Getting TimeMachine to use an external drive on another Mac
I was trying to do this a couple of days ago and couldn’t find anything concrete on the Internet regarding my particular setup for how I wanted to use TimeMachine.
I have an iMac which is my main PC and an always on Mac Mini which is being used to play and store media connected to my TV. The Mini has a 2TB external drive and a partition on that drive of 500GB intended for TimeMachine for my iMac.
Problem was that I couldn’t get TimeMachine on my iMac to find the partition. This is how I got the setup to work:
- Enable File Sharing on the Mini from System Preferences->Sharing.
- Connect to the Mini using Finder on the iMac so you can browse all drives.
- In Terminal on the iMac, enter this command without the quotes: “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupporetworkVolumes 1”
- Open TimeMachine on the iMac. It should now find the external partitions on the Mini to use.
- Bear in mind that over a wireless G network, the initial backup can take a REALLY long time. I recommend doing this over Ethernet cable if possible.
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any data loss or damage to your computers as a result of these instructions.
One year later with an iPad
I brought an 32GB iPad 1 about a year ago with without having any clear purpose for it. At the time, I owned an iPhone 3G so it already seemed odd to own two iOS devices (I now have an Orange San Francisco Android) and on top of that, I also owned a Macbook making a total of three portable devices with overlap.
During the initial period, it really did feel like owning and maintaining a second giant iPhone as I was using the same apps albeit on larger screen. The only difference I noticed at the time was that Internet browsing was a much better experience and the general performance was a lot better.
I started to wonder why I brought the iPad in the first place.
Slowly, I started to realise that most of the things I do on my laptop which included web browsing, email and chat, could be done on the iPad.
Fixing my iPad 1 after updating to iOS5
After upgrading my iPad Gen1 to iOS5, I found it be extremely sluggish when typing and apps (especially Safari) were crashing constantly. I originally thought it was it was like when the iPhone 3G got the iOS4 upgrade which basically made it almost unusable and frustrating sluggish.
However, after a quick search, I found a thread in the Apple forums where a couple of people have replied with a ‘fix’ for this:
Hope it works out for everyone else.
