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My situation is the following. I have an external HD (320 GB) and where I've set-up Time Machine backups since about 2 month now. I really love it except for the reason that my external HD is not network-capable. So for doing backups I have to manually attach the ext-HD (via USB) to my MacBook.
So today the idea came to my mind to make these Time Machine backups over the network. Basically I have an "old" Win notebook which I use somehow as a server for some stuff. It is more or less always connected to the network, so I could attach the external HD to that notebook and share it on the internal network. This post describes an approach that enables Time Machine backups for SMB shares.
Now before switching I first wanted to ask for some experiences among you. Did someone already try this out? Does it work well or is it not advisable and I should simply continue with my manual-usb-plugging backups?
Update
I now tried to configure my Time Machine for the backup to the network share. I created the sparse bundle as suggested with the following command:
hdiutil create -library SPUD -megabytes 198000 -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Juri's MacBook Pro_0025004696d8.sparsebundle" "Juri's MacBook Pro_0025004696d8.sparsebundle"
The "0025004696d8" is the mac address of my wireless device on my mac. So I copied the sparsebundle to the network drive. The I've chosen the mounted network drive on time machine and started the backup. For a while it displayed "making backup disk available" and then the error message "The backup disk image '/Volumes/timemachine-1/Juri's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle' could not be created (error 45)".
It seems as if time machine tries to create a new sparsebundle rather than using the one I copied there...Could someone please help me?
Update2
Sorry, now it works. The hostname has to match perfectly, otherwise it won't work. This link helped me a lot (for future reference).
As for the MAC Address: as far as I know, it should be the address of the first network card (like as listed as
en0
in the output ofifconfig
). On many Macs, that's the built-in ethernet card, not the built-in AirPort card. – Arjan – 2010-01-13T21:26:49.537