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I'm building my 3rd new Time Machine since October

So, I posted this from a page telling me how to run Time Machine in 2024. It just came up with an external hard drive, connected permanently to my MacBook Air, and not to be used for other things.


We've had a QNAP NAS for many years and I originally tried unsuccessfully to use it for Time Machine. Whenever I had a problem QNAP would blame Apple and Apple would blame QNAP. I gave up and bought a Time Capsule, which worked perfectly for 7 years, until it died last October. I was ready to buy a new one but Apple have dropped them. It recommended NAS as an alternative, so I tried again. My first Time Machine worked from 12 October 2023 to 4 January 2024. It wasn't till 10 January I realised it had stopped, and though the backup exists on the NAS, Time Machine can't recognise it and I built a new Time Machine yesterday. 14 hours later it has managed just 13% of the backup. I don't have control over the NAS and it's a matter of regular domestic dispute, which is another reason why I bought the Time Capsule.


Given my Time Capsule failed (luckily just AFTER I'd bought my MacBook Air and restored to it from a Time Machine backup), are there any cloud solutions people would recommend?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Air 15″, macOS 14.2

Posted on Jan 15, 2024 12:56 AM

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Jan 15, 2024 8:42 AM in response to ibirdlite

Please don't say NAS


Hard to avoid that, since the Time Capsule was in fact a simple NAS.


The closest that you will come to a Time Capsule these days is buy a Synology or upper end Asus router and then connect a simple USB drive to the USB port on the back of the router. Both Synology and Asus support Time Machine backups in this type of setup.


Sorry, but like it or not, this is a simple NAS arrangement.


Upside.....Both Synology and Asus use USB3 ports, so backups will run about twice as fast compared to backups to a Time Capsule.


Downside.....You may not need a new router.


There may be other routers that support Time Machine in the same way, but I am not aware of them.


Bottom line......if you want to back up using Time Machine over a network......some sort of a NAS will be involved. I know of no cloud solutions that support Time Machine, but I haven't spend any time looking because I know that will never use it.








Jan 15, 2024 11:16 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks for responding. I'm not planning to buy any new NAS since there is a QNAP NAS on the premises. I'm looking for something that works better with Time Machine, and ideally a cloud solution. Over the course of today I think I've concluded that TimeMachine is becoming increasingly irrelevant, without Time Capsule or Airport. I'm surprised there isn't a cloud solution from Apple, since they sell cloud subscriptions. I'm now trialling Carbon Copy Cloner, and looking at something like BackBlaze for a cloud backup. Happy to hear any views on the efficacy of this ...

I'm building my 3rd new Time Machine since October

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