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Apr 24, 2016 9:27 PM in response to Browneye9999by White Dragon,Well, I continued to research the problem this evening and I fixed the problem on my 10.11.4 system. I deleted the arp cache by starting the Terminal app and using the following command:
sudo arp -a -d
I then restarted my MacBook and had no problem connecting to my WD My Cloud using "Connect to Server..."...
I think it is entirely possible that El Capitan has a problem with arp cache management.
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May 2, 2016 4:32 AM in response to John Galtby surgicalfanatic,Hi John,
Are you saying the NAS devices sold in Apple Store (online) won't work either? If what you say is true, it would seem to me that Apple should withdraw these devices from sale as it amounts to a misleading selling practice, viz: with the knowledge that TM won't work with a third party NAS but at the same time selling third party NAS for the purpose of TM backup.
In all fairness, Apple can't work in a vacuum if they seriously want to fit in with computing / network technologies used across the industry whether in the home, small to medium business or a global enterprise. Conservatively one could say that Apple only has less than 10% of computing market and probably less of networking so no matter how much confidence fanboys have in Apple, they are not in a position to dictate to the larger share of the market. At some point Apple has to accommodate the rest of the market - if they want to remain relevant.
Of course the elephant in the room is that home and small business users want reliable network drives with full redundancy and to think that Apples limited data storage solutions satisfy this is putting and keeping your head in the sand.
Hope you get to see the problem that other forum uses are so frustrated about and wanting a real workable solution to.
Cheers
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May 2, 2016 5:28 AM in response to surgicalfanaticby VikingOSX,The only two ethernet storage solutions sold in the online Apple Store are Time Capsules by Apple. Everything else as of this post date are discrete external USB3, or Thunderbolt drives, and expensive Thunderbolt Storage arrays. Other than the Apple products, all of these (with proper formatting) are compatible with Apple's Time Machine because they are physically attached products, and no opensource AFP, as implemented by third-party NAS providers, even enters the equation.
I have a Synology Diskstation downstairs. It too offers a Time Machine backup solution using the opensource Netatalk AFP. I do not use it for Time Machine for that reason.
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May 2, 2016 3:14 PM in response to VikingOSXby surgicalfanatic,Thanks for the clarification Viking. What you say may be so but don't ignore the elephant in the room that users want a NAS with redundancy and Apple limits available options to Airport Time Capsule (note similar network issues exist for this device described in support forums) or a wired device (wires, hooked up to your Mac!! you've got to be kidding!!). Solutions that are hardly satisfactory for prosumers, or businesses of any kind / size.
I note that you have a "Synology Diskstation downstairs" and assume that you therefore have a need for network connectivity with redundancy and use it with Apple devices. You must be disappointed that TM doesn't work on the box and have to use all sorts of tweeks to fit it in to your Apple environment. This gets to my point about Apples relevance to the wider market of networking and infrastructure and your message merely demonstrates that Apple is isolating itself whilst the behemoth of the market moves in another direction of openness and portability.
Regards
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May 7, 2016 4:42 PM in response to surgicalfanaticby phrodrigues,Hello,
I too started having problems with accessing my Qnap drive on my mbp with 10.11.4, using AFP... and it wasn't because of an OS update!
After having synched my iphone photo lib to Photos (the library is on the Qnap), I opened up iTunes to sync the phone (its library is also on Qnap), as usual.
The first time it accessed the iTunes library and I started updating apps. Somewhere in this process, the folder stopped being accessible...
And since then, I can connect to the server, select the drive and open it from the Finder but the file list doesn't show up.
And clicking on the drive to unmount it for example, results in a spinning wheel for a long time, until it finally decides it can no longer access the shared folder.
I've tried everything from restarting the NAS to clearing the ARP cache on the mac, to no avail...
Accessing the drives via SMB seems to be working fine.
Now my 2 cents on using a NAS for TimeMachine, Photos and iTunes library storage.
My current setup has been like this for about 3 iPads (4, Air2 and now Pro) and as much iPhones (5, 6 and 6s) (or was until it stopped working):
- Time Machine: a HFS+ sparse bundle image file on a Qnap shared folder. Time Machine was setup via command line and it works like a charm! (this is still working correctly, as I write this it's backing up the drive). Not sure if it's accessing it via SMB or AFP, but when required to, Time Machine looks for the network drive, mounts it, backs up and dismounts it.
In the past, I used Qnap TimeMachine solution, but it didn't work that well... it tended to corrupt something had from time to time, the backup had to be done from scratch instead of just incremental, which was a drag.
- Photos library: also a HFS+ sparse bundle image file on a Qnap shared folder. Photo (or iPhotos at the time) had all sorts of issues if the library was not on a HFS+ drive - and Qnap shared folders aren't. I had the drive that contained the sparse bundle file set up as a login item, and the mounted image also as a login item. So upon start up, the shared drive would mount and also the image file.
- iTunes library is just a plain shared folder on the Qnap and it's been working fine.
I'm trying to mode this also to a sparse bundle file as it is much easier and quicker to manage. If you want to back it up to an external drive, for example, you're copying only 1 big file, instead of thousands of music, album cover, movies and whatnot files.
So you can use a storage solution for your Apple stuff other than the products Apple offers. I've been doing it for several year now!
Cheers
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May 8, 2016 5:37 AM in response to phrodriguesby surgicalfanatic,Hi there Phrodrigues,
Thanks for putting so much effort into outlining your experience with the Apple products we all use and want to securely backup and access on our networks. My household has used Apple since 2003 and we currently have phones, desktops, laptops and tablets and I've got to say that it is starting to frustrate me that Apple, seemingly represented by senior bloggers (we don't seem to get much official input from Apple itself) chooses to ignore and not fit in with the bigger technology marketplace out there. It's easy to say that problems arise from other vendors not taking account of the apple approach or guidelines but realistically, it seems to me that even after all their successes Apple is a small cog in a big wheel so should be more prepared to work with the wider marketplace rather than pontificating about their "superior" approach.
Long term, people like me and all users in their household gets to a point where benefits of moving with the larger mainstream of technology (and there are increasingly more choices by very responsive companies out there now) outweighs the benefits of Apple "cool" and Apples "integrated" universe. Don't get me talking about the problems of iCloud Photo Library - what a problematic joke of a product.
Anyway, thanks again
Cheers
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by John Lockwood,May 9, 2016 3:40 AM in response to Browneye9999
John Lockwood
May 9, 2016 3:40 AM
in response to Browneye9999
Level 6 (9,379 points)
Servers EnterpriseAs I am sure will have been mentioned in earlier posts, various NAS manufacturers including QNAP use the open-source NetAtalk software to provide AFP (Apple Filesharing Protocol) services. Apple have when releasing newer versions of OS X made changes to their AFP protocol such that sometimes NetAtalk has needed to be updated to match these changes. The various NAS makers have therefore needed to wait for NetAtalk updates and then incorporate them in to their own software. Somewhat recently QNAP issued a bigger update to the software for their main NAS boxes - this software is called QTS by the way.
See https://www.qnap.com/qts/4.2/
It may be the case that the latest version which appears to be 4.2.1 might now have caught up enough to help out.
It does not help but of the three major NAS makers NetGear has or at least had the reputation of being more punctual about updating their copy of NetAtalk.
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May 15, 2016 11:57 PM in response to John Galtby John Kilpatrick,Mr. "Galt" (whatever your name is): You are mistaken.
Please see:
Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support
Time Machine can back up the data on your Mac to these backup disks:
- An external USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive connected to your Mac
- An AirPort Time Capsule's built-in drive (any model)
- An external USB drive connected to an AirPort Time Capsule (any model) or AirPort Extreme (802.11ac model only)
- Network volumes connected using Apple File Protocol (AFP)
This article was last updated on Sep 23, 2015. Therefore it's not like you were correct when you wrote this.
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Aug 10, 2016 1:39 PM in response to Browneye9999by dversion,Try disabling BACK TO MY MAC on both machines and rebooting...
SC
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Oct 2, 2016 3:09 PM in response to White Dragonby docduck,Thanks. Same fix works when upgrading to Sierra, at least for my Qnap NAS (sudo arp -a -d in Terminal). It looks like the cache needs flushing and reconnecting in Finder ("Connect as" button) whenever the OS is installed. Ignore everyone who says "Apple only support TimeCapsule for network TimeMachine backups."