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I have a NAS device attached to my router. I'm using it as a backup device for my Mac Book Pro. I'm getting the following error:

The backup disk image /Volumes/SHARE-1/MacBookPro.sparsebundle could not be created (error -36).

I'm not sure what the problem is. The NAS device is a Buffalo external device with a SMB (FAT) format. Could this be the problem?

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  • Have you upgraded anything on the MBP recently?
    – user17065
    Commented Jan 14, 2012 at 15:31
  • No John, haven't updated anything. Its running Mac OS X version 10.6.8.
    – Stephen
    Commented Jan 14, 2012 at 16:05

1 Answer 1

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Yes, the FAT is the problem. Time Machine needs an HFS+ formatted drive.

That's quite logical, since files copied from your HFS+ system have many attributes that could not be handled by the FAT filesystem, not even counting the files too long, or the characters that could not be accepted as a valid filename on FAT drives :)

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  • Thanks MattiSG, is there anyway I can partition the harddrive and format one partition to HFS+ ?
    – Stephen
    Commented Jan 14, 2012 at 18:38
  • @Stephen Well, that's another question. If this answer answered your question (Could [the FAT filesystem] be the problem?), you should upvote and validate it ;) Then, either simply fire up Disk Utility (in the Applications/Utilities folder), or you should ask this question as a new one seeing this is a NAS, and I don't how Disk Utility handles network volumes.
    – MattiSG
    Commented Jan 14, 2012 at 23:01
  • Thanks for the help Matt, I might post another question. Yes, your right Dick Utility does not support network volumes.
    – Stephen
    Commented Jan 15, 2012 at 18:50
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    Time Machine in Mountain Lion defaults to creating a sparse bundle disk image when backing up to ZFS (ZEVO beta). Whilst the question is specific to Snow Leopard, it may be worth reviewing this answer to see whether 10.8 similarly allows a sparse bundle disk image on FAT.
    – Graham Perrin
    Commented Jul 27, 2012 at 6:46

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