Backup Mac Using Time Machine. Ip camera multiple viewer. When Time Machine Backups are enabled on Mac, it starts automatically backing up all documents, photos, music and apps to an External Storage Device. Once the first Backup is completed, Time Machine keeps updating the Backup by scanning your computer for new, revised and deleted files on an hourly basis. Oct 29, 2020 First time you're setting up Time Machine? Click Your Time Machine Check Box OR Slider To ON. The first Time Machine screen you'll see will have a slider button. Or A check box under the Time Machine logo. You use this to turn on and off Time Machine auto backups.
Guide: Setting up a Time Machine Share on your Unraid Server
Apple's Time Machine is a built-in backup feature for your Mac that will automatically backup all of your files, apps, music, photos, emails, documents, and system files. When you complete a backup, you can even restore files from your backup if the original files are deleted from your Mac or the hard disk (or SSD) in your Mac is erased or replaced. With Unraid, you can now use Time Machine with the SMB protocol and store your Time Machine backups on your Unraid server!
Note: This guide works with MacOS High Sierra.
Create a Time Machine Backup on your Unraid Server
To create backups with Time Machine and store them on your Unraid server, all you'll need to do is connect it to your Unraid server and then Time Machine will automatically make:
- Hourly backups for the past 24 hours
- Daily backups for the past month
- Weekly backups for all previous months
- The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full
If you want to control when backups are completed, we suggest you use a tool such as Time Machine Editor so you can customize when backups are made and select a host of other options not available in Time Machine itself.
Unraid and Time Machine Setup
Before you begin, make sure SMB is enabled in the Unraid webgui by going to:
- Settings --> SMB under 'Network Services'
- Set 'Enable SMB' to 'Yes' and click 'Apply' (Array must be stopped to change this).
- Also, set 'Enhanced macOS interoperability' to Yes as well.
Now:
- In the Unraid webGUI, go to 'Shares' and click 'Add Share'.
- Name the share (Ex: Time Machine).
- Set your minimum free space or leave default. This is the minimum free space available to allow writing to any disk belonging to the share.
- Under 'Included disk(s)' select the disk in the array that you'd like to use for your Time Machine share. You can still use this same disk for other shares.
- Keep 'Enable Copy-on-write' on 'Auto'.
- Under SMB Security Settings.
- Under 'Export' select 'Yes (Time Machine)'
- Set your 'TimeMachine volume size limit'. This limits the reported volume size, preventing Time Machine from using the entire real disk space for backup. Example: setting this value to '1024' would limit the reported disk space to 1GB.
- Set your Security parameters to what you prefer.
- Click Apply/Done.
Next, we need to make the new Time Machine share a Remote Share:In the Unraid Webgui: (note: this section isn't necessary and should probably be removed entirely)
- Go to 'Main' and under 'SMB Shares', click 'Add remote SMB/NFS Share'
- Select SMB and find your server by putting in the IP address and clicking Search for Servers:
- Fill in the rest of the information and select the Time Machine share you just created.
- Click Add and then under Main --> SMB Shares click Mount to mount the Time Machine Share.
From here, there are just a few more steps:
- Connect to your Time Machine share by connecting to it through the Finder.
- Next: go to Time Machine Preferences on your Mac and 'Select Disk'.
- Your newly mounted Time Machine share should show up. Select this share, enable encryption if desired and click 'Use Disk'.
- Now, Time Machine will say it's trying to connect to your share. Before clicking connect, it's recommended to eject your mounted share from your desktop and then connect.
- Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you.
Set Up Time Machine Backup
Note: The first backup may take a long time, depending on how many files you have and the size of your Mac's harddrive.Thereafter, Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups should be faster.
Reminder: We suggest you use a 3rd party tool such as Time Machine Editor so you can customize when backups are made and select a host of other options not available in the Time Machine program itself.
How To Set Up Time Machine
That's it. Now, all of your Time Machine backups will be stored on your Unraid server and if something bad happens to your Mac, you will be able to restore files, settings, and apps from these backups!
Creating Multiple Time Machine Shares for Different People/Macs
So, say you want to create multiple time machine backups for different people/Macs in the house? You will need to create a separate share for each Time Machine backup and separate users in Unraid. For example, say the Stooges want to backup their Macs. If the username on each of the Macs is larry, curly, and moe, you would create Unraid users larry, curly, and moe. Once the users are set up then you would create the individual Time Machine shares (ex: tm-larry, tm-curly, tm-moe). From there, simply follow the instructions above!
For more info on Time Machine shares, be sure to also check out Space Invader One's excellent video on Unraid Shares and MacOS!
Apple's Time Machine software made it easy to set up incremental back-ups, with one exception: network drives (more formally called network-attached storage, or NAS). Time Machine only directly supports drives formatted with Apple's HFS+J file system, and will eventually use all disk space on the drive. This page provides an illustrated guide showing how to set up Time Machine on a network drive, using a sparse bundle to emulate a smaller HFS+J drive. Click ‘show screenshot' after each instruction to see the relevant screenshot.
Suggestion: consider online back-up
For six years we used the technique described on this page to back-up the Macs at my company. In 2014 we switched to Backblaze Online Backup, who provide unlimited back-up space for both Macs and Windows PCs for $5 a month. By using an online back-up solution our back-ups are safe even if a disaster hits our building and affects both our computers and our network drives.
Preparation
1. Ensure the network drive is mounted:
1a. Click ‘Go' and then ‘Network' and double-click on your network drive. If your network drive is protected, enter your username and password.
From here, there are just a few more steps:
- Connect to your Time Machine share by connecting to it through the Finder.
- Next: go to Time Machine Preferences on your Mac and 'Select Disk'.
- Your newly mounted Time Machine share should show up. Select this share, enable encryption if desired and click 'Use Disk'.
- Now, Time Machine will say it's trying to connect to your share. Before clicking connect, it's recommended to eject your mounted share from your desktop and then connect.
- Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you.
Set Up Time Machine Backup
Note: The first backup may take a long time, depending on how many files you have and the size of your Mac's harddrive.Thereafter, Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups should be faster.
Reminder: We suggest you use a 3rd party tool such as Time Machine Editor so you can customize when backups are made and select a host of other options not available in the Time Machine program itself.
How To Set Up Time Machine
That's it. Now, all of your Time Machine backups will be stored on your Unraid server and if something bad happens to your Mac, you will be able to restore files, settings, and apps from these backups!
Creating Multiple Time Machine Shares for Different People/Macs
So, say you want to create multiple time machine backups for different people/Macs in the house? You will need to create a separate share for each Time Machine backup and separate users in Unraid. For example, say the Stooges want to backup their Macs. If the username on each of the Macs is larry, curly, and moe, you would create Unraid users larry, curly, and moe. Once the users are set up then you would create the individual Time Machine shares (ex: tm-larry, tm-curly, tm-moe). From there, simply follow the instructions above!
For more info on Time Machine shares, be sure to also check out Space Invader One's excellent video on Unraid Shares and MacOS!
Apple's Time Machine software made it easy to set up incremental back-ups, with one exception: network drives (more formally called network-attached storage, or NAS). Time Machine only directly supports drives formatted with Apple's HFS+J file system, and will eventually use all disk space on the drive. This page provides an illustrated guide showing how to set up Time Machine on a network drive, using a sparse bundle to emulate a smaller HFS+J drive. Click ‘show screenshot' after each instruction to see the relevant screenshot.
Suggestion: consider online back-up
For six years we used the technique described on this page to back-up the Macs at my company. In 2014 we switched to Backblaze Online Backup, who provide unlimited back-up space for both Macs and Windows PCs for $5 a month. By using an online back-up solution our back-ups are safe even if a disaster hits our building and affects both our computers and our network drives.
Preparation
1. Ensure the network drive is mounted:
1a. Click ‘Go' and then ‘Network' and double-click on your network drive. If your network drive is protected, enter your username and password.
2. Find the name of your computer on the network:
2a. Open System Preferences.
2b. Click the Sharing icon.
2c. The computer name on the network is shown below the input field, with a ‘.local' suffix which should be ignored (that is, if it shows katemorley.local then your computer's network name is katemorley).
3. Ensure Time Machine will show your NAS device:
3a. Click ‘Go' and then ‘Utilities'.
3b. Click the Terminal icon.
3c. Type defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 and press enter.
4. Find the MAC address of your computer:
4a. Type ifconfig en0 | grep ether and press enter. Your MAC address is the 17-character string consisting of six pairs of hexadecimal digits separated by colons.
Creating the sparse bundle
5. Create the sparse bundle:
5a. Type hdiutil create -size 100g -fs HFS+J -volname 'Time Machine' NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle and press enter, where NAME is the name of your computer on the network (as determined in step 2c) and XXXXXXXXXX is your MAC address (as determined in step 4a) without the colons. This will create a 100 gigabyte sparse bundle; to create a sparse bundle of a different size replace 100g with a different value.
5b. Type rsync -aE NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle /Volumes/DRIVE/. and press enter, where DRIVE is the name of your network drive. This will copy the sparse bundle to the network drive, and will take several seconds.
5c. Type rm -rf NAME_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle and press enter. This will delete the copy of the sparse bundle on your computer. You can now close Terminal.
Setting up Time Machine
6. Select the back-up location:
Set Up Time Machine Disk
6a. Click the Time Machine icon and then Open Time Machine Preferences.
6b. Click the Choose Backup Disk button.
6c. Select the network drive and then click the Use For Backup button. Time Machine will show the drive's full capacity, but back-ups will be limited to the size chosen in step 5a.
7. Start the back-up:
7a. Time Machine will start the back-up automatically after two minutes. Alternative, click the Time Machine icon and then Back Up Now.
7b. Time Machine will show a status of ‘Preparing…' while it determines which files to back up. Paragon ntfs trial.
7c. After a few minutes the back-up will begin and the status will change to ‘Backing up'.
7d. While the back-up is in progress, a volume called Time Machine will be shown on the desktop. Once the back-up completes, this volume will disappear.
