With the latest 10.5.2 update to Leopard, Apple have fixed the issues with connecting to an SMB server over a wireless network. However, Time Machine will still not back up to a network drive. Looks like we’ll have to wait for Time Capsule for proper network backups.
Posts Tagged ‘time machine’
SMB Fixed in 10.5.2
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008The Most Interesting Announcement at MacWorld?
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008Steve Jobs has made his keynote speech at MacWorld and the blogosphere is alive with the news of the MacBook Air, updated iTunes and iPhone software, but personally I think the most interesting announcement was that of the new Time Capsule.
Time Capsule is an Airport wireless router with an inbuilt 500GB or 1TB hard-drive. It’s available for pre-order now, but won’t be shipping until February. Costing €299 for the 500GB model and €499 for the 1TB version, considering the specs, it does represent decent value for money.
While integrating a wireless router and a server grade hard-disk may be a stroke of genius, the fact that the Time Capsule is specifically designed to work with Leopard’s Time Machine is what makes it so intriguing. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that I, along with a large proportion of Leopard users, have been experiencing problems using Time Machine to backup to a NAS drive. This announcement confirms that using Time Machine to backup to a a network drive will be possible.
With Mac OS 10.5.1 this particular set-up won’t work, so either the 10.5.2 Leopard update that’s on the way will enable this functionality, or Time Capsule will be provided with the requisite software. Although new versions of iTunes and Quicktime are available for download now, there’s no sign of the 10.5.2 update yet. Given that Time Capsule won’t be shipping until February, we may be waiting a while yet for Apple to make this release available.
Forcing Time Machine to Use a Network Drive
Friday, November 23rd, 2007Update 18 December 2007:
I’ve discovered a better way to force Finder to browse the contents of a network drive. You can read more here.
By default, Time Machine will not allow you to back up to a network drive – even if you can get Leopard to recognise the drive.
However, there is a command that will allow you to use a network drive with Time Machine. Before running this command, mount your network drive. Open Terminal, and at the prompt type:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Open Time Machine Preferences, and you should now be able to view your network drive mounts.