Using TM to backup to an USB HD through a NAS

Hello,

Bear with me as I am new to Macs and have no clue how to search if this has been asked in here before...even a google search yielded broad options.

I have a MBP that I want to backup via wireless using TM. I have a spare 2TB Western Digital that I want to connect to a QNAP NAS via USB. Can TM be configured to backup to the 2TB HD without using any of the drives on the NAS? I do not want to add this 2TB capacity to my existing 6TB that I physically have on the NAS itself. Again, I just want the data in my MBP to go wirelessly to the 2tb connected to the NAS.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks.

I am doing this exact same thing only I have a Synology disk station and a 2.5 portable hard drive attached with usb to the NAS. It works fine for me. I dont know how you go about setting it up on the Qnap system but if it allows time machine backups you should be able to select the usb drive attached to the nas as the drive you want the backup to go to inside of the Qnap system. Then when you setup time machine you should see the drive thats attached to the nas available to backup to.

The cool part about this whole setup is now you have a TM backup you can take with you and saves alot of headache trying to restore the mac over the network

thanks for the fast reply LB! I will dive deeper into the NAS and see if that is possible.

Lbatson21 said:

The cool part about this whole setup is now you have a TM backup you can take with you and saves alot of headache trying to restore the mac over the network

Click to expand...

So you are saying you can disconnect your usb drive from the nas and plug directly to the Mac and restore? That sounds great.

Yea. Thats actually the only way I know how to restore it ( I tried using just the NAS to hold my TM backup but can't yet figure out how to direct terminal to find my drive to restore over the network)

Batson,

how did you format your spare drive connected to the usb port of your nas? time machine does not show my spare drive.
My spare drive shows up on the nas admin page but I can't go past that.

I connected it to the Mac and used disk utility to format Mac os extended journaled. I then used the nas that has built in time machine support to designate the drive for time machine. Time machine should pick it up after that

I had posted a similar question - in the switcher's forum. http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/switcher-hangout/228588-time-capsule-alternative.html Maybe I should have posted it here. Do you also keep a clone copy of your HD? Don't mean to hijack your thread - I'm just trying to sort out my options for this as well.

No I don't clone the drive but I might soon just to keep another copy. The USB hd attached with TM works fine for now though. I checked the other thread and it's right, wd sucks for networked drive (terrible software). I really like my synology and sounds like people have had good luck with qnap as well.

Lb,

I think my WD
'My book" external drive might be the issue. I will try another drive and see what happens after I format it to OS extended journaled option.

Now, if we could only get the option to limit the size of the share....that would be good.

On the good side of things...the good news is that I can finally see the usb drive under the SAMBA service. I just do not know why it does not show up under the AFP service.

I am aware that AFP with SAMBA does not work well and I also think it does not work well when this is the only service enabled on a NAS. It kind of sucks since I am on a Mac mostly and do very little on the XP/Vista machines...

I need to find a way to keep the drive available whenever I reboot the Mac. I am sure I need to add it to the initial log on item list or whatever it is called... The other thing is that I do not see it on the TM options when you are trying to setup a drive for TM.

Yea I would guess once it's formatted it should be visible with the afp service. Let us know what happens

Well,

no go with the drive showing up under the AFP service. It shows up under SAMBA...

I will continue to troubleshoot and see what I can come up with.

Is there any option on the NAS to setup Time Machine? I have an area under File Sharing/Services > Mac File Service on the Synology that let's you select the drive you want to use for Time Machine (which when the USB drive is connected it shows as usbshare1). From that point it does it's thing and shows as a selectable drive (usbshare1) in Time Machine options on the Mac.