Multiple Time Machine backups on a single Buffalo Quad

[pastylegs]

   

I am thinking of purchasing a buffalo 2tb quad NAS for a client who needs a backup solution for his small practice.

 

He has ~5 Macs which we want all to backup to the Quad incrementally using time machine. I'm finding it difficult to find out whether or not backing up multiple *time machine* enabled macs is possible. Can anyone confirm that this can be done?

[Kameran]

Only one at a time.

[pastylegs]

   

is this the case with all buffalo NAS's? This is a bit of a dealbreaker for me

[paxpopuli]

   

It's possible, and i'm using it at this time !

 

I could have tried o make a new sparsebundle with the linkstation web admin, but I don't really know what it does, so i've done it myself.

Explanations can be found here :

http://appleclinic.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/time-machine-on-nas/">http://appleclinic.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/time-machine-on-nas/ 

 

The trick is just to create a named sparsebundle file and copy it into the backup directory on your NAS.

 

One more thing, if you want to use Airport (yes, I know, but I don't want to plug my laptop), use the ETHERNET Card MAC Adress, not the Airport's one.

I've tried it on a macbook connected via Airport to my local network and found that TimeMachine was trying to create a sparsebundle by itself without using the one I created, and failed on connecting to the time machine volume. This file was named with the Mac Adresse corresponding to the Ethernet Card, and not the Airport One... That's strange... 

So i simply renamed my sparsebundle file with the same name as the one timeMachine was trying to use, and it works...