LaPastenague if French for Stingray.. My name is Ray.. I Sting people!! 😁
Mostly not even deliberately.. might be something in my nature. If I get stepped on, I just swim away but there is a barb in the tail.
It is a long story.
Thanks for the precise answer to all my questions.
The problem has affected both your home & work environment even though you are using completely different USB units.. that suggests the problem is fundamental to the nature of the beastie. I think USB drives will generally behave this way.
- Unplugging the drive itself does nothing. You need to unplug the power from the TC
Hmmm that means the problem is the firmware of the TC itself.
To fix it is not really possible unless we can find some factor that is common that is able to changed.
I would try a USB hub.. just because it is the cheapest way to change your setup that might help things work better.. definitely powered hub.. not a passive one.
- When I spoke to Apple I enquired about NAS but was told that Time Machine doesn't support NAS.
That is one of those Jedi (political) statements that is sort of true.. from a certain point of view.
Since Apple did not make Time Machine support NAS.. the people who make the NAS made their products support TM.
There is not a single decent NAS brand on the market that does not support TM with varying degrees of success..
I run a synology NAS.. and it is equal to the TC. As you can see (DiskStation is typical Synology name).. has had stable backups running to it since Nov 2014. Never turned a hair.
In an office I would definitely use a Synology NAS.. (there are other brands and alternatives of course).
Buy a 4 disk model and put 4 disks (from the recommend list) in it if you have the ready to do it.. cost you about $1000-$1500 depending on disks. So you have full redundant RAID setup. However these boxes have incredibly flexible setup so adding disks is possible at later point in time.. if you don't have the ready to outlay immediately for what you need.. disks can be added. I am running a single disk.. it is just about due for a second disk to be added. The main thing is not to skimp.. buy a 4 disk model.. so you have expansion space. You can use a USB drive to backup the NAS.. backup is built into the NAS software.. you can then do something you should be doing now.. swap the USB drive each week and keep one off site.. so the business can keep all its data intact in the case of fire/flood/theft etc. The most recent week can be cloud stored.
Alternatives.. run a Mac mini (with server extension although it is not actually required).. that will give you central network TM storage.. The problem is using USB hard disks is about the only way to add capacity to it.. Thunderbolt disk array will cost more than a NAS.. so it is not really a great solution cost wise.
There is one other thing I would do.. Buy a USB3 1TB hard disk (the portable external type), Toshiba, Touro, etc.. lots of good brands. for every Mac.. and create a bootable clone of the drive using a backup software like Carbon Copy Cloner. (Chronosync will also do it). This is a full backup that takes the place of the internal boot drive.. it means a dead or corrupted hard disk can be instantly replaced by simply booting the backup. If you have never done it.. give it a go.. download CCC.. free to use for a month.. create a bootable clone of your hard disk to a suitably sized USB.. and then boot from it.
You can do a clone to a central drive but you cannot network boot a Mac.. and you will need a disk for each Mac if you want it to be bootable. (although if you have several identical macs.. you can boot any of them from the one disk.. and then restore from the backup.).
- More generally, does a NAS operate correctly under a Poweplug network (home situation) or does it require 'true' ethernet?
Power plug is no problem.. it is of course slow.. where gigabit ethernet is now so much faster.
For home I do not think you need the same level of redundancy and the occasional reboot is not such a problem.. in fact.. with a bit of trickery.. a mains timer can be used.. it will shut off your TC and USB drive at 2am every day.. and turn it back on at 2.01am.. primitive.. agricultural type solution.. a clock timer might cost you $10.. it is not the best solution because the disk could be spinning at 2am.. which is not good.. so you will need to perhaps get a fancy clock that does weekly.. We have done this kind of stuff for many years.. in the early days of routers that were unreliable.
