Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

So, the document off Apple.com (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1177) that explains how to restore from a Time Machine backup housed on Time Capsule has a section on "restoring the entire volume that was erased". Has anyone tried that with the ReadyNAS. Is this something that is possible with the new ReadyNAS firmware, which officially supports Time Machine backups?

sirozha wrote:
So, the document off Apple.com (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1177) that explains how to restore from a Time Machine backup housed on Time Capsule has a section on "restoring the entire volume that was erased". Has anyone tried that with the ReadyNAS. Is this something that is possible with the new ReadyNAS firmware, which officially supports Time Machine backups?

Yes, that's what I did, but you'll note that it requires the Leopard DVD and the OS will be loaded off the DVD and not the Time Machine backup.

Where are the time machines files located on the NAS. With all the computers we have they have consumed almost 1T on the NAS. We are going to remove some computers on this service but we believe there will still a large backup files left behind.. How do we remove these and reclaim the space?

thanks

Badbruno

bollar wrote:

sirozha wrote: So, the document off Apple.com (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1177) that explains how to restore from a Time Machine backup housed on Time Capsule has a section on "restoring the entire volume that was erased". Has anyone tried that with the ReadyNAS. Is this something that is possible with the new ReadyNAS firmware, which officially supports Time Machine backups? Yes, that's what I did, but you'll note that it requires the Leopard DVD and the OS will be loaded off the DVD and not the Time Machine backup.

Forgive my ignorance, but from the description in that document, it appears that you have to boot up with the installation DVD, but you don't really install the OS from the installation DVD. All you do is point to the location of the Time Machine backup, and if you are accessing Time Capsule over Wi-Fi, you need to configure your wireless network SSID and password for Time Capsule to become accessible. The instructions don't say anything about having first to install the OS when restoring the entire volume that was erased. So, I was under the impression that the Time Machine backup already contains the OS, and this type of restore can pull the entire backup from Time Capsule (aka ReadyNAS) and thus copy the OS, the applications along with their settings, and all user files from Time Capsule to the newly installed hard drive.

badbruno wrote:
Where are the time machines files located on the NAS. With all the computers we have they have consumed almost 1T on the NAS. We are going to remove some computers on this service but we believe there will still a large backup files left behind.. How do we remove these and reclaim the space?

You could log in to the NAS as user ReadyNAS and the Time Machine backups will be visible to you. They will take a very long time to delete that way and Netgear needs to come up with another solution for this.

If you have shell access, they are stored in /c/.timemachine and you can delete the files using the normal *ix commands.

sirozha wrote:

Forgive my ignorance, but from the description in that document, it appears that you have to boot up with the installation DVD, but you don't really install the OS from the installation DVD. All you do is point to the location of the Time Machine backup, and if you are accessing Time Capsule over Wi-Fi, you need to configure your wireless network SSID and password for Time Capsule to become accessible. The instructions don't say anything about having first to install the OS when restoring the entire volume that was erased. So, I was under the impression that the Time Machine backup already contains the OS, and this type of restore can pull the entire backup from Time Capsule (aka ReadyNAS) and thus copy the OS, the applications along with their settings, and all user files from Time Capsule to the newly installed hard drive.

Perhaps so, as you note. In any event, a TM backup made to the ReadyNAS is exactly the same as that made to a Time Capsule, so the restore options will be identical.

Bollar - you said:

You could log in to the NAS as user ReadyNAS and the Time Machine backups will be visible to you.

This suggests there is no means to simultaneously access the TM backup share while staying connected to the NAS as a standard user. This is certainly what I have found - do you see the same?

sphardy wrote:
Bollar - you said: You could log in to the NAS as user ReadyNAS and the Time Machine backups will be visible to you. This suggests there is no means to simultaneously access the TM backup share while staying connected to the NAS as a standard user. This is certainly what I have found - do you see the same?

Yes, that's the case that a user can't have access to the TM share and user shares simultaneously, however, Time Machine can be connected to the TM share while the user can be connected to his shares at the same time.

OK - that's what I'm seeing too. Unfortunately a limitation vs the manual approach to enabling timemachine support.

Thanks

sphardy wrote:
OK - that's what I'm seeing too. Unfortunately a limitation vs the manual approach to enabling timemachine support.

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