Those folks who are using Time Machine know how great it is for backing up everything quickly and easily. However, what if you can’t always have an external drive hooked up to your machine. Or, maybe you want to back up more then one machine to that drive. Time Machine backups live quite nicely next to other backups or files.

Out of the box Time Machine does not allow you to back up to a network drive. It just doesn’t show up when you go to choose a backup disk. You have to run a command in Terminal first to enable this function. On the machine you want to be able to access a network drive open Terminal and enter this command to enable networked drives in Time Machine:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

How to make your local external hard drive accesible to Time Machine

Now that you have your remote machine able to use Time Machine on a network drive how to you network the drive you want to use?

It’s important to know that Time Machine will only work on HFS+, also known as Mac OS Extended, drives. If your drive is formatted FAT or NTFS for use on Windows it won’t work. Also, Time Machine over the network only works for share points shared out using the version of AFP found in Leopard. You can’t share it off an older Tiger machine.

Create a share point for Time Machine

  • Open System Preferences and click on “Accounts”
  • Click on the lock at the bottom left of the window and enter your admin name and password.
  • Now click on the “+” at the bottom right of the window to create a new account. From the drop down at the top of the window select “Sharing only”. This will create an account that can only be used to access share points from the network. If you have that user already in your address book you can select them from that list. Otherwise just enter the desired name and password.

Now that you have an account for your network user to access the Time Machine share point you have to create it.

  • Create a folder on your local external drive to share out for backups
  • On a Leopard machine open System Preferences > Sharing. Then place a check next to File Sharing if it isn’t already checked.
  • Click on the “+” under “Shared Folders” and select the folder on your external drive.
  • The folder now shows up under “Shared Folders”. Select it and then click the “+” sign under “Users”. Add the “Sharing only” you created and make sure they have Read and Write permissions. You can delete the other users from that list so that only the remote user can access that share point if you prefer.

Configure Time Machine on the client

Now, go back to the remote machine and connect to that share point.

In the Finder select Go > Connect to Server and either put in the IP address of the machine you want to back up to or browse for it.

Once you’ve connected to the share go to System Preferences > Time Machine and click on the “Choose Backup Drive”. You should see your network share in the list. Select it and you’ll be asked for the login credentials again. Make sure you check the “Save in Keychain” option so you aren’t asked repeatedly.

Now configure Time Machine the way you want and you’re set!

Every time Time Machine runs it will mount that share point, back up to it and then unmount it. One of the security benefits from using Time Machine like this is that all of the files are saved in an encrypted disk image so they are more secure then a regular time machine backup.

:: Feb.27.2009 :: Management, System :: 7 Comments »