10.7: Enable Time Machine on unsupported network drives

Sep 20, '11 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: ars

Changes in network protocols in Lion broke Time Machine access to some legacy network drives. This hint shows how to restore it.

As I discovered with dismay Apple implemented a new version of networking protocols in Lion, which made that my network drive could no longer be accessed via Time Machine. Apple published a work-around for devices using AFP, see this KB article for that procedure.

In my case this did not help as I was accessing the network drive via SMB. Finally I found yesterday the following site which published a method which allows you to use Time Machine with legacy SMB services. I made my first Time Machine back-up last night and it worked. Here is the link.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. I looked over the SMB method given at the linked site and it involves replacing the Apple backupd library with a custom-made version. There's source code available so you can build it yourself, if you wish. Comments to the post have indicated pretty good success, and the author seems to be responsive to questions. Nevertheless, if you're not comfortable with low-level system hacking and have a full known good backup, you should proceed with extreme caution.]

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