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My new Lacie D2 Network drive is Time Machine compatible. That means it’s really easy to setup with Time Machine – no hacks required, it just gets detected.

However, Time Machine is clearly designed for drives that are used ONLY for Time Machine. This is great when you have a drive that is dedicated to backing up a single machine, but this device being a NAS, the point is to use it for multiple computers, and multiple purposes.

The easiest way I’ve found to limit the size that time machine will use is to:

1) Create the share where you want to host your Time Machine files, make sure you make it Time Machine compatible.
2) Enable Time Machine. It will create the file and start ‘Preparing’. As soon as you can confirm the .sparsebundle file has been created in the share, stop time machine, and disable it.
3) Copy the filename of the sparsebundle file. (It should be something similar to your hostname_mac_of_eth_card – but I figured it’s easier to copy it.)
4) Open a terminal and run this command. Replace the comment and the filename by your own of course, as well well as the size of the volume we’re creating. In my case, I created a 40gig volume for my Hackintosh, since I don’t keep much there. You can create the file locally, it won’t really take 40g (or whatever space you specify) as it is only a maximum.


hdiutil create -size 40g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of Blah" blah_000000000000.sparsebundle


5) Move that file on the share you created for Time Machine purposes.
6) Turn on Time Machine and point it to that share again. It will discover the file, it should start backing up to it, and should not go over the space you assigned to it. That way you can fully use your NAS to backup many computers while keeping some space for music and videos !

Hi Everyone,

I know a lot of you were waiting to see how my MSI Wind Desktop built NAS would pan out. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble finding an MSI Wind Desktop, and I decided I wanted a simpler solution.

In the end, I decided to buy a 1TB Lacie D2 Network drive.

It supports multiple protocols (SMB, AFP, FTP, HTTP), is Time Machine compatible, does not have a fan (the big metal casing is used as a heatsink) and is pretty close to dead silent.

I will use it to:
1. Host music and videos to stream to ps3 (excluding files that need to be transcoded obviously)
2. Download big torrents without leaving computers on
3. Backup my Macbook pro, Hackintosh, and a Windows machine

This is a post that will get updated as I get shafted by incredibly poor service from companies, or stellar service.

1) Bell… ok now you know the first section is the NEGATIVE one.

Throttling, DNS Hijacking, Saying they are coming to fix my dry-loop DSL between 5 and 9pm and not showing up (I have an ADSL through Teksavvy).

2) Micro-Boutique (at dix30)
Some of the worst service I’ve ever seen in a computer store. I’d rather get a Mac at Futureshop than there. Took over 30minutes of arguing over a 35$ rubber iPod case that plain didn’t fit properly. They didn’t want to take it back because I had used the screen protector (which you have to install before you put the case on). They couldn’t replace it as the WHOLE BATCH was messed up (iSkin), yet refused to reimburse me for about 30minutes.
When I informed the employee that the case was badly molded, and that I had read on some forums that other people had issues with it, I was told that “This is plain FALSE, we sold a lot of them and they’re FINE”.
Thanks for saying I’m a liar before even checking it out.

Oh, also, when the iPhone 3g was released, they told me, 3 times in a row, that they would ABSOLUTELY have cases for it TOMORROW.

Just bought a Macbook ..from the Apple store.

3) Mobilia
Great furniture, crappy service. My couch has been late for about 2 weeks now, which is not that bad of an issue. What’s bad is I went there two times, to told that the manager would call me the next day. He never did.

Oh, and apparently they ordered only 2 couches but sold 3, so someone is getting the shaft.

http://www.bbb.org/kitchener/business-reviews/furniture-retail/mobilia-thomasville-in-pointe-claire-qc-1034196#ratingdetails

Their awesome BBB rating seems to show I’m not the only one having issues with them.

I was going to get more furniture to match the couch I got from there if I ever receive it, but it’ll have to be somewhere else.

Now, the good ones!

1) Teksavvy
Even though they have to go through Bell’s ADSL network to provide customers with service, they always answer prompty and try their best to fix your problem. It’s sad Bell’s bad service is hurting them, and I hope Bell is forced into playing fair.

2) Zaino Canada
The best products to polish a car, and it ships out so fast I got the stuff the second day after I ordered. Twice.

More to come…

I have just upgraded my Macbook pro to 10.5.8.

I didn’t use the combo update for two reasons:

1) My ADSL is totally messed up, waiting for Bell to fix it, so 700+megs is insane for an update
2) I figured that since my OS X install was about a WEEK OLD that it could handle updates easily.

The install went fine, I rebooted.. and now I can’t even launch Firefox 3.5 !

Update: I rebooted a second time, and now Firefox seems to work fine. My spotlight index appears to be wiped, which I assume is normal.

Weird.

Here’s my new PGP key, valid until August 1st, 2014. Yeah, I’m kind of sick of generating new ones yearly.

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