Time machine issues

[chewedpen]

Is anyone having issues with Time Machine? I am having issues setting up a shared external drive on my Mac Mini M4 to use as a time machine backup location, but also want to share the drive for backing up my MBP M4. I have enabled all the sharing options and enabled it in the sharing menu for Time Machine use. But the only way I can get it to work is if I partition the drive into 2 separate drives and dedicate one partition to each machine when sharing it on the mini.

I have a Synology NAS and it lets me use the same folder for each machine, so I don't need to create separate shares for backing up each machine.

Is TM acting as it is now designed? Or am I seeing a bug/issue with os26 Tahoe?

I am moving away from the Synology NAS and am trying to setup a large external drive for everything that is on the NAS including Time machine backups. I would setup an external drive connected to my ASUS router and use that for time machine backups, but the ASUS router does not support APFS that Tahoe seems to force you to now use.

 

[Pecka]

I use Time Machine for back up from my MBP to my Mac mini and it has stopped working since installing Tahoe beta, but I have not investigated why. It says that the back up volume is not available.

 

[ScanPro]

This is copied from he Sequoia age, Well I don't know how much difference it will make here. I put Tahoe on and external drive and a TM on an external drive. Works fine for 3 backups. I didn't do anything other than start Tahoe as usual, signed in to all accounts. Strange message tho, when I went to set up the TM in Tahoe, it said this drive is not recommended (it wanted a 4.99TB drive) I ignored it and all went well as It was a 4TB SSD. I will continue to jump back and forth to keep checking. My TM is just one partition.

 

[gilby101]

But the only way I can get it to work is if I partition the drive into 2 separate drives and dedicate one partition to each machine when sharing it on the mini.

You don't need separate partitions. But you do need two APFS volumes in the one container/partition. One volume for the local backup, a second volume which you make a network share so that multiple Macs can use it for backup.

This is as designed. There has not been any change with macOS 26.

 

[chewedpen]

You don't need separate partitions. But you do need two APFS volumes in the one container/partition. One volume for the local backup, a second volume which you make a network share so that multiple Macs can use it for backup.

This is as designed. There has not been any change with macOS 26.

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. Im wondering if you might have more input on the issue I am having now.

I have the drive partitioned in two, one 22 tb partition for file storage and one 8 tb partition for Time machine. (APFS) The drive is connected to the Mac mini, I have enabled file sharing for the Time Machine partition. Enabled "Share as a Time Machine backup destination", setup my user account and applied the permissions to enclosed items.

Back info on the drive - it's a OWC Thunder Bay 4 enclosure, it has 4 drives in it set up as raid 5 (four 10tb derives in raid 5 equals 30tb of storage) I used OWC's soft raid program to setup the drive and create the partitions/volumes.

I can get the Mac mini to backup, but when I try and connect the MacBook Pro to the shared Time Machine drive I get an error when logging in to the share (Screen shot attached)

I do not understand how to make a second volume from the the current Time Machine volume, do I need to partition the Time Machine drive again? Would I some how do that in Disk Utility? Erase the entire setup and start again making volumes - one storage volume and two separate volumes for the Time Machine backups.

 

[gilby101]

A Time Machine volume is read-only except for the TM dong a backup. So sharing it can only allow reading.

In your 8TB TM partition (APFS container) create a new volume (lets call it NET-TM). In Disk Utility, View > Show All Devices, select the container and add the volume NET-TM. This will share the 8GB space in the APFS container with the local TM volume.

In File Sharing, add NET-TM as a shared folder (in this case a whole volume). Right click, select Advanced Options, enable "share as a TM backup destination". That can now be used by other Macs as a TM destination.

Apple Support page: https://support.apple.com/en-au/102423 and "Mac shared as a network backup destination".