Mac – Does the D-Link DIR-857 support streaming Time Machine backups from multiple machines

Networkroutertime-machine

I'm looking to replace my aging DIR-655 and the new DIR-857 looks appealing. This C-Net review has this to say about the USB port on the device:

SharePort is a useful feature of D-Link USB-equipped routers that enables the router to support any USB device as though it were connected to a network computer directly. Over time this technology has evolved from allowing only one computer to access the connected USB device at a time, to multiple access, and now, the ability to share data via the internet.

But I'm having a hard time finding any concrete details on how that port works and what it really supports. D-Link's product page is lean and so is their brochure.

  • Can I connect a drive array to this port such that multiple Macs in my network can do their remote Time Machine backups to that attached storage space?

  • Will it handle a HFS+ formatted file system?

And as a bonus:

  • Will it handle a Drobo?

I know none of the above is possible with the DIR-655 I have now.

Some clarifying points:

  • I realize I could do this with a TimeCapsule but I have all the disk on hand already with the Drobo and I happen to really like the features of the D-Link firmware (see my comments in Kyle's answer below for details)

  • Daniel Beck has found out that the SharePort software does work on Mac, but is it Time Machine friendly? There are non-Apple, remote storage devices that do support Time Machine (see this ReadyNAS FAQ for example) so is this similarly blessed and compatible?

Best Answer

Product description

According to the datasheet, it looks like this device's share functionality does not work with Macs at all, since you need to install a driver to get USB-via-Ethernet support. From the footer of the last page of the PDF you link to:

Minimum System Requirements

Computer with:

  • Windows® 76, Windows Vista®6, Windows® XP SP26, Windows® 20006, or Mac OS® X (v10.4)5 + Internet Explorer® v6 or Mozilla® Firefox® v3.0

And 5 translates to:

The software included with this product is not Mac-compatible.

SharePort drivers

There are SharePort drivers for OS X though:

  • This forum page links to a driver download for OS X up to 10.6.
  • This manual (zipped PDF) is linked as Additional downloads and also mentions support for OS X up to 10.6.

This is for the "USB via network" feature, so this might work. The advantage is that the file system on the drive should be transparent to the router just forwarding the USB connection. That's why they can say they support any USB device: They don't actually care what kind of device is connected.

Regular sharing

It doesn't look like this device has any regular sharing functionality. Wouldn't surprise me, given the networked USB feature.

Related Question