Snow Leopard Time Machine - Backup to a Network Drive is it possible?

Question

Level 1

8 points

Snow Leopard Time Machine - Backup to a Network Drive is it possible?

I have a MacBook Pro 17" 2.5Ghz, with a 250gb harddrive, running Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I want to do a clean reinstall of Snow Leopard and I want to run a backup first. I don't have any external drives big enough for the job, but I do have network drives that have enough space. Can anyone give me directions on how to set up Time Machine to work with network destination drives? I read an online article that it was possible to do this with Leopard, though I never got it to work. If all else fails, I'll have to buy a new external drive. (Money's tight right now though.) If any of you have recommendations for good fast external drives, I'd appreciate your opinions on that too. (But I really hope I can get the network drives to work.) Thanks!

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.6.1), 2.5Ghz, 4gb RAM, 250gb hd

Posted on Oct 10, 2009 2:59 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 10, 2009 4:46 PM in response to peterv6

Time Machine does not back up to network drives, except Time Capsules or a drive running Leopard or Snow Leopard on another Mac on the same local network. It will often back-up to a USB drive connected to an Airport Extreme, but even that is, technically, unsupported, and may require running a special Terminal command to make it work.

Here's the official word: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1733

You may find some hardware or "hacks" that might make it work, in some cases, to a degree. But use them at your own risk.

First, since this is *unsupported by Apple,* there's nowhere to go when there's trouble.

Second, you're risking a future update preventing it from working, and perhaps rendering your backups useless.

Reply