NAS drives for Time Machine backups

A NAS (Drive refers to the hard disk inside the NAS or the type of HDD made specifically for NAS), can be used for Time Machine backup with almost any wireless router.

We do actually recommend Synology NAS to people as a replacement for the Time Capsule as it has proved very reliable and Synology has gone to some effort to make sure it conforms to Apple's SMB2/3 requirements on the later OS.

Some routers like Synology and high end Asus also do support Time Machine.

As an example, the Nighthawk series has many, many issues reported with Time Machine but all seem to revolve around using USB, not an NAS drive

Yes, Netgear has in general done poorly with Time Machine but it can also affect a NAS plugged into the router due to poor handling of bonjour packets which is needed for the Mac to determine network resources.

Just a bit more info to mention that the Synology router and the upper end Asus routers will allow you to connect a USB 3.0 drive to the USB port on the router and back up using Time Machine in that manner.......since both Synology and Asus support Time Machine backups in this type of setup.

Downside.......you will have 2 separate products......a router and a hard drive for the setup.....not a single package.

Upside......if the hard drive fails, the router still works, and if the router fails, the hard drive still has your backups.

I'll look at ASUS too now.

I did extensive testing and did not find the Asus very reliable on Time Machine to a USB drive plugged into the router itself.

For a NAS it is fine.. I have exactly this setup .. a Synology NAS with Asus router and it works great.

I think a lot of the problem is Time Machine and would therefore recommend an alternative like Carbon Copy Cloner if you do try the Asus with USB drive setup...

Cost wise the cheapest solution is definitely a router like Asus or better still the Synology RT2600AC with a good USB3 hard disk plugged in. The Synology router firmware is directly linked to the development of the NAS firmware. And it is around the same backup speed as the internal disk in the Time Capsule .. much much faster than using USB port on any Airport router.

A NAS is a lot more expensive solution. It is however much faster although that is by the bye when on wireless backup as you really need to be using ethernet to gain full potential. NAS also has loads more functionality. Some of the Apps that are available on the Synology are excellent. e.g. surveillance station. So the economics of it can work out if you are prepared to go in non-Apple direction of using local file storage etc.. where Apple is pushing iCloud.