Things You Will Need (and need to do):- A Buffalo LinkStation that natively supports Time Machine (CL/CH series)
- A Mac (or two) with OSX 10.5.6 or higher
- A lot of time for your computer to sit.
- SHUT TIME MACHINE OFF ON YOUR MAC
- Delete the share you created on your NAS 5 hours ago that you haven’t gotten to successfully work yet.
- Go into the Time Machine tab in the NAS and disable it.
Creating your image file
Because you aren’t using an actual Apple Time Capsule you will have to do a couple of things yourself. Not hard..
You need to create a disk image to backup to. Weird, I know, but it’s how Time Machine works.
Open Terminal on the Mac (go to Spotlight and type Terminal… there it is). Type the following line
ifconfig | grep etherYou will get 1-2 lines, the first or only line is the MAC address ofthe WIRED Ethernet port. Regardless of which you will use to backup(wired or wireless) Time Machine needs the MAC of the WIRED port.
Copy that to TextEdit or something.. or write it down.
Now, go into System Preferences > Sharing
In the box at the top you see your computer’s name, below it is thename you will need to use for TM (Time Machine). If it’s complicatedand stupid, click EDIT and change it to something easier. I used“MikesMBP” it will automatically add .local on it, that’s fine, let itbe.
Now.. here’s where we create the image (sparsebundle).
Open your new friend Terminal again. Type the following…
hdiutil create -size [SIZE IN GIGS]g -fs HFS+J -volname"[VOLUME NAME]" /[COMPUTER NAME]_[MAC ADDRESS WITH NOCOLONS].sparsebundleWTF?!
Ok…
- SIZE IN GIGS : You can set a max size for the bundle, I used 200 that seemed like plenty.
- VOLUME NAME : Anything you want, I used “Mikes Backup” very creative, I know.
- COMPUTER NAME: This is the name from above (the one below the box that you may haveedited) don’t add the .local so just “MikesMBP” in my case
- MAC ADDRESS WITH NO COLONS :Ok, that crazy crap you copied to Text Edit, it’s that… when you removethe colons it should look like 00b443e684f2 or something… so.. the lineabove, when you are done should look something like this…
hdiutil create -size 200g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of Mikes Computer" /MikesMBP_0019e5582bd1.sparsebundleAfter you hit enter it will sit for a minute then say that the file is created … TADA!
Setting up the NAS
Very little actually needs to be done on the NAS, thankfully.
First, make sure that your NAS will work with the Mac. Click on SharedFolders > Service Setup and make sure that Apple Talk is on.
Open the NAS admin, go to Shared Folders. Create a new folder called“TimeMachine” or something , it doesn’t matter. Make sure that theshare is accessibly via Apple Talk. Save your changes… da da da.
Go back to your Mac. In Finder go to Network, browse to the NAS, youwill see the folder you just created. Open it and copy in thesparsebundle file you created above.
DELETE THE SPARSEBUNDLE FROM YOUR MAC WHEN IT’S DONE COPYING. ** NOTE ** I have two Macs, to use both in TM, just create asparsebundle unique to each machine and upload them to the folder. Dothis for BOTH machines before moving to the next step.
Back to the NAS web interface…
Click on the Time Machine tab in the NAS. Click the Enable option andselect the folder you created a minute ago. Hit apply .. tada.. donewith the NAS.
Wait about 2-3 minutes before moving on. This may be a good time to get something to drink.
Getting Time Machine Working
Ok… open Time Machine on the Mac, turn it on.. it will ask you where tobackup to, it should find the TM share on the NAS by itself. Once itdoes, just let ‘er rip. It will be “preparing” for a long time, minewere 10-20 minutes (on a wireless connection).
The backups will start, and it’s on like Donkey Kong.
The backups on wireless are slow, but after the initial sync they are incremental and shouldn’t take so long.