NAS

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Level 1

8 points

NAS

Running out of room on my 3 TB time capsule and looking to add network attached storage to my home office network. Taking about networking 2 MacBook pros, a mac mini (with fusion drive) and a new iMac, 2 iPads, an Apple TV and 3 iphones. Re: purchasing a new NAS, unsure of implications of APFS and High Sierra. Questions include whether the manufacturer needs to specify the NAS is APFS compliant; whether you can run mixed Sierra and High Sierra macs (i.e. HFS+ and APFS) on the same NAS using time machine; whether APFS will play nice with my mac mini's fusion drive if I convert to High Sierra; and so on. Common sense would dictate I wait a few months to watch the rollout of APFS and new operating systems all around but I have some time limited project money to spend on the NAS. Looking at systems from Synology and WD My Cloud.

Airport Time Capsule 802.11ac, iOS 10.3.3, not really re: this product

Posted on Sep 6, 2017 7:06 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,826 points

Sep 6, 2017 7:46 AM in response to bckendall

To learn how to use Time Machine please read Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support. Non-Apple NAS devices are not supported and will not work.

If you want to use Apple's Time Machine software for backups, then don't purchase a non-Apple NAS. It will never be reliable, despite what their manufacturers claim.
If you want to use a non-Apple NAS for backups, then don't use Apple's Time Machine software. Use something else. No backup solution is as well integrated with macOS as is Time Machine though.

Your stated goal is to back up multiple Macs. That's perfectly acceptable to Time Machine, but the solution is to use multiple backup devices, not one large backup device. You can add additional Time Capsules to your network as clients, or simply purchase additional USB hard disk drives and connect them to the Time Capsule through a powered hub. That latter solution is by far the least expensive alternative. Unlike the NAS devices you proposed using, it is unequivocally supported by Apple, and is guaranteed to work.

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