'm on 10.5.4 now. TM is working like a champ.

I am not so sure about this ? I now don't have this set and my backup volume on my NAS doesn't show up in the time machine preference panel

des wrote:
So I faithfully followed the step by step instructions but...every time I get the same error: Time Machine Error The time machine image could not be created. Help! Any thoughts?

Maybe this helps, as it sounds like the problem I was running into. :|

I thought I followed the instructions to the letter, then after several hours of frustration, I worked out that I wasn't naming the sparse bundle with the computer name, ie the one used to identify it over the network. One way you can find the name to identify the Mac, is in settings>network>highlight ethernet>click on advanced>WINS (its the netbios name).

So in the instructions where it says you can name the 'volume' anything it's not actually referring to the naming of the sparsebundle itself. The naming of the sparsebundle is the product of 'networkcomputername'+'ethernetmac address'.sparsebundle). After I made this change to the naming of the sparsebundle, it all works very well.

yoh-dah wrote:
The step-by-step how-to can be found here.

I believe that's going to default to 1 meg span sizes, or 1024 files per gig of backup.

Try adding this:
-imagekey sparse-band-size=131072

That makes it allocate 64 meg blocks (131072 * 512 byte sectors = 64m), for 16 files per gig of backup. This saves space and helps performance.

Edit: btw, the Time Capsule defaults to 8 meg blocks. I suspect it would use larger if the thing weren't so tight on RAM.

Just an FYI in case anyone runs into the same problem I did. TM backups were working for a few months then started failing.

Turns out the sparesbundle I created was too small. Even though my hard drive is 185 GB, it was "full" even though my hard drive wasn't (it was about 179 GB). I made a sparesbundle that was 200GB in size, still wasn't good enough so I went up to 220 GB and now it works like a charm.

So if you get failures ... try making your sparesbunldle bigger.