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I use a Synology DS920+ And have been very happy with it. I have time machine running for several MacBooks. I also use it as a Jellyfin server.
The Synology setup is easy and it is smooth to add new drives. Just remember to add the smallest drives first. If you have two 4 tb drives setup, don’t buy a 2tb drive to add more space, but going up to an 8 is no problem.
We have a couple of Synology NAS at the office (I forget the models). One is geared towards data sharing on the LAN and the other is used by our off-site employees. We managed to get a git server running which is nice, but that's an interesting idea to use them for Time Machine. As it stands, we just issue everyone a personal TM external drive and call it a day, but I might look into this.
It was pretty easy to set up. There was a time machine setting somewhere that makes it so the Mac will just see it as a viable backup location.
Having everyone’s TM on the NAS would make it easy to set up some sort of offsite mirror as well.
I just googled Synology Time Machine setup or something and there were a ton of guides.
+1. Have same setup.
I use unraid and used it for Time Machine back ups.
I also use it for smb shares. For captureone libraries and apps, like renpy games
Start with 2 8tb wd red they’re 122$ on Amazon right now. One parity and one data. You’ll have 8 tb to use.
Then pick up and eBay pc 8th gen or more from dell or Lenovo or hp for about 200. 8th get i5 allows a good plex setup for media sharing
Best Buy also has easily shuckable 14TB and 18TB EasyStore WD Reds for $200 and $250 right now.
Be careful buying drive you intend to shuck for a NAS. It is hard to tell if they are SMR or not, and if they are the NAS will throw errors from time to time. I would say if you already have the drives go ahead and try it out, but if you are buying new, get some that are designed for a NAS.
I believe this fits two drive you can expand it more if you transplant to a new case and psu. I’m at 8 drives
I forgot to add you can add drives of different sizes and just keep adding it down the road i gave a mix of 3,4, 6 and 8 tb drives over the years as they got cheaper
The easy thing is to get a NAS like Synology or Terramaster. You can definitely build one from tutorials online, but I’m at a stage in life where I don’t have the time.
I have set one up for Time Machine in the past, but have switched to CCC direct to the NAS.
I had a home built NAS running first FreeNAS and then Ubuntu, but eventually switched to a Synology which I am very happy with. Saturates my 10gb network and is super easy to manage and set up stuff like network time machine volumes.
Some good options here. I’m a fan of TrueNAS from iX Systems. Very easy to build your own but I’ll admit my last box I just bought their mini and put in my own disks.
I’d avoid QNAP although they’ll do the job.
If you want something more turn-key, go for a Synology box. Go for something with at least 2 drives like a DS220j for less than $200 or the slightly better DS223 for about $250. Just pop whatever drives you want in there, I’d suggest server-grade, NAS drives or SSD for better reliability. Setting this up to work with Time Machine is very easy and there are tons of walkthroughs online for setting that up.
For a more DIY approach, you can build a TrueNAS box (formerly FreeNAS). Tons of tutorials you can follow online that will tell you everything you need to go this route.
One thing to note, a NAS will only be available on your home network without additional configuration. TailScale is my recommendation if this is something you want to do.
My router has a USB port and supports time machine backups over Wi-Fi. I just connected an external hard drive and it works very well. It ended up being the easiest solution for me without needing to invest in a whole NAS.
If you aren’t already, you may want to use a solid state external drive or be sure that your router it allows the hard drive the sleep. I killed 3 external drives by doing this before I realized what the issue was.
I did notice that it wasn’t sleeping properly, so I just SSH in and kill the offending process as needed. The issue only comes back following a restart, but otherwise the HDD works great. The disk is asleep unless I am actively backing up or using it.
I also have an offline external SSD I use as a redundant backup to be safe.