Time Machine on QNAP

Time Machine backups are not supported on network storage (except Time Capsule).

Unles QNAP guarantees it will recover all of your data for free when their system fails, I wouldn't trust my backups to that system.

Maybe this will help.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4224325

I have deleted all backups on NAS and restarted time machine but when i try to reconnect on imac i just get a spinning disk

Is the MacBook doing the same thing?

You might try removing the drive as a backup disc in System Preferences/Time Machine, restarting, and then add it back.

Have you tried shutting doewn the NAS drive and restarting it?

philx wrote:

. . .

I have deleted all backups on NAS and restarted time machine but when i try to reconnect on imac i just get a spinning disk

I think I need to start completly again and make my macs completely forget i ever had a time machine connection

You might want to try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

But note that a lot of folks are having trouble with QNAP NASs and Time Machine. Some seem to have it working fairly well, but others are having a number of problems, especially finding the backups corrupted on the monthly verification procedure and having to start over. There's some speculation it's using an old version of NetaTalk, but I don't have one and don't know if that's true or not.

I understand they recently released a new version of their software, but have also seen a couple of posts saying it's actually worse. It may vary, of course, depending on conditions. A few reverted to the previous version.

Barney-15E wrote:

Time Machine backups are not supported on network storage (except Time Capsule).

That's not exactly so.

AppleCare (and Apple Stores) don't support it, meaning, they don't have access to the hardware so can't test, much less replicate problems so the software gurus can find the problem. There are a whole lot of NAS makes, models, and software versions, so supporting them in that sense would require all sorts of hardware and training. The same is true of printers, scanners, U.P.S. systems, and the like.

But they are supported in the sense that Apple publishes the specifications for developers. If the NAS maker implements AFP file sharing and the special requirements for Time Machine properly, it will work. But it's a crapshoot -- when the requirements change, the NAS maker may not have updates available immediately, if at all.

Personally, my suspicion is that making it work well is not a big deal to the NAS makers -- it's just another way to sell hardware. So it will work when they test, but in the real world, when things go wrong, especially when there are power or network problems, their programming may not be doing exactly what TM expects, so all sorts of things may go wrong.