CHRISTOPHJPETERChristoph Peter

BACK UP OFTEN!!!!

Now that I have my mac mini set up as my home server I also wanted to backup its system drive to preserve all the configuration. I have an Airport extreme basestation that has a 500GB hard drive hooked up to it. I have used it to back up my mac book pro over the air and it worked just fine. When I tried to select it as the backup drive for my mac mini the time machine preference pane would crash every time. So I played arround with it and it appears that time machine is now able to backup to any afp:// file server. It is important that you mount it using the following instructions and not just click on it in the finder. It appears that apple does something differently when using the shares in finder.

Setting up time machine with a remote destination

This is done by pressing command + K in finder and using OS X built in ability to connect to different file servers

connect to server

You might get prompted for user name and password. Once connected the afp source shows up in your finder.

afp source

In my case that is the airport extreme base station called chrillo.Airport with the hard drive. This could also be another mac. Now head over to your time machine preferences and the click the change drive button.

remote time machine backup

As you can see it shows up with its Ip address. In my case I used the internal Lan IP  but you can also use a public Ip or domain. Just remember that depending on your ISP this address can change. Also if you use dhcp the address might change. My ISP has static Ips so its no problem. For dynamic Ips you can use a service like dyndns.org.

remote time machine backup

… and you are done. For my server I changed the backup interval with the information found here http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/how-to-tweak-and-fine-tune-time-machine-487678?artc_pg=3

I run a Airport Extreme basestation with a western digital My Book 500GB USB harddrive attached to it and since 10.5.2 it has been possible to do wireless backup, with a few draw backs. I had to mount the drive manually each time I wanted to perform a back and the back ups took considerably longer than they used to over fire wire but it was working. After I upgraded to 10.5.3 Time Machine kept on telling me

The drive could not be mounted

even though it was already mounted and Time Machine could access it for back ups. I read up on the problem and found some fairly complicated solutions but in fact it is really easy to solve the problem:

Simply go to system preferences and Time Machine and choose select drive and reselect your Airdisk. Not only that Time Machine will continue your old back up but it now also mounts the drive all by it self which which completly automates the Backup process.

I now enjoy Time Capsule like backup without having had to spend a the extra money.