Time Machine with Network drive

I just upgraded my mac book pro from tiger to leopard and was very excited about TimeMachine (only to find out moments later that it only works with attached drives – USB or firewire). After struggling a little and googling, I found following solution. Although, it worked for me, its not a documented way, so be careful and try it at your own risk.0. Make sure that timeMachine is set to off

1. Mount your network drive (check step-5 if you are getting error in mounting)

2. Change the preferences by running following command (open iTerm or other shell)
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

3. Now activate the time machine

4. You will now be able to select your network drive.

5. In case, you loose your network mount, you will need to reset the preference set in step-2, by running following command (open iTerm or other shell)
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 0

For more detail, read this

38 Responses to “Time Machine with Network drive”

what a tip…. thanks!

colorsanto said this on January 3, 2008 at 3:49 pm | Reply
Thanks this helped me alot!

Homer said this on January 10, 2008 at 12:06 am | Reply
does this really work! if it does you guys are my heroes!

ae said this on January 22, 2008 at 4:10 pm | Reply
Great tip. Thanks

Jared said this on February 12, 2008 at 11:33 pm | Reply
Very nice! you’ve been stumbled. Awesome Thanks for posting this info. I bought a 1TB network-only drive from Western Digital that I can’t use. I’ll try this and see if it does the trick. I wonder though, what will happen if I want to use this with my Macbook Pro? I will “loose” the mount point every time I unplug from my network, right? like when I leave home, and come back later. Will I then have to redo this?

oscar said this on February 15, 2008 at 8:08 pm | Reply
[…] found this blog post detailing how to set up Time Machine to work with network drives. Very helpful, […]

Il Riso Fa Buon Sangue » Blog Archive » Time Machine with a network drive said this on February 29, 2008 at 9:40 am | Reply
Thank you very much!

Stephen said this on March 15, 2008 at 4:05 pm | Reply
[…] https://smangal.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/time-machine-with-network-drive/ […]

How-To: Time Machine with a Network Drive (Share) | Ev's Tech Thought of the Day said this on March 27, 2008 at 3:38 am | Reply
What does this mean “running the following command”? How do I do this?

SAS said this on March 27, 2008 at 6:10 pm | Reply
Hi SaS,

You do that on command line (any preferred shell, e.g. iTerm or Console). I modified the post also.

-Shailesh

sxm20 said this on March 27, 2008 at 6:44 pm | Reply
gotta keep in mind that Mac OSX will not write to an NTFS formatted disk! other than that, great tip! thanks!

chris loughlin said this on May 6, 2008 at 8:47 pm | Reply
Excellent, saved me a bundle, was getting ready to buy TimeCapsule to replace my MiniMax drive – connected to my AirportExtreme. Works like a charm – thanks!

Kevin Williams said this on May 28, 2008 at 10:23 am | Reply
Thanks for the tip. Will try when I get my network server back up and running again.

lucid said this on May 30, 2008 at 10:39 am | Reply
Thanks for this great tip!

Now does anyone have a method to get Time Machine writing to NTFS disks?

derek said this on June 27, 2008 at 11:48 pm | Reply
Wow-great tip!!!!!!!

Ari said this on July 1, 2008 at 6:42 am | Reply
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thomas Tomchak said this on July 6, 2008 at 3:43 pm | Reply
im sorry im missing something !, i did the above command the x11 console on my macbook air, and when i entered this line all i got back was the following ;

<.apple.systempreferences tmshowunsupportednetworkolumes 0
unknown001f5bd4d91f:~ subhaspatel$

im trying to configure my backup to a shared network drive, which was formatted on winxp. will this workl ?

regards

subhas said this on July 13, 2008 at 5:02 am | Reply
Important hint! But it wouldn’t work with my existing backups.
This needed one more trick. Found the solution here:
http://rolf.haynberg.de/?p=83

Regards

AlienX said this on August 2, 2008 at 12:33 am | Reply
[…] Basic Method (essentially a quick terminal tweak to show “unsupported” drives) […]

Packets of Consciousness » Mac Leopard Time Machine to Wireless PC Network Share said this on August 17, 2008 at 6:24 pm | Reply
Thanks so much for this…does anyone know if there is a way to use Time Machine with a Mybook World Edition? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t use FAT or NTFS…

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

fadingcaptain said this on September 14, 2008 at 4:53 pm | Reply
^^You have to make a spare bundle in order for it to work…

Aakash said this on October 26, 2008 at 4:13 pm | Reply
[…] Time Machine with Network drive […]

Nils Preusker » Blog Archive » Back me up! said this on January 17, 2009 at 5:59 pm | Reply
[…] https://smangal.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/time-machine-with-network-drive/ […]

Brain Dump » Time Machine with Network Drives said this on February 14, 2009 at 4:37 am | Reply
good tip, thanks a lot!

sc0tti said this on March 4, 2009 at 8:52 am | Reply
it is great that time machine will now reconize my drive but when i try to back it up it wont there is aways the error the backup disk image could not be created what is happining

kwing said this on March 19, 2009 at 2:52 pm | Reply
You beauty. I have just bought a belkin n+ modem router with usb drive connection and this worked a treat. Many thanks to you.

JimJam said this on April 17, 2009 at 2:15 pm | Reply
Brilliant!! My Lacie Network Space is now working with time machine – 30mins tryng myself, 1 minute on google and 30s using your help. Thanks.

Gareth said this on May 6, 2009 at 3:03 am | Reply
- Correction….I can see my drive but after ten minutes of trying Time Machine gives up. NOt HFS+ and so no go 😦
  
  Gareth said this on May 22, 2009 at 7:23 pm | Reply
  - Try reformatting and partitioning the drive. Partitioning drives with a single partition sometimes seems to work. Dunno why. Read about it somewhere. It certainly worked with my drive.
    
    Mike said this on August 9, 2009 at 1:22 am
No go for me either, the command lets TM see the share, but since it’s an EXT2 FS on a DLINK NAS (DNS-323) it starts, tries, then fails.

Jeff said this on June 6, 2009 at 1:32 pm | Reply
Hello,

Thanks for the tip. I have come a long way. I have a Macbook Pro. I can connect the networkdrive (a Lacie Network Space) to Time Machine, but each time I get an error from Time Machine. “Backup cannot be made.” Should the network drive be formated? Who van assist?

Han Titulaer said this on June 29, 2009 at 6:52 am | Reply
Thanks for tip! You just save me 🙂

madviper said this on August 18, 2009 at 4:41 am | Reply
Wont work with Leppard.. IDK what to do.. It just fails… Any way to partition the drive to the correct format?

Vincent said this on September 28, 2009 at 7:04 pm | Reply
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Time Machine on a network drive « Burgundywall.com said this on December 6, 2009 at 1:35 pm | Reply
[…] Completely copied from https://smangal.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/time-machine-with-network-drive/ […]

Time Machine with Network drive said this on December 12, 2009 at 2:37 am | Reply
Seems to be working with my Lacie Networkspace 500GB. Thanks!

Nick Moylan said this on December 14, 2009 at 11:04 am | Reply
Thanks for the tip! Works like a charm 🙂

Use it with this advice if you aren’t sure how to map a network drive on OSX to reconnect on startup:
http://www.technipages.com/how-to-map-network-drive-in-mac-os-x.html

Ganesh said this on May 5, 2010 at 5:17 pm | Reply
- Actually THIS is the link on how to map a drive and make it a login item. Good writeup with pictures…
  
  http://www.maciverse.com/mount-a-network-drive-in-os-x-on-startup.html
  
  Ganesh said this on May 5, 2010 at 5:20 pm | Reply