Modern equivalent to Time Capsule?

I am looking for a more automated backup device. Right now I use a Hitachi external hard drive. I connect it with a USB cable. That is acceptable for the Mac at the office, but it would be nice to have something at home that I could connect wirelessly through the local network. Time Capsule could do that. I see old Time Capsules for sale online. I do not know that I want to buy a device that is that old.

In storage I have a previous Mac Mini with a dead SATA drive. I could replace the drive easily enough if I could use the Mac as a surrogate Time Capsule. I am told that Macs do not work that way.

Is there any other device that accepts Time Machine backups over a LAN?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Apr 8, 2023 11:10 AM

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1 reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,434 points

Apr 8, 2023 12:57 PM in response to R_55a

Because Time Capsule was an Apple manufactured device, Apple controlled the software interaction between the Time Capsule firmware and macOS. Sure, there are NAS out there (e.g. Synology) that have a Time Machine compatible backup solution over the LAN, but they are not using current Apple software on the Synology server, they are using open source code that may not keep up with any changes Apple makes to Time Machine on macOS.

The consequences of using a NAS is that one firmware update to the NAS, or a point update to macOS could break your backups. This has been reported time and again over the years with different NAS implementations. I have had a Synology server in the basement with TBs of storage and not once have I used it for a Time Machine backup solution. I purchase suitably sized and fast external Crucial X8 SSDs for Time Machine backups and this has proven ultra reliable for me on several Macs with different versions of macOS.

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Modern equivalent to Time Capsule?