Time Capsule or NAS?

[Koing]

So what do you guys use for local backups? An apple Time Capsule or a NAS with time machine functionality? What are your experiences?

I've had grief with my qnap TS210 with the me being on Mavericks now. I can grab a 2TB time capsule off ebay for about £115 or get a Synology 2 bay NAS for about £120 with no drive. I already have a 1TB drive. I'd get more functionality with the Synology. I'd use the torrent client and dlna with my PS3. I could dump my movies on to it and get it working that way.

Koing

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have a FreeNAS box with AFP and Time Machine functionality. Two macbooks and two PC desktops back up to it.

One caveat (I don't know if this is a problem with real Apple Time Capsules) if a laptop is put to sleep while backing up (happens fairly frequently) the backup sparsebundle gets flagged as "in use" and it won't let you back up again. You have to bounce the AFP service on the NAS.

So I have a cron job to restart the afp service every night at 2AM, just in case.

FreeNAS is also a pretty usable general purpose server. I don't use it as a MineCraft server any more, but it's a Crashplan and Plex server for my house.

If I ever re-architect, I'll probably just use a general-purpose Ubuntu box, though.

 

[Eug]

I keep all my critical files on my NAS, accessible from any of my machines at any time.

That NAS has a daily local backup via external SATA drive, and a daily network backup on a second NAS on the other side of the house.

My primary NAS is a Synology DS413 4-drive model, although I currently don't have 4 drives in it. I run each drive as an independent separate volume, which makes managment a lot easier, and keeps speeds high. My multimedia is housed here, as are my critical files.

My secondary NAS is a Synology DS211j 2-drive model. It acts as my surveillance camera recording drive, as well as the backup for my critical files on the DS413.

If you want a Synology NAS for multimedia playback, one consideration is to get one that does transcoding on the fly. However, I didn't bother because I'm told it doesn't always work perfectly, and more importantly, most current portable devices can handle even high bitrate video these days. My iPhone has no problems playing a 10 GB MKV file.

I think more important is the read/write performance. For that you need a fast CPU. Luckily, in 2014, they have the DS414j for a 4-bay model, which includes a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 at 1.2 GHz. It also has a decent 512 MB RAM which is good for OS performance, and USB 3 for fast local backup.

For your usage otherwise a DS213j would suffice, but it only has a single-core CPU so performance suffers a bit, and it doesn't have USB 3 or SATA for fast local backups. That said, USB 2 is OK after the initial backup, since subsequent backups are incremental.

These do have AFP and Time Machine support, but I don't know how well that works, since I never use it. I back up my computers locally. I don't have to do it all that often either because my critical data is on the NAS anyway.

 

[jonesthewine]

Time Machine - for the MacBook Air (two Time Machine SSD backup drives in USB portable enclosures - one for home, the other for business travel) and iMac (plugged in 24/7, also a USB portable enclosure).

I like the peace of mind of having complete re-install images handy and portable.

 

[Koing]

Time Machine - for the MacBook Air (two Time Machine SSD backup drives in USB portable enclosures - one for home, the other for business travel) and iMac (plugged in 24/7, also a USB portable enclosure).

I like the peace of mind of having complete re-install images handy and portable.

I think I'll go with this as it's more important to me. It's pretty easy to connect my rMBP to the receiver and to play movies that way.

Thanks guys.

Koing

 

[GWestphal]

Use ZFS whatever you do. I've heard Time Machine sparse bundles crap out eventually. ZFS basically won't ever.

 

[Tegeril]

...

One caveat (I don't know if this is a problem with real Apple Time Capsules) if a laptop is put to sleep while backing up (happens fairly frequently) the backup sparsebundle gets flagged as "in use" and it won't let you back up again. You have to bounce the AFP service on the NAS.

...

This does not occur with a Time Capsule or an Airport Extreme with an external volume.

 

[Tegeril]

I keep all my critical files on my NAS, accessible from any of my machines at any time.

That NAS has a daily local backup via external SATA drive, and a daily network backup on a second NAS on the other side of the house.

My primary NAS is a Synology DS413 4-drive model, although I currently don't have 4 drives in it. I run each drive as an independent separate volume, which makes managment a lot easier, and keeps speeds high. My multimedia is housed here, as are my critical files.

My secondary NAS is a Synology DS211j 2-drive model. It acts as my surveillance camera recording drive, as well as the backup for my critical files on the DS413.

If you want a Synology NAS for multimedia playback, one consideration is to get one that does transcoding on the fly. However, I didn't bother because I'm told it doesn't always work perfectly, and more importantly, most current portable devices can handle even high bitrate video these days. My iPhone has no problems playing a 10 GB MKV file.

I think more important is the read/write performance. For that you need a fast CPU. Luckily, in 2014, they have the DS414j for a 4-bay model, which includes a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 at 1.2 GHz. It also has a decent 512 MB RAM which is good for OS performance, and USB 3 for fast local backup.

For your usage otherwise a DS213j would suffice, but it only has a single-core CPU so performance suffers a bit, and it doesn't have USB 3 or SATA for fast local backups. That said, USB 2 is OK after the initial backup, since subsequent backups are incremental.

These do have AFP and Time Machine support, but I don't know how well that works, since I never use it. I back up my computers locally. I don't have to do it all that often either because my critical data is on the NAS anyway.

To where do you backup your NAS?

 

[Eug]

To where do you backup your NAS?

As mentioned, local backup is a SATA drive, and the network backup is to that secondary NAS. The primary NAS is in my home office, but the secondary NAS is located in a closet on the opposite side of the house.

The secondary NAS also is my surveillance video recorder, but I don't back that video up. It generates something like half a terabyte every 10 days or so, so it's too much to backup, and I don't really need backups of that anyway.

Also, I occasionally backup the most critical files to Blu-ray discs. I will put them off site in my work office. I wanted to put them in my safety deposit box at my bank, but it turns out the box isn't wide enough. So, I'll just get a couple of USB flash drives or perhaps a HDD or something to put in my safety deposit box.

 

[Rakehellion]

I got a Time Capsule for free. It's pretty nice. :thumbsup:

I also have several online backups and an external hard drive for installs.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, I have clean installs for 10.4 and 10.5 for G4s, and clean installs for 10.6-10.9 for Intel machines, stored on hard drives as well. Luckily you can store them on small partitions.

 

[halik]

NAS! I've got 1Tb raid 1 set up that backs up all our macs via Time Machine

 

[halik]

This does not occur with a Time Capsule or an Airport Extreme with an external volume.

Likewise, I've got a mac mini that is serving up the NAS and I've never run into that issue.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Use ZFS whatever you do. I've heard Time Machine sparse bundles crap out eventually. ZFS basically won't ever.

Not true. I've had corrupted sparsebundles on Time Machine, FreeNAS, and even external HDs.

 

[Eug]

Yeah I stopped using Time Machine because I ran into various issues over time. However, I didn't have a Time Capsule. I was using an Airport Extreme with an external USB drive.

 

[manly]

I'd pass on Time Capsule, putting your data (even if you limited yourself to only backups) at the mercy of one hard disk drive is chancing it. I remember when Apple introduced it and publicly claimed they used "enterprise" hard drives. Months later, somebody cracked one open and I think they found either a desktop HDD, or worse a "Green" HDD inside.

 

[Tegeril]

Eug, I was more meaning to ask if you did any off-site. But thanks for clarifying

 

[Koing]

Likewise, I've got a mac mini that is serving up the NAS and I've never run into that issue.

Can you give more details on your setup please? Thanks,

I'd pass on Time Capsule, putting your data (even if you limited yourself to only backups) at the mercy of one hard disk drive is chancing it. I remember when Apple introduced it and publicly claimed they used "enterprise" hard drives. Months later, somebody cracked one open and I think they found either a desktop HDD, or worse a "Green" HDD inside.

I see what your saying but I need something that works and that is preferably not qnap.

So any recommendations of NAS that work with time machine or another method for incremental back ups over wifi for my home usage?

Koing

 

[ControlD]

I used to have my Time Machine backups go to my unRAID server (basically a home made NAS) and I finally ended up going back to an external hard drive solution.

The biggest issue for me is that pretty much with every major OS X upgrade, NAS functionality with Time Machine gets broken. At least this was the case up trough Mountain Lion which is when I finally threw in the towel and surrendered. If you are patient, fixes will come along but it just got to be more hassle then I wanted to deal with.

I imagine this is not an issue with a Time Capsule, which isn't the greatest solution either but at least chances are good that Apple will make sure your backups keep working with new OS X releases. They have zero interest in doing the same with third party solutions from my experience. That isn't meant as an indictment of Apple, just my experience in using NAS + Time Machine from Snow Leopard through Mountain Lion.

 

[Eug]

If I had a Time Capsule, I'd still have a NAS anyway.

They are not mutually exclusive of course.

 

[Kaido]

I see what your saying but I need something that works and that is preferably not qnap.

So any recommendations of NAS that work with time machine or another method for incremental back ups over wifi for my home usage?

Koing

I believe that generic NAS backup (i.e. a regular file share) is still not officially supported by Time Machine - you can do it with a small hack, but it's not "official", which is sort of what you want if you're going to be relying on it for backup. However, I know that third-party vendors have gotten official support for it, such as Seagate's Black Armor NAS:

http://www.seagate.com/files/support/barracuda/po_blackarmor_nas_time_machine_mac.pdf

Synology has support via a somewhat lengthy procedure as well:

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/tutorials/481

Buffalo also has support for TM:

http://www.buffalotech.com/resource_center/nas_system

 

[Koing]

I used to have my Time Machine backups go to my unRAID server (basically a home made NAS) and I finally ended up going back to an external hard drive solution.

The biggest issue for me is that pretty much with every major OS X upgrade, NAS functionality with Time Machine gets broken. At least this was the case up trough Mountain Lion which is when I finally threw in the towel and surrendered. If you are patient, fixes will come along but it just got to be more hassle then I wanted to deal with.

I imagine this is not an issue with a Time Capsule, which isn't the greatest solution either but at least chances are good that Apple will make sure your backups keep working with new OS X releases. They have zero interest in doing the same with third party solutions from my experience. That isn't meant as an indictment of Apple, just my experience in using NAS + Time Machine from Snow Leopard through Mountain Lion.

Yeah I think I'll go with a Time Machine as every upgrade something breaks and it's a hassle making sure it works and then use my NAS to back that up as well.

If I had a Time Capsule, I'd still have a NAS anyway.

They are not mutually exclusive of course.

Good shout guys and thanks for all of the info.

Koing

 

[Koing]

I believe that generic NAS backup (i.e. a regular file share) is still not officially supported by Time Machine - you can do it with a small hack, but it's not "official", which is sort of what you want if you're going to be relying on it for backup. However, I know that third-party vendors have gotten official support for it, such as Seagate's Black Armor NAS:

http://www.seagate.com/files/support/barracuda/po_blackarmor_nas_time_machine_mac.pdf

Synology has support via a somewhat lengthy procedure as well:

https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/tutorials/481

Buffalo also has support for TM:

http://www.buffalotech.com/resource_center/nas_system

My qnap had/has support TM but it gets broken after upgrades from OSX . I guess I can just use it to back things up manually or another storage.

Koing