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Mac Mini 2nd Hard Drive as Time Machine Backup

G

grimfool

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 5, 2011
35
0
I have a mac mini with a 2nd hard drive and I want to use the 2nd hard drive as the time machine destination for other macs on a network. I have attempted to set it up but I can't see the hard drive from the options on time machine in the other macs. All the macs are on Mavericks. Any suggestions?:)
 
I've done that and can see the backup folders in finder on the other computers but I can't see the drive in time machine on them
 
If it's plugged in it's not a backup.

Having had lightning strike my house and take out almost everything that was plugged in (UPS, surge protector, turned off, didn't make a difference), I know that anything that is plugged in to a power outlet is NOT a backup.

I have 2 external drives for backup, one is at work, one at home. I plug it in to back it up, then swap the drives so my latest backup is always stored in a separate location.

Having the Time Machine drive inside the same box as the primary is a recipe for disaster.
 
grimfool said:
I have a mac mini with a 2nd hard drive and I want to use the 2nd hard drive as the time machine destination for other macs on a network. I have attempted to set it up but I can't see the hard drive from the options on time machine in the other macs. All the macs are on Mavericks. Any suggestions?:)
Click to expand...
This is becoming a common problem with Mavericks, which has changed the preferred file-sharing protocol to SMB2, but Time Machine still only accepts drives shared via AFP.

You will either need to enable AFP file sharing on your Mac Mini, or on your other devices you can follow this guide to enable unsupported network volumes, which should allow you to set SMB, NFS and other network volume types as a target for Time Machine backups.

SMB2 should be fine for Time Machine backups (as Time Machine will probably just use a disk image on the device anyway), but AFP is the only mechanism Apple officially supports. Pain the ass though!
 
To add a little more. Using the 2nd hard drive is only half the story. I also use Carbon Copy to copy the backups from the internal hard drive to 1 of 2 external hard drives which are changed every week. I have used this system with a mini server for several years but the need for the server is no longer there so I want to do it on a mac mini with a 2nd drive but for some reason it won't let me.
 
grimfool said:
To add a little more. Using the 2nd hard drive is only half the story. I also use Carbon Copy to copy the backups from the internal hard drive to 1 of 2 external hard drives which are changed every week. I have used this system with a mini server for several years but the need for the server is no longer there so I want to do it on a mac mini with a 2nd drive but for some reason it won't let me.
Click to expand...
Can you be more specific? Carbon Copy Cloner shouldn't give you any issues as it should happily accept any mounted volume as a target.

Are you cloning on the two-drive Mac Mini (i.e - the Mac Mini is cloning its first drive onto the second) or cloning from other machines on your network? Is there a particular reason you don't want to use Time Machine for this (nothing again CCC, but Time Machine is built-in so it makes sense to use it if you can)?

Can you supply screenshots showing some more of your setup? For example, the volume list (left side) in Disk Utility, drive select menus for Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine where you're struggling to select the drive, might provide some clues.

You can use Shift - Command - 4 to enable the screenshot band-selector, just select an area of your screen to create a screenshot of a particular window.
 
The problem is not with carbon copy but with the ability to see the 2nd hard drive of the destination mac from the time machine application on the source mac. As I said if the destination mac is a mac mini server running snow leopard there is no problem and the source mac backs up to it. Since I have no other use for the mac server other than for back up I want to use it as a standard mac mini running mavericks.
 
So you've upgraded the Mac Mini server to Mavericks and now Time Machine backups to it as the target don't work?

It sounds exactly like the issue a lot of other people have been having, which is that the default file sharing method for Mavericks is now SMB2, but Time Machine only normally supports AFP (which was the default on previous versions of OS X). For this reason you either need to enable AFP in File Sharing preference pane on your server, so that the source Mac(s) can backup to it again as before. Or alternatively you can enable unsupported network volumes on the source Mac(s) in order to use the server's SMB share as a backup target.


Have you tried both of these?
 
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