Step 2: Manually Create a Time Machine "Drive"

Type the folloing command into your Terminal window:

mkdir tmtmp; cd tmtmp

tmtmp is just a temporary directory and you could name it anything you like, as we will only be using it briefly.

Now, for the real trick. Time Machine stores backups in a special format called a "Sparse Bundle."  What you'll be doing here is telling your Mac to create one of these manually.  In order to do this, though, you'll need the following pieces of information:

• the MAC adress of you network card and
• the Bonjour name of your Mac.

The Bonjour name of your Mac can be found easily.  Just navigate to System Preferences, then Sharing, and you will see displayed the name you will need.

Navigate to your Sharing Preferences...
Your Bonjour name is the name before the ".local" extension.

Now, you'll need to find your MAC address.

Click on the Apple symbol in the upper left hand side of your screen, and click "More Info." 

Then, click on the Network tab, and locate the proper MAC address next to your primary network connection. 

You could also type "ifconfig en0" (or en1, en2, etc) in a Terminal window to display the same information... follow the keyword "ether" in the displayed results.

Now you can create the Sparse Bundle with the following Terminal command:

hdiutil create -size 100g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup" "YourBonjourName_xxxxxxxxxxxx.sparsebundle"

In this example, the "x's" represent your MAC address without dividers.

With the parameter -size 100g you are reserving 100GB for the backup before Time Machine starts to override old backups.  As such, you should choose a size big enough to make a first backup of your Mac.  My Mac has a 250GB hard disk and I have chosen 300g for the -size parameter.  You can choose any size you like that will fit your needs.

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