External harddrives that work with timemachine?

James J

James J

James J

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Basically although I like the idea of the time capsules, I don't like the price tag at all as its very steep. My external network HDD doesn't work with time machine, even when using the terminal code to search for none apple hdd's, and due to that, no backup is currently in place.

So is there any real alternative to a timecapsule or do I need to spend £230 for the priveledge of making sure my work is permanently backed up?
 
You have to format it to Extended Journaled. AFAIK you can use any HDD 2.5, 3.5, USB, Firewire etc etc

I'm using a 1TB Iomega thingy and used a Freecom portable 400GB drive previously.
 
Arse as my bufallow network harddrive only supports NTFS with no way of changing it (just checked on it and theres just a NTFS option which is greyed out with no other formats available lol)

Shall experiment over the weekend or I'll just end up buying something new lol.
 
I've used a 1TB western digital usb . You don't have to use all the drive.

Can the mac boot from a USB time machine drive or does it have to be a Firewire drive?
 
I'm using a samsung F3 1TB through a freecom dock as my time machine. it works great. You don't need to buy the apple version, unless you want the wireless backup feature it offers.
 
James J said:
Arse as my bufallow network harddrive only supports NTFS with no way of changing it (just checked on it and theres just a NTFS option which is greyed out with no other formats available lol)

Shall experiment over the weekend or I'll just end up buying something new lol.
Click to expand...

Backing a Time machine up to a NAS is different than just using a USB drive, and I think you may be right in that it has to be Apple approved or whatever. But wait! there is a way around it, finding link...

Can't find it. It described making a timemachine image file and then having timemachine on the mac mount it over the network.

Maybe something like this. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=141960 but no mention of an image so I don't know how it would work on a NTFS file system
 
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icedbullet said:
I'm using a samsung F3 1TB through a freecom dock as my time machine. it works great. You don't need to buy the apple version, unless you want the wireless backup feature it offers.
Click to expand...

Sadly its the wireless part which I really like the sound of as it means I wont have to remember to connect the drive at any time. Just walk into my house, turn the MBP on and job done.
 
A word of warning.

I was time machining to an external drive on another mac via wireless. Lasted about three weeks before it got corrupted and I lost the lot. Gone back to a usb external now.
 
You need to be very careful with running a non-Apple TimeMachine drive as a wireless TimeMachine target. Actually, IMO, I wouldn't use Apple's either.

Why? Well, if you use a normal USB or firewire drive this is the file structure you get:

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Now, if you use the TimeCapsule *OR* you use a USB drive on a remote end point (I.e. NAS or the like) the storage method uses sparse images.

You'll have ONE image file. What's more, Sparse images are notorious for corrupting. Personally, I've not had any problems with them (sparse images I mean), but I wouldn't trust my backups to them.

Locally attached - TimeMachine database goes wrong, you can access the file system directly. Goes wrong on TimeCapsule or NAS - and you can't mount the Sparse Image - bang goes your backups.

It's a risk that's just not worth it for me.
 
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MagicBoy said:
A word of warning.

I was time machining to an external drive on another mac via wireless. Lasted about three weeks before it got corrupted and I lost the lot. Gone back to a usb external now.
Click to expand...

Er, should have ready the whole thread. ^^^ This :D
 
Definately seems that I need to re-assess the whole thing doesn't it lol. So whats the safest way of backup up my MBP files without having spiraling costs?
 
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