Really liking this mac mini

[jdbakker]

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.

What you're trying to do is Unsupported. I would go so far as to suggest you stop wasting your time.

There are only two configurations that are guaranteed to work and keep working with Time Machine: a local HFS+-with-journalling-formatted HDD (can be USB-connected) or, indeed, a Time Capsule. Any other networked setup can and will break the next time Apple upgrades their OS, TM software or TC protocol.

If you want automated remote backups without buying a Time Capsule I suggest you look into rsync. I have it backing up my laptop for the past five years, and it works great.

(I can see it from Apple's POV: a backup solution is the kind of thing you never want to get customer service complaints about, so you keep the number of supported configurations manageable. Having full support for networked volumes which may disappear halfway through a backup when Joe in the next cubicle turns his computer off is Not On. And it's not like they deliberately keep changing the protocol to keep non-revenue-generating users outside, or they'd've nailed that TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes door shut long ago -- they just don't support it. For you that translates in something that's just not worth the loss of billable hours, never mind the headache).

JDB.
[have had Macs as my primary computers since '91, aided and abetted by a handful of *ix machines for simulations and other heavy lifting plus the odd Windows machine for CAD software and other sundry apps which won't run under an emulator. I only moved from Win98 to XP last fall; my Win laptop has no net connection as fussing with virus/malware protection and the occasional wipe/reinstall took more of my time and blood pressure than shuffling files around on CDs and USB sticks does]

 

[johnR]

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..

It's a shame Apple exert so much control over what a user can do IMO. Free BSD actually incorporates a lot of device drivers for commonly available hardware, but Apple might have "fixed" that in their version.

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

Normally viruses can't spread through Mac OS X or any other Unix based OS because the system of file permissions doesn't allow it (unlike Windows file systems which allow it by design). You might be unlucky and get a virus that runs on the virtual machine software you need to run the Windows apps, but damage will be limited.

I abandoned Windows in 1998, a few weeks after I acquired my first personal computer. After experiencing the urge to hit the computer with a hammer once too often, I formatted the HDD with an ext2 file system and installed GNU/Linux. I've been using it for all my computing ever since. The engineering apps I use are a bit spartan (pcb, xcircuit, gschem, qcad) but get my work done.

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

Haha, I don't think so. It seems to be a common set of initials among electronics and audio engineers. I know of at least one with the same name as me.

 

[JohnRoberts]

What you're trying to do is Unsupported. I would go so far as to suggest you stop wasting your time.


JDB.

Thank you, no doubt the correct answer... I have wasted a bunch of time, thanks to WWW experts suggesting sundry methods to make it work...

All I care about is email, and perhaps some web links, surely I can find the specific files there to manually back up.

The engineer in me says if it can be done, I can do it,,, but that doesn't mean I should.

Thanks for giving me permission to stop wasting my time.

JR

 

[riggler]

John, if you backup your user account manually ( /Users/johnroberts ) you'll get everything you need pretty much (Mail database, browser bookmarks, etc).

But, why not repartition your backup disk? Make 1 partition for Windows - FAT32 or NTFS, and one HFS+ Journaled partition as your Mac OS X time machine disk?

It's not too hard to do.

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility

I can walk you through it if you wish. I don't think it's a waste of time to setup! Time Machine is an elegant solution once setup.

Damian

 

[JohnRoberts]

Disk utility can't reach out and touch my external hard drive because (I assume) it is shared on a network and not plugged in directly.

I don't want to waste a bunch more time on this right now as I have real work to do.

As i think I've mentioned before, I would probably want to dump what I already have on the external hard drive to one of my PCs first, and then plug the external drive directly into the mac to partition and set it up for journalled HFS+

Thanks for the offer... but not today...

JR

PS: I have backed up my user file and it looks like pretty much everything of value. 

PPS: I am not sure I trust my external drive, I can feel vibration from it on my desk. I know these things spin up to pretty serious RPM, but vibration tells me something inside is out of balance so potentially under stress, and will probably fail, sooner rather than later. I may just buy a new bigger. and better backup drive and partition it from scratch for dual use.