Time Machine backups are a nightmare on NAS, however this is what I did with a NetGear Stora:
In Finder -> Go -> Connect to server.
enter your NAS address including username and password, like this:
smb://username:password@192.168.0.1/ *or whatever your volume's IP is.*
then select to mount the volume of where you want to keep your sparse bundle image.
Now open the disk utility, and create a sparse bundle with the following settings:
- Name: Backup (or whatever)
- Size: 300GB (or whatever)
- Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- Encryption: none
- Partition: No partition map
- Image Format: sparse bundle disk image
- Save As: yourcomputername.sparsebundle (e.g.: Toms-MacBook-Pro.sparsebundle)
After you've done all that copy it to your backup volume and open Time Machine's preferences
Click on Select Disk and choose the volume that you want to backup to.
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A couple of suggestions:
Follow this screencast that i made to auto mount your volume on start up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vhcmEd0Y8o
Do not upgrade to OSX Lion when it comes out, since at least for my Netgear's Stora the Time Machine did not work and i ended up buying a Time Capsule, check first on the ReadyNAS forums.
It's unsupported by Apple and Snow Leopard didn't exist when that tutorial was written. Why do you expect it to still work after a major upgrade of the OS? – Daniel Beck – 2011-06-24T10:11:34.357