Backup Macs to a SAMBA (SMB) Share

In this Instructable you will learn how to backup a mac to a Windows Home Server box or any other SAMBA share.


You will need:

Windows Home Server (Or an SMB network share) with free space as big as your mac's HDD used space

Apple computer running 10.4 or 10.5

Network Connection between the two


I have not tried this with 10.4 Tiger, but i know its much easier than Leopard.

Step 1: Enable SAMBA backup on the Mac

In this step you will enable your Mac to backup to SAMBA shares

Step 1: Open Terminal

Step 2: Type the command:

"sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1"

with no quotes. Then type in your password.


You have enabled Time Machine SAMBA backup.

Goto Step 2 for Leopard, or skip step 2 if you have Tiger

Comments

[admin]

Hey, this is a great instructable and is very informative. Just one thing is missing... pictures! It really helps a lot when trying to follow directions so you should consider taking some photographs. Once you do that and leave me a message when you have so that we can publish your work. Thanks! Thanks for the cool instructable and we hope to publish this soon!

[vostrushka]

The backup to SMB share is not a trick. But how to recover when you boot from CD/DVD. The simple command: mount -f smbfs //login@server/share does not work. The error message referencing the absence of some library. I guess that MAC standard installation media does not have SMB support. Or it should be set up in some way, the question is how? Regards Leonid

[A.C.E.]

nice. now if only i could get the mac running on my windows laptop. The installation was succesful (ideneb 10.5.6 osx86 leopard) but it hangs on the apple screen when it boots.

[doriean]

Try Typing -v For Verbose Mode This Will Get You Past The Spinning Apple And Into Your Os. Nice Tut Thanks

[HybridStorm]

Just a quick note, when you are making the name of the sparse bundle be sure to remove any spaces or hyphens between the parts of the mac address. It needs to be one long string.