Ask TUAW Video Edition: Time Machine over a network

ask tuaw video This week, Jude writes in and asks about using a home theater Mac mini as a Time Machine location for his MacBook Pro. We show him how to do this with some tweaking to his MacBook Pro.

In the video, we used this code to put into Terminal.app:

   sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Remember, you can leave us questions in the comments! The video is on the next page.

Update: The terminal command is if you are using machines that are pre-10.5.6. If you have machines that are 10.5.6 or later you can just connect via Apple File Share and not need the terminal command. If you are trying to backup to a device that isn't running Mac OS X (such as a NAS) then you will need the terminal command.

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Ask TUAW

This week, Jude writes in and asks about using a home theater Mac mini as a Time Machine location for his MacBook Pro. We show him how to...

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Jesse Fowler

Dear Ask Tuaw,

I have a 27" iMac mounted to my wall on an articulating arm. It is the media center in our house. The iMac speakers are not cutting it for watching movies. I've been using them for almost a year, but it's time to fix this problem. Can you direct me to some good speakers in two price ranges--cheap and not cheap?

Thanks,
Jesse

February 27 2011 at 7:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris

Hi,

I was using bootcamp recently, and I set up a VLC playlist to listen to all of the music in my itunes media/music folder on my OS X partition. This was all working fine, but i then noticed that some songs that I had deleted from my itunes library were being played. This meant that they hadn't been moved to trash.

Back in OS X, I checked my iTunes library, and the media folder. The media folder has ~500MB of tracks that arent in my library, and therefore unwanted. How can I find out which tracks haven't been trashed, and deleting them, without messing around with the data in my library - the play count, ratings, etc.

Thanks,

Chris

February 23 2011 at 8:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jason

It gets difficult to restore from an unsupported remote drive.

February 22 2011 at 7:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

chris stumpf

I am using a drive attached to my Mac mini as a TimeMachine location on my network and didn't have to do any of the terminal stuff you show here. I just shared the drive like you described and time machine was able to see it on my MacBook Pro.

February 22 2011 at 12:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to chris stumpf's comment

sodajerk

Agreed. I've been using a Drobo 4-Bay drive connected to my MacMini via FW800 as a Time Machine drive, backing-up the four laptops plus the MacMini (media server) in my household. Works flawlessly in both wired and wireless configurations.

February 22 2011 at 1:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Uh, why do anything unsupported? The simple answer to the original question is; YES you can.

Format external drive on the mini (use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) which is the default)

Enable file sharing on the mac mini (it'll use AFP but you can double check in the options).

On the macbook pro open finder go to the mac mini, connect with mac mini username and password, double click on the drive to mount it. Time machine will recognise this mounted drive.

[Optionally: After the first backup has started, you'll notice it'll take a while over wifi. You can speed this up: Cancel it. Unmount the drive from the mini, attach it to the macbook pro and tell time machine to use it to complete the first backup. IMPORTANT: You don't do this first because the remote backup uses a disk image, which needs to be set up. After that first backup is completed (if you take this optional step), unmount the usb drive, re-attach it to the mini, remount that drive on the macbook pro and tell time machine to use that remote drive again.]

February 22 2011 at 12:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to DG's comment

Justin Esgar

After double checking with some other sources...this only works if both machines are running 10.5.6 or later. I will update the post.

February 22 2011 at 12:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

DG:

Thanks for your mini tutorial. This worked more efficiently than anything I could find in Apple discussions or anywhere else on the Internet.

Regards.

March 27 2011 at 5:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ars_workerbee

So... after you enabled the unsupported backups, did you try and actually restore from one?

Protip: they're disabled for a reason.

February 22 2011 at 12:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to ars_workerbee's comment

Justin Esgar

Yes I have been able to restore from one.
And yes they are disabled for a reason -but sometimes in offices it's easier to enable them and have systems backup to a NAS.

February 22 2011 at 12:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply