Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

David,

Thanks for your post. However, option-clicking on the time Machine icon allows you to choose a different disk, but nothing is listed in that dialog for me. The current Time Machine destination that I set up on the ReadyNAS already has two different backups: my wife's and mine - they seem to be on the same disk, though. I cannot see her backup from my Mac. So, if I were to replace my Mac, how would I be able to access my current Time Machine backup from the new Mac? Do you think that the Migration Assistant will be able to see those backups on 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.

I have an idotic question. following the link's instructions, I copied the hdiutil command with magpie blah blah blah reference. I pressed enter and the image has been created. Despite deleting the incorrect sparsebundle file from Finder, I tried to re-create the sparsebundle file using the correct references but terminal is saying that "Only one image can be created at a time". Please suggest what I can do to fix this?

Is it possible to access a time machine backup on a ReadyNas Duo from a Playstation 3 to show photos?

haze wrote:
Is it possible to access a time machine backup on a ReadyNas Duo from a Playstation 3 to show photos?

Don't believe the PS3 would be able to read the sparsebundle. Better to set up sharing of your photos on your NAS in such a way that they can be easily read by the PS3.

mdgm wrote:
haze wrote: Is it possible to access a time machine backup on a ReadyNas Duo from a Playstation 3 to show photos? Don't believe the PS3 would be able to read the sparsebundle. Better to set up sharing of your photos on your NAS in such a way that they can be easily read by the PS3.

Yes, indeed.
Just wondered because it would be great to have a automagic backup with TM and be able to reach the files in my PS3...

Greetings fellow ReadyNAS Users...

I have a brand new 2110 and want to use TM to back up my iMac. Followed the instructions, and it worked like a charm.

Then, I changed the connection from my iMac to the router from ethernet to (very fast) wlan. Since then, the data transfer speed of TM, and TM only, has reduced to bytes per second (has been running for about 15 minutes now and transferred 46KB (!). Other file transfers to the ReadyNAS via finder etc work just fine.

I want to use the backup facility without the ethernet cable, but at this speed it is clearly not an option. Something is wrong. Any suggestions as to what that might be?

Any suggestions?

btaroli wrote:

odysseus wrote: ... it creates a journaled HFS+ *case sensitive* file system. What are the implications of using a .sparebundle file with a presumably case-insensitive file system instead of a case-sensitive one for Time Machine? ... There may be implications. What this depends upon is how the filesystem of your Mac(s) is configured. If you, for example, back up a Mac with a case-sensitive filesystem to a TimeMachine volume that is case-insensitive, then this can result in situations where files with different names (file vs fiLe) overwrite each other. So, from a TimeMachine perspective it is always safer to use case-sensitive filesystems. There have been other threads discussing this issue. Do some searching. :) In my case, I always use case-sensitive filesystems. It just avoids any confusion or sloppy behavior.

Hey folks,

I find the whole "case-sensitive (journaled) filesystem on a sparsebundle" aspect quite intriguing as well. Mostly because (as has been noted since 2 years ago): that's what Time Machine seems to *favor*... initially on sparseimages, and then later with sparsebundles. And —on the surface anyway— that fact seems to go against the grain of *non*case-sensitive filesystems, to which the OS (and 3rd-party apps) have defaulted for almost a decade now. Back in that "OLD" thread, i found posts by schalliol and m_stoll (as well as btaroli, toad and pjc) most interesting. [i had intended to use links there, but url tags seem to be prohibited?]

Anyway, i'm not posting to get any deeper into that puzzle... i just wanted to share a little tidbit i discovered. The man page for hdiutil has what i assume are typos in the -fs section. (i'm still on 10.5.8, but the online man page for Snowy shows the same error):

 -fs filesystem
where filesystem is one of HFS+, HFS+J (JHFS+), HFSX, JHFS+X, MS-DOS, or UDF. 

It really bugged me that all of the blogs, articles, hints, threads, etc., all had to spell out "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" in qoutes on the command line (or script). Where (or what) is the corresponding acronym? [must be one since Time Machine/Capsule always use them.]

I tried that "JHFS+X" there, but it failed with:

Finishing…
DIHLDiskImageCreate() returned 22
hdiutil: create: returning 22
hdiutil: create failed - Invalid argument

So did HFSX+J and JHFSX. But i hit gold on my 4th attempt though...

/usr/bin/hdiutil create -verbose -size 96g -type SPARSEBUNDLE \
-fs HFSXJ -volname 'Backup of iMacG5' ./iMacG5_0011243d60c9

I've checked that with hdiutil imageinfo and diskutil info (and verifyVolume) and Finder. It's right: HFSXJ is indeed the proper shortname for "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+", and apparently it's fully undocumented (or mis-documented perhaps).

I thought maybe at least btaroli might get a kick out of that. [and it may turn out that Apple always uses case-sensitive sparsebundles with Time Machine/Capsule for special reasons as yet unknown to us... because it sure seems odd otherwise.]

-HI-

I have a new ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus with RADiator 4.2.15. I enabled Time Machine support in Frontview and was able to select it as a backup target in TM on OS X 10.6.5. But when the backup starts, it spins for several minutes "Making backup disk available...". It correctly shows the capacity of the TM space I have allocated (50GB). But after a few minutes it fails with "The file server NAS2 [the name of the NAS] has closed down." This is the same error I got with the NV+ and I have searched this forum for help with this, to no avail. No sparsebundle is created in the share (which I mounted from Finder.) If I try it again, I will sometimes see "Unable to get status of backup disk".

The documentation for this feature suggests it should "just work". How can I fix this?

Hi there. I've got a ReadyNAS Duo with Radiator 4.1.7. I've just replaced both the hard disk with Seagate as the Western digitals failed due to high load cycle count. I’ve rebooted, Raid 0 the volumes and restored my backup files. Problem is I had a to do a few reboots before I got all the setting right for Raid 0 and moving from my previous C and D volume to just a C volume.

Thing is, during one reboot I set up Time Machine in Frontview but forgot to do it this last time, when I set up a back up job to restore the sparsebundle. Now I can’t seem to get the Time Machine function to stay set - it always reverts to the default setting password and 0MBs of space, although Frontview indicates the setting change has been applied.

I've even gone through and deleted and created a new .timemachine folder on the C drive folder of the Duo but it still doesn't want to save the setting and hence the Time Machine volume

Any suggestions?