Can't use Time Machine with external HDD on a networked Mac?

[NMF]

I have several Macs in my house and am trying to set up the Mac mini as the centralized Time Machine location for all of them. I've assigned the Mini a static IP (from my router) and have disabled DHCP. Everything seems to work fine and I can connect to the shared drive with no issues.

Problem is, Time Machine won't work on it. I set the networked drive as the TM location and it never makes it past the "preparing backup" stage. I always get some error, either Error 60 or Error 16.

What's going on here? I've read many accounts online of people doing their TM backups this way. What am I doing wrong? Both machines are connected via Ethernet.

 

[phoenixsan]

Regarding to....

the error codes you are getting, maybe these links are helpful:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2758994?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4022936?start=0&tstart=0

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

 

[NMF]

I appreciate the response, but that's all pretty basic, common sense stuff. I also don't want to waste hours pouring over Apple Community threads and tinkering endlessly with stuff. If I wanted to do that I wouldn't be using Macs. This Time Machine stuff should "just work." I'm super pissed that it doesn't, to be honest.

I posted here hoping that someone else might have gone through this already and could tell me what to do. I've already spoken to AppleCare about it and they're completely useless. I've pretty much exhausted the amount of my time that I'm willing to give up to troubleshoot this. I really need someone to just tell me how to make it work.

 

[adam9c1]

Using a network drive as a TM is not officially supported by Apple.

If you directly attach a drive to your Mac Mini and run OS X Server on it, you can then set the server as a TM location for your clients.
The drive will have to be local to the Server machine.

 

[NMF]

Using a network drive as a TM is not officially supported by Apple.

If you directly attach a drive to your Mac Mini and run OS X Server on it, you can then set the server as a TM location for your clients.
The drive will have to be local to the Server machine.

If it's not supported then why does it let me select a network drive as a TM disk? If I wasn't supposed to be doing it then Apple wouldn't let me do it. That's how they roll.

This is so frustrating.

 

[adam9c1]

you can run TM on a Time Capsule

 

[NMF]

you can run TM on a Time Capsule

I realize that. However, I already have a router. And a Mac Mini.

 

[26139]

okay

I appreciate the response, but that's all pretty basic, common sense stuff. I also don't want to waste hours pouring over Apple Community threads and tinkering endlessly with stuff. If I wanted to do that I wouldn't be using Macs. This Time Machine stuff should "just work." I'm super pissed that it doesn't, to be honest.

I posted here hoping that someone else might have gone through this already and could tell me what to do. I've already spoken to AppleCare about it and they're completely useless. I've pretty much exhausted the amount of my time that I'm willing to give up to troubleshoot this. I really need someone to just tell me how to make it work.

Hire a third-party tech to help you out.

Not to be a dick, but you're asking for help with a fairly complicated issue, and you've already said you're unwilling to do the work required to figure it out.

I've only seen Time Machine work with a networked drive (Airport Extreme with attached HD or Time Capsule) or directly attached via usb.

You're breaking new ground.

 

[NMF]

You're breaking new ground.

It doesn't seem that way... there's a bunch of people in the Apple TV forum who talk about using Mac minis as iTunes servers and centralized Time Machine locations.

Anyway, screw Time Machine. Broken piece of junk. CarbonCopyCloner did a full backup up to a disk image on the remote drive in under 15 minutes. I couldn't believe how fast and easy it was. Apple clearly doesn't give a damn about Time Machine anymore.

 

[jhiesey]

I use an external hard drive attached to an old Macbook Pro for time machine backups across the network and it works fine. I don't know why it isn't working for the OP, but it is certainly possible to get it to work.

And this IS an officially supported setup, as long as the server (the mac mini in the OP's case) is running OS X Server and you enable Time Machine Server. It's even listed on the OS X server features page: https://www.apple.com/osx/server/features/#time-machine

It is true that other network drives, except the Time Capsule, aren't officially supported though.

 

[mwhities]

I use an external hard drive attached to an old Macbook Pro for time machine backups across the network and it works fine. I don't know why it isn't working for the OP, but it is certainly possible to get it to work.

And this IS an officially supported setup, as long as the server (the mac mini in the OP's case) is running OS X Server and you enable Time Machine Server. It's even listed on the OS X server features page: https://www.apple.com/osx/server/features/#time-machine

It is true that other network drives, except the Time Capsule, aren't officially supported though.

Might be the issue. The OP doesn't mention that OS X Server is installed.

I do the samething with my 2010 Mac mini. I have OS X Server on it and TimeMachine enabled. Works flawlessly.

 

[NMF]

Might be the issue. The OP doesn't mention that OS X Server is installed.

I do the samething with my 2010 Mac mini. I have OS X Server on it and TimeMachine enabled. Works flawlessly.

I do not currently have OS X Server installed, as I honestly don't understand what it is. It seems to be for businesses I guess? I want stuff like contacts, calendars (etc) to by synced to the cloud, not a home server. It also seems like OS X Server is broken and causes a bunch of problems... nearly all of the reviews are negative.

However, if it will fix my issue then I'll buy it, but I was under the impression that it only let you set the internal storage of the Mac mini as the Time Machine location. I would want the backups stored on an external hard drive connected via USB3. Also, can OS X Server be used like a regular computer as well? This Mac mini is acting as a home server but it's also used from time-to-time for email and web browsing.

 

[mwhities]

Attached is a screen shot of my backup using the Server.app.

The TimeMachine ON your system is to back up THAT system to a drive that's internal, external, or networked.

The TimeMachine in OS X Server is so that other systems can use that (your mac mini) as the backup device. You can setup your external USB3 or any other external drive (that's shared from the mac mini with OS X Server installed) as the share point and when you setup TimeMachine on a different system, you can use the external on your mac mini.

 

[AshMan]

I also think one answer here overlooked is the time machine share should not be mounted on the computer. Time machine will mount it as needed.

I have used time machine on a networked hard drive with no issues except when it was mounted as a shared drive first it would not work.

But I have never tried it not using osx server. But there are some ways to have it work by enabling support through terminal commands. Just not sure what They are. Used this method to do it once over ambient networked to a windows box with freenas in a virtual environment and it worked fine.

 

[NMF]

Attached is a screen shot of my backup using the Server.app.

I bought OS X Server and set it up. Time Machine is working perfectly with it now. It still takes about 2x as long as CCC, but I suppose that is to be expected with real versioning. TM did the initial backup of my MBP (about 85 GB) in just under 40 minutes. That's what I'm talking about. With all the negative reviews and comments I don't dare mess with anything else in OS X Server, but at least Time Machine appears to be working as intended now.

Do I need to keep Server.app running on the Mac Mini at all times? Also, what happens if I have to restart the machine?

 

[mwhities]

I bought OS X Server and set it up. Time Machine is working perfectly with it now. It still takes about 2x as long as CCC, but I suppose that is to be expected with real versioning. TM did the initial backup of my MBP (about 85 GB) in just under 40 minutes. That's what I'm talking about. With all the negative reviews and comments I don't dare mess with anything else in OS X Server, but at least Time Machine appears to be working as intended now.

Do I need to keep Server.app running on the Mac Mini at all times? Also, what happens if I have to restart the machine?

No, you can close the app. The Server runs in the background. When you restart, the Server service will restart.

Also, at home, I only use TimeMachine, DNS, File Sharing, and VPN. (Comcast business with statics.)

 

[jhiesey]

Good to see you got it working!

One last thing to note is that you should make sure that either your WiFi network has encryption/a password on, or that you encrypt the Time Machine backups by checking the box in Time Machine (or both).

Otherwise anyone nearby with a laptop can see all of your files as they are backed up. I inadvertently had my system set up like this for a little while when Lion didn't support encrypting network backups.

 

[NMF]

Good to see you got it working!

One last thing to note is that you should make sure that either your WiFi network has encryption/a password on, or that you encrypt the Time Machine backups by checking the box in Time Machine (or both).

Otherwise anyone nearby with a laptop can see all of your files as they are backed up. I inadvertently had my system set up like this for a little while when Lion didn't support encrypting network backups.

My WiFi network has a WPA2 password set up. Would that be enough?

 

[jhiesey]

My WiFi network has a WPA2 password set up. Would that be enough?

That should be fine. (I know it's been a while since you asked...)

 

[mwalsh8]

That should be fine. (I know it's been a while since you asked...)

I use the same setup... A Mini Server with attached RAID box for network backups. It has worked flawlessly for years backing up 3 clients, and the server itself. Now i want to move the backups to a larger capacity RAID box to extend the backup set. How would i go about copying the data to the new drive. Apple mentions adding additional drives, but not moving existing data.

 

[dimme]

I use the same setup... A Mini Server with attached RAID box for network backups. It has worked flawlessly for years backing up 3 clients, and the server itself. Now i want to move the backups to a larger capacity RAID box to extend the backup set. How would i go about copying the data to the new drive. Apple mentions adding additional drives, but not moving existing data.

I did it a while ago with superduper, worked great. Besure to turn off tim machine in the server app first. and clients.

 

[mwalsh8]

I did it a while ago with superduper, worked great. Besure to turn off tim machine in the server app first. and clients.

I have used both CCC (currently and forever) and SuperDuper (a while back). for cloning drives. CCC supports block level copying of TM drives due to hard links in the file structure. I tried it as a test but it was taking forever (I stopped it at about 20 hours, halfway thru the verify process). It reformatted the drive and reported failure.