What NAS drives are recommended for Time Machine?

For Time Machine specifically, I would stick with Synology unless you have a reason to choose something else. Apple currently requires a NAS to support Time Machine over SMB, and Synology has mature Time Machine support.

For a home with one or two Macs, the Synology DS225+ is a good choice. If you need more capacity or want room for several Macs, look at the DS425+ or a larger 4/5-bay Synology. The older DS224+ is also still a perfectly reasonable Time Machine NAS if you find one at a good price.

QNAP is another good option, particularly the TS-264, but I'd choose Synology for a straightforward Time Machine setup because DSM is generally easier to configure.

One important point: RAID is not a backup of the NAS. RAID 1 protects against a drive failure, but you should still have another backup of important data.

Also, don't buy an old NAS just because it advertises "Time Machine" support. Make sure it supports Time Machine over SMB. Apple says AFP-based NAS Time Machine backups are no longer recommended and will not be supported in macOS 27.

If this is just for one Mac, a NAS may actually be overkill. A large USB SSD/HDD connected directly to the Mac is simpler and usually more reliable.

BobHarris wrote:

I have Synology.

UGREEN has been getting some traction.

No matter what you decide, ONLY use disks rated as NAS or Enterprise. DO NOT use consumer drives, as consumer drives fail in a NAS because of the vibrations from adjacent drives, and the more demanding use in a NAS.

I would add:

Also avoid any NAS drives which use SMR (aka Shingled Magnetic Recording) since they are horrendously slow.

WD is notorious for making it difficult to determine which of their drives use SMR and which use CMR (aka Conventional Magnetic Recording).

Personally I've been using Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives because of the silly tricks & games WD plays & the off/on quality of WD (granted Seagate had some really bad years between 2011 and 2020, but seems to have come back).

https://www.seagate.com/products/nas-drives/ironwolf-hard-drive/

Here are the two WD NAS drive models utilizing CMR for reference:

https://www.westerndigital.com/solutions/network-attached-storage/nas-hard-drives

Here is the WD Red drive you want to avoid at all costs because it is SMR (see how confusing WD is):

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/recertified/internal-drives/wd-red-sata-hdd-recertified?sku=RWD20EFAX

I have Synology.

UGREEN has been getting some traction.

No matter what you decide, ONLY use disks rated as NAS or Enterprise. DO NOT use consumer drives, as consumer drives fail in a NAS because of the vibrations from adjacent drives, and the more demanding use in a NAS.

FWIW, I currently use a Synology 4-bay NAS for this. I have been doing so ever since Apple discontinued the Time Capsule. No regrets.

In addition to the Synology, I have successfully been making Time Machine (TM) backups to my Raspberry Pi's. For that, I use the RPi 4 model that runs "headless". It hosts the Open Media Vault (OMV) file server app. Connected to the Pi's USB port is my TM backup destination drive ... a WD MyPassport.

jimwarner wrote:

Recommendations for NAS drives for Time Machine

YouTube channel NAScompares has lots of videos on this topic.

Synology is a good choice, though is moving to vendor-branded storage.

If you have your own hardware, ZimaOS might interest.

If you want a gateway into Ubiquiti Unifi gear (cameras, sensors, networking, Wi-Fi), the UNAS series might interest.

Local preference for HDDs are the WD (formerly HGST, Hitachi, IBM) Ultrastar DC drives.

Synology offers a quality product line which supports Time Machine.

There are others which I’m sure will be posted shortly.

Nice setup.

Ditto on the Synology recommendations.

(I have the 5-bay model fitted w/ Synology “Enterprise” HDDs)