The D-Link DNS 323 is an extremely affordable SAN solution for a home or small business network. And since Bonjour support has been cooked into firmware version 1.09 it is now even more useful for Mac users. However, out of the box it still cannot be recognized by TimeMachine as a valid backup drive. Infuriating to say the least, however, with a bit of time and perceverance it is possible.
Firstly, you will need to fun plug your DNS 323. Excellent instructions are found at the DNS323 Wiki site which is an excellent resource for all your DNS 323 hackery needs.
Secondly, you need to add AFP support.
Lastly, do the following command on the command line to get TimeMachine to recognize network drives which it does not do by default (really Apple? Why?!?):
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
That’s it. You should be able to point TimeMachine at your DNS 323 and you are good to go!
Note that you used to have to trick the Mac into using the SAN as a backup drive but I did not find this to be the case with my latest setup, but if you are having trouble, read A Poor Man’s Apple Time Capsule.
If you enable bonjour support and AFP, how do the MACs know to connect via AFP versus SAMBA? Presumably both are enabled.
Also, I’ve read that time machine will try to use all the available drive space for its own needs, so do you have to limit the size of the sparse bundle image or something like that?
This worked great and I was able to select the d link NAS, but now I’m getting a Time Machine error the states the network disk does not support required AFP features. I have both AFP and Time Machine enabled on the NAS. Anyone have any hints??? I’m on hold with india (tech support)
links are dead and i have the same problem as Scott
@Scott
had the same problem, something with TM lock-stealing (found when using:)
tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep backupd
anyways it can be TM-support can enabled in the AppleVolumes.default file. (My case located at: /mnt/sda2/Alt-F/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default)
nano /mnt/sda2/Alt-F/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default
add ‘tm’ to the options all the way at the bottom of the file
# End of File
EFAULT: options:upriv,usedots,tm
“/mnt/sdb2/Backup” “Backup”
Restart afp and it should work. I used Alt-f with netatalk 2.2.1 on my DNS-323 and I am running Lion on my mac.