I've been looking at a WD My Cloud NAS drive as a replacement for an old 1TB Time Capsule. for my brother who has 2 MacBooks running Big Sur. A lot of my research has indicated that using a non-Apple NAS to back up with Time Machine is not reliable. Since Apple no longer makes the Time Capsule, what can he use? Anyone out there doing TM backups to a network drive?
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
As a best chance of success, the NAS manufacturer must declare that it supports the “Time Machine over SMB specification.”
If it merely claims it supports Time Machine, or even that it can backup Time machine using SMB, that may not indicate it does support the specification.
If it shows that it runs Samba v. 4.8 or later, it should support Time Machine over SMB.
I’ve been backing up over the network to a drive connected to my Mini since Time Machine was introduced. I now have an M1 Mini hosting the drives. Never had any problems.
It sounds like your brother doesn’t have a desktop Mac from which to host, so hopefully someone here is using a NAS that works, both backup and restore.
I’ve been working with Synology and Time Machine, and have has no issues.
FreeNAS /TrueNAS also lists Time Machine support, though I’ve not used that.
MrHoffman wrote:
I’ve been working with Synology and Time Machine, and have has no issues.
I just posted on another thread that I have never seen anyone post any success stories, here (not that I would expect them on this type of site). Now, there is one.
This sounds like a possible option... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784
Connect an external USB drive to the USB connection on a Time Capsule. My brother has a spare USB drive we can test. I'll let you know if that works.
It would be nice if someone on the Forum is actually using a specific unit that works and is reliable. Since Apple no longer sells an external network connected device for TM, I would expect Apple might suggest something?
Thanks
I’ve been backing up over the network to a drive connected to my Mini since Time Machine was introduced. I now have an M1 Mini hosting the drives. Never had any problems.
So with that said... I have an iMac with connected external drives. How can I use that setup to do Time Machine backups from my wife's MBP and my MBP? Right now we each have external drives that we manually connect and back up to. How do I "see" those drives on the iMac from my Time Machine setup?
I created a single Sharing Only user for Time Machine drives.
Sorry, not sure I understand this. Are you saying I need to create a new user account on the iMac just for Time Machine? My wife and I already have user accounts on that mac. Or is a "sharing user" something else? Thanks.
Sorry, not sure I understand this. Are you saying I need to create a new user account on the iMac just for Time Machine? My wife and I already have user accounts on that mac. Or is a "sharing user" something else? Thanks.
I was describing what I did. You don't have to do that. If both of you have an account on the iMac, you can use those. I just created the Sharing Only user so I could just use that one user for all network backups--and not have to create accounts on the host computer. If you already have those accounts, use them.
Add the drives to Sharing System prefs, File Sharing. I created a single Sharing Only user for Time Machine drives.
Ctrl-click on the shared drive in File Sharing and select Advanced. Set it as a Time Machine drive.
You should be able to select it from Time Machine on the laptops.
If it doesn’t show up, try connecting to it in Finder using the username and password you added in File Sharing.
What NAS to use for Time Machine?
