How to: Back-up Apple Macs to Any Windows Home Server Using Time Machine

By on July 9, 2009 in Windows Home Server

Many of you will be successfully backing up your Apple Macs to a HP MediaSmart Server and Time Machine, courtesy of HP’s proprietary backup software which ships on their latest models.

But did you know that with a little work, you can back up your Mac to any Windows Home Server machine?

Brent Friedman has a walkthrough on his blog which is well worth checking out. Take a look and let us know how you get on.

More Info: Time Machine Backups to WHS


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Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • http://blog.civilslife.net Chris

    I'm guessing you mean https://brentf.com/blog/tutorials/time-machine-ba... as the only links in this post are internal.

  • Tom

    Thanks for the link update!

    These Tag/Category links are so annoying..
    Walkthough > You expect to get direct you the mentioned walkthough page.. :S

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/tezzer Terry Walsh

      Sorry! Link sorted.

  • http://www.serverinhuis.nl Marc Dieben

    This looks great, but we tried it over here with a Imac with Mac OX 10.5.7. and it did not work. We got the announcement "The disk could not be activated" when trying to back-up with Timemachine

    What are we doing wrong?

    Best regards,

    Marc Dieben

  • asperi

    As for me it is very hackky – I would not recommend to use anything similar, because it guaranties nothing, while you'll be blindly sure, that your data are safe. Even if it works during backup (or just now), it could fail during restore (or just tomorrow).
    In the case proprietary solution is not available, I would prefer manual alternative, eg. Carbon Copy Cloner or something.
    Just IMO. Your safety in your hands.

  • Brent Friedman

    @Marc Dieben,
    I replied to your post on my blog.

    @asperi,
    Yes, it is a hack and is totally unsupported by Apple. I'm not sure if this is how HP does it, but it works.

    • ViRGE

      From what I've seen, it looks like this is indeed how HP is doing it.

      For what it's worth, once I set it up correctly I've never had a problem. The only real downside to this method besides the tricky setup is that you can't do TS restores from non-modified systems, such as the installation disc.

      • asperi

        I've being used the HP's solution for almost a year, and can say for sure that they don't change anything in the system environment to fool the system or something, instead they provide completely proprietary solution (just see as their disk looks in Disk Utility). And this gives them possibility to evolve (eg. in v2.5 they added possibility to shrink and growth the disk without loss of backuped data – I love this feature). And I think they don't stop on this, so I'm eager for the next update.

        To the contrary the described hack is a dead way to nowhere. Are you on it? Good luck.

        • Brent Friedman

          Disk Image icons can be changed and/or overridden…

  • George Cook

    If you install macfuze on your mac you can read and write to ntfs drives. My macbook pro is part of my pc network. I do work on it and then upload thru the network to the whs shared folders. Using SuperDuper!, I backup directly to a folder in my users directory over a wifi connection. It's very easy.

  • Kevin

    Awesome works great thanks for the link.

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  • Dae

    Did the link to the article/blog about backing up a mac to windows home media server change?