Really liking this mac mini

[JohnRoberts]

John, is the drive you want to backup to mounted before you try to backup?  It's possibly searching for airport devices because it can't see a drive.

In Leopard:

Mount drive you want to use as a backup.
System Preferences > Time Machine > Set drive you want to use as your backup drive under "Change Disk".  Set Options (like what you don't want to be backed up) in Options.  Make sure Time Machine is turned on.

From then on it will automatically stay backed up while the backup drive is mounted and if the backup drive is unmounted, it will backup the next time the drive is mounted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "mounted"  but I have tried a secret handshake I found on the internet (more than once)  to go into the terminal program and enter a script that is supposed to make external drive visible to time machine...  defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

This didn't change anything and time machine is still looking for some airport connection.

The external drive is accessible in finder, just not to time machine.

JR

 

[Matt Ward]

Hi John,

Just to clarify; the drive you want to backup to is network attached?  If not, how is it connected to the mac mini?

If you double click on the hard drive icon on the top right hand side of the desktop, can you see your backup drive?

 

[JohnRoberts]

Hi John,

Just to clarify; the drive you want to backup to is network attached?  If not, how is it connected to the mac mini?

Ethernet cable to router. 

If you double click on the hard drive icon on the top right hand side of the desktop, can you see your backup drive?

There is no hard drive icon on the desktop. Only icons are in a single line along the bottom edge of monitor screen.

My external hard drive shows up in "Finder" under "shared", along with a couple other (PCs) computers, when everybody is turned on and talking.

JR

 

[MartyMart]

JR - you're way ahead of me with the terminal hack/E-net drive connection .... but it's not working .... right.

My TM backup is a traditional firewire or USB drive hooked up to the the mac every week or so for
a backup update.

That works     .... I know ...... it's "old school" 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thanks everybody for the help, and I apologize for wasting bandwidth on my personal problem. I have been messing with PCs since before there were PCs, but I find the MAC secret handshakes and "customer friendly" simplifications difficult to pierce through sometimes.

I guess if I was a good Apple customer, I'd just buy a wireless backup drive and move on...  

Martin.. do you manually copy files or use some other back up utility, that intelligently manages the backup?

I have already gotten into the habit of backing up sensitive files to the external drive... but you know how that goes.

I am not very confident in that external drive is bulletproof, but odds of two different drives going down at same time should be pretty slender.

JR

PS: I wonder if they'll ever offer a mini with flash instead of hard drive... the prices should come down over time. Flash storage should be hard to kill.

 

[Matt Ward]

Okay,

In Finder, Go > Connect to server > enter network address (if smb/cifs protocol use smb://ipaddressorhostname if afp protocol afp://ipaddressorhostname).

Click connect

You should get an authentication dialogue (this can be different depending on protocol).

It should now, hopefully mount the drive (this process is equivalent to "Map Network Drive" in Windows XP.)

You should see an icon on the desktop for the drive (depending on the Finder prefs.  - by default you should see one) and you should be able to see the drive contents.

You should now be able to make the drive the backup drive in Time Machine Preferences.

To make the machine mount the drive on login then drag the drive icon into the user login items (System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items).

Let me know how you get on!!!

 

[Matt Ward]

I apologize for wasting bandwidth on my personal problem.

Why apologise?  You've helped a huge amount of people on here over the years.

I have been messing with PCs since before there were PCs, but I find the MAC secret handshakes and "customer friendly" simplifications difficult to pierce through sometimes.

I find the reverse the case.  I think it's largely to do with MS / Apple using different words for the same things and different approaches to do things.  Whatever you "grow up" on becomes what you know; I know that MS servers drive me mad with complicated ways of doing things that Unix seems to me to be much more easy.  Different strokes an' all that...

Martin.. do you manually copy files or use some other back up utility, that intelligently manages the backup?
Can't speak for Martin (although I assume TM means he's using Time Machine).  Myself I back up my laptop via USB using Time Machine; it's built in to the OS; it works easily and is reliable.  If the machine has the drive it keeps itself backed up.  It's very easy to use with local drives.

For Network drives there is a very powerful command line utility called rsync (even more powerful when scripted), but I would advise caution if you are not a fairly experienced Mac / Unix command line admin.

One last thing - the instructions I've given for mounting a network drive are for Leopard; I understand Snow Leopard is very similar but haven't spent a lot of facetime with it yet.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Okay,

In Finder, Go > Connect to server > enter network address (if smb/cifs protocol use smb://ipaddressorhostname if afp protocol afp://ipaddressorhostname).

Click connect

You should get an authentication dialogue (this can be different depending on protocol).

It should now, hopefully mount the drive (this process is equivalent to "Map Network Drive" in Windows XP.)

You should see an icon on the desktop for the drive (depending on the Finder prefs.  - by default you should see one) and you should be able to see the drive contents.

You should now be able to make the drive the backup drive in Time Machine Preferences.

To make the machine mount the drive on login then drag the drive icon into the user login items (System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items).

Let me know how you get on!!!

Arghh that's another few hours I'll never get back... How much $$ does apple want for that wireless backup?  

OK some progress, I got my external drive "mounted" or whatever so TM can see it.

TM is now seeing it , and churns away for a few minutes writing to a temp sparse bundle file, before it craps out and gives me a 45 error code saying the sparse bundle file could not be created.  

after more googling this appears to be a known apple bug  and remedy is to create a sparse bundle file on my desktop and move that to my external hard drive,  but TM ignores that one, tries to open it's own and then crashes after several minutes ..

I even got TM to recognize a hard drive on one of my PCs, it tries to write a back up there and failed too.  It didn't take as long to fail on the PC, it's almost as if it is trying to write a file that is bigger than the space available... but I have 300G+ on external drive and 50+G on the PC drive.  I wonder if the TM is trying to open space for some huge file the first time...

I am not feeling like this is my fault,  and I suspect they will sell a lot of wireless back up devices.

no mas

JR

PS: about sticking with the first computer you learned on...  First computer I had to deal with was an IBM360 for doing homework in FORTRAN with key punch cards, but my first "personal" as in my completely own computer was a Heath kit version of DEC LSI-11/2

It seems that unix predates apple.. but that doesn't help me.

 

[Biasrocks]

So no Virginia they aren't idiot-proof...  How come I never lost a PC hard drive?????

You must not have bought any of the newer Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm
drives.  Had 2 of them die within about a week of them being installed, the
third took a full 3 months to die.

Went to newer Western Digital Blacks and haven't looked back. They are reliable and
are faster than the Seagates too boot.

Mark

 

[MartyMart]

Martin.. do you manually copy files or use some other back up utility, that intelligently manages the backup?

I have already gotten into the habit of backing up sensitive files to the external drive... but you know how that goes.

I use Time Machine and a dedicated B-up drive via firewire, no ethernet or wireless version, that's much slower than
FW800 !!
That's a total system wide backup but I also backup personal stuff and projects to 2 x other drive on a regular basis
so far ... so good

M

 

[JohnRoberts]

Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Starting standard backup
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Creating disk image /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2/jr's mini 1.sparsebundle
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini hdiejectd[2840]: running
Nov  2 14:38:46 jrs-mini hdiejectd[2840]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
Nov  2 14:40:54 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
Nov  2 14:40:54 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Failed to create disk image /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2/jr's mini 1.sparsebundle, status: 45
Nov  2 14:40:59 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Backup failed with error: 20
Nov  2 14:40:59 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.


Arghhh

So it appears to be something obscure about that sparse bundle file, but it is seeing and talking to my external drive, just not able to finish. 

I have made a support request to the external drive maker to see if they have a suggestion... The external drive seems fine for simple file transfers back and forth between MAC and PC world, but there is clearly something special about the Time Machine...

JR

 

[Andy Peters]

Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Starting standard backup
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Creating disk image /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2/jr's mini 1.sparsebundle
Nov  2 14:38:36 jrs-mini hdiejectd[2840]: running
Nov  2 14:38:46 jrs-mini hdiejectd[2840]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
Nov  2 14:40:54 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
Nov  2 14:40:54 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Failed to create disk image /Volumes/EdgeDiskGo-2/jr's mini 1.sparsebundle, status: 45
Nov  2 14:40:59 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Backup failed with error: 20
Nov  2 14:40:59 jrs-mini com.apple.backupd[2751]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.


Arghhh

So it appears to be something obscure about that sparse bundle file, but it is seeing and talking to my external drive, just not able to finish. 

I have made a support request to the external drive maker to see if they have a suggestion... The external drive seems fine for simple file transfers back and forth between MAC and PC world, but there is clearly something special about the Time Machine...

JR

is the Time Machine backup disk formatted using the "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)" format? The clue was that you use the disk to transfer data back and forth between OS X and Windows; to do that, it's likely formatted as FAT32, which OS X can read and write. Windows cannot normally access an HFS+ (the OS X Extended) drive, and OS X cannot write to an NTFS disk.

So try reformatting the drive as OS X Extended (use the Disk Utility). See here; the last post in the thread points out that TM only works with HFS+ disks.

HFS+ is also the OS X default format. The journaling works well; if your machine gets a power glitch, the fsck that runs after restart (or from Disk Utility) has an excellent chance of recovering everything. NTFS disks tend to scramble easier.

-a

 

[Andy Peters]

Hi John,

Just to clarify; the drive you want to backup to is network attached?  If not, how is it connected to the mac mini?

Ethernet cable to router. 

If you double click on the hard drive icon on the top right hand side of the desktop, can you see your backup drive?

There is no hard drive icon on the desktop. Only icons are in a single line along the bottom edge of monitor screen.

To make hard disks (and other things) show up in a Finder window, click on the Desktop to make the Finder the front application, then choose Finder -> Preferences from the menu. Under "General" you will see "Show these items on the desktop:" and one of the items is Hard Disks. I have all of the options selected.

My external hard drive shows up in "Finder" under "shared", along with a couple other (PCs) computers, when everybody is turned on and talking.

If the external drive is connected directly to the Mac, then it should show up under Devices in a Finder window. Check Finder Preferences, under the "Sidebar" option, and make sure External Disks is checked.

-a

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thank You Andy.. that makes sense... While it seems an easy enough error to report out I guess true mac users shouldn't try to connect to non-apple hardware. 

One of the many "fixes" I have found on the internet and tried involves creating an sparse bundle file that is mac OS extended journalled format on the MAC then moving that image file onto the external drive for TM to use...

Today, I "mounted" this image file and pointed TM directly at this (journaled) image file and, this time it ran 5 minutes before crashing. 

arghhh  my head hurts  It's acting like there isn't enough room but there is plenty so the drive format secret handshake may be it.. but the error is subtle and it's trying to work.

JR

 

[Mbira]

Well I just took the plunge.  I'm writing from the Apple Store as I wait for my new 17" macbook pro to have 8 gig of memory installed.  ;D

I need to get out of here soon before the amount of money I just spent sinks in 

 

[Andy Peters]

Thank You Andy.. that makes sense... While it seems an easy enough error to report out I guess true mac users shouldn't try to connect to non-apple hardware. 

One of the many "fixes" I have found on the internet and tried involves creating an sparse bundle file that is mac OS extended journalled format on the MAC then moving that image file onto the external drive for TM to use...

Today, I "mounted" this image file and pointed TM directly at this (journaled) image file and, this time it ran 5 minutes before crashing.   

arghhh  my head hurts  It's acting like there isn't enough room but there is plenty so the drive format secret handshake may be it.. but the error is subtle and it's trying to work.

The problem with the sparse bundle trick is that it still has the (aging, unreliable) FAT32 filesystem underneath. Reformat the drive as HFS+. It'll work. I guarantee it. We have three Macs here that each have a dedicated FireWire disk, formatted using HFS+ Journaled, that is used for Time Machine backups, and it works. It'll work with USB disks also; I just don't have any.

There is a very cool use for the sparse bundles, though. OS X lets you create a disk image file (.dmg) which can be mounted* just like a real disk. (Lots of Mac software is distributed as a .dmg, which is essentially a clone of a CD-ROM or DVD.) You can clone your operating system disk to a .dmg if you like. The cool use is that you can create (using the Disk Utility) an encrypted disk image and password-protect it. Without the password, the data in the image cannot be accessed. This image isn't a .dmg, it's a .sparseimage file.

So what I do is put all of my accounting data into a sparse bundle (Quicken file, lots of other records/receipts/invoices/etc). When I want to do my accounting, I open the sparse bundle (double-click on it), enter the password, and it mounts and appears as just another disk. When I'm done, I unmount the disk (click on the up-arrow that appears next to it in the Finder) and it's not accessible. Backing up the accounting data is as simple as copying the unmounted bundle to a backup disk.

-a

* "Mount" is the Unix term for "attach a disk to the computer so that the operating system can access it." The Unix command for this is, not surprisingly, mount. To disconnect a disk from the operating system, mainly so you can physically disconnect it from the computer, you use the umount command.

 

[riggler]

+1 on formatting as HFS+ w/Journaling. There are many benefits to that filesystem anyway over FAT32. And it's the "native" Mac OS X filesystem...

 

[JohnRoberts]

And what does reformatting the external hard drive to mac friendly do for my PCs also on the network and already using this drive?  As far as I can tell my PCs can't directly talk with mac format drives.  I could do a save of my back up hard drive elsewhere temporarily, and plug it directly into the mac and probably reformat it, but long term this network drive needs to talk to both PCs "and" the mac mini. Right now it does that, except for Time machine. 

FWIW this mac is just my email, web reader, not my primary work computer(s)... So I don't need to lose saving my work data to protect some email addresses. 

Most engineering software I work with is still PC centric. 

I sill like the mac for email and web surfing but I am not ready to drink the apple kool aid just yet. At Peavey I had to design gear to work seamlessly with other manufacturers. I guess we needed better marketing. 

JR

PS: Yes, I have since figured out what "mount" means, but my life is so full of random jargon, that something else that was perhaps useful just got erased (Kelly Bundy effect).. 

 

[johnR]

* "Mount" is the Unix term for "attach a disk to the computer so that the operating system can access it." The Unix command for this is, not surprisingly, mount. To disconnect a disk from the operating system, mainly so you can physically disconnect it from the computer, you use the umount command.

It dates back to when hard disks were huge things that had to be physically lifted into place and bolted to a computer mainframe before use. Like many Unix terms it's still in use.

JR, this is incidental to your problem, but OS X is essentially Free BSD (a free open source Unix clone) with Apple's GUI and other bells and whistles running on top. There's a Unix command shell, which most Mac users are unaware of, lurking under the hood.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I am not completely unaware of it,, unix probably predates the mac by a bunch.. and I had to use terminal mode and drive the mac like an old model T, to set some internal switches, so the mac would recognize unsupported drives or something like that..

My first personal computer had 256k 8" floppies for mass storage, and I had a friend who worked for NCR so I recall his stories about old school main frame hard drives.

I am just a little disappointed in mac being so plug and play friendly if you buy the more expensive apple hardware, and a royal PIA if you try to use more common hardware and interface with the significant non apple PC world that so many engineering applications use..

and please nobody suggest that I buy a MAC that runs PC software. (Cool a mac that can get viruses).

Or maybe I've been sniffing too many lead fumes reflowing SMT boards in my kitchen oven. 

JR

PS JohnR are you sure you're not just my alter ego? and we're the same person pretending to be two?  8)