NAS enclosure for Time Machine

[MikeFromMesa]

My Time Capsule has gone the way of all flesh and I have purchased an NAS enclosure for the disk that used to be inside my now dead TC. While the NAS I bought is quite nice and very inexpensive it only works with disks formatted for exFAT and is thus useless for Time Machine. I have looked for a relatively inexpensive dual bay NAS that will handle 3.5 inch drives and are compatible with HFS+ but have no real experience knowing what is good and what is not.

A single bay would work if all I wanted to do was use it for Time Machine but it might be nice to have a dual bay so I could dedicate one bay to Time Machine and the other to sharing between our various computers (Mac and Windows) so one bay would be HFS+ and the other exFAT. I don't even know if any devices do that so I am unsure what to look for. I don't need to do any video streaming as we seldom watch any TV.

It would be helpful if there was a USB 3 connection (rather than USB 2) just in case I need to copy data directly to or from the device. Cost is a large consideration, but so it quality as I want to buy something I will not have to fret over constantly.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

The closest I have gotten to an answer to this question was a response from an Amazon user to a similar question I posted about one of Amazon's multi-bay enclosures. His response was that that specific enclosure (and perhaps, by extension, others as well) are really designed as RAID devices and therefore can not hold two disks with different formats.

That makes sense and I guess I will assume it is true for all multi-bay drive enclosures.

 

[michelangelo]

I understand the Time Capsule, in its use for Time Machine backups, is a very special animal. Attempting to replace it by a an Airport Extreme is already NOT advised. Using other NAS devices for time Machine backups is risky, unless of course its manufacturer states it is Time Machine compatible. The Joe Kissel guide "Backing up your mac" maintains a list of such alternative NAS devices to Time Capsule. You may want to explore what Joe Kissel has to say (tidbits publishing) before committing yourself, before attempting to mix Time Machine backups, other NAS uses for macs and other NAS use for windows machines. A quite demanding requirement.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

Attempting to replace it by a an Airport Extreme is already NOT advised.

I was using the TC as both a router and a network storage device, not for Time Machine. it was a wireless n device and when I bought my new Mini (which is Wireless ac capable) I decided to get an ac router and use the TC as a network storage device only and that was why I now have the Airport Extreme. I have no idea why you would suggest that I should not be replacing my TC with the AE as Apple, in the form of their Apple Care folks, seemed to think it was a fine idea. If there is some reason I should not have done so I would like to know what that is.

Since the TC is no longer capable of working as a router it has todbe replaced by something and Apple has now stopped making Time Capsules. In the end it was either the AE or a regular router by Link-Sys or Netgear or someone else. The AE seemed the easiest to install and maintain.

The Joe Kissel guide "Backing up your mac" maintains a list of such alternative NAS devices to Time Capsule. You may want to explore what Joe Kissel has to say (tidbits publishing) before committing yourself, before attempting to mix Time Machine backups, other NAS uses for macs and other NAS use for windows machines.

I will certainly look into the guide you mentioned. At this time I am not using TM at all and do all of my backups using Carbon Copy Cloner and a series of usb external drives. I am uncertain if I want to return to using Time Machine for backups although it does not seem that it should be difficult to mount another TM capable NAS device on the network and just use it. I don't see what the problem should be but I will look into the reference you mentioned. Thank you for posting it.

 

[chscag]

At this time I am not using TM at all and do all of my backups using Carbon Copy Cloner and a series of usb external drives.

I maintain a weekly Time Machine backup schedule but use Carbon Copy Cloner to make daily backups. Time Machine backups are useful if you do happen to need to go back in time to dig out an old file or folder. However, you can actually do the same thing with CCC.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

I maintain a weekly Time Machine backup schedule but use Carbon Copy Cloner to make daily backups. Time Machine backups are useful if you do happen to need to go back in time to dig out an old file or folder. However, you can actually do the same thing with CCC.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner for a number of reasons, among them the ability to boot off of the backed up device. That has been very helpful for me several times. Time Machine also offers some unique features in that it seems to back up every time there is a change and thus you can go back to pretty much whenever you want. The disadvantage is that it eats up disk space very quickly. It had almost filled my Time Capsule's 2GB disk in about 6 months. That seemed excessive to me and I turned to CCC instead. With it I can keep the very old stuff that I want without having to worry about the old backups being over-written when disk space runs out.

Still, if I had another NAS device that was TM compatible I might just put a 4GB disk in it and turn TM back on and that was the reason I posted the original question - could I find a dual enclosure NAS device that I could use for both TM and network storage in such a way that the network storage was available to my Windows machines as well. That does not appear possible and perhaps the best solution is to buy some HFS+ software for the Windows machines. Paragon makes something like that and perhaps that is the best option for me.

 

[michelangelo]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner for a number of reasons, among them the ability to boot off of the backed up device. That has been very helpful for me several times. Time Machine also offers some unique features in that it seems to back up every time there is a change and thus you can go back to pretty much whenever you want. The disadvantage is that it eats up disk space very quickly. It had almost filled my Time Capsule's 2GB disk in about 6 months. That seemed excessive to me and I turned to CCC instead. With it I can keep the very old stuff that I want without having to worry about the old backups being over-written when disk space runs out.

Still, if I had another NAS device that was TM compatible I might just put a 4GB disk in it and turn TM back on and that was the reason I posted the original question - could I find a dual enclosure NAS device that I could use for both TM and network storage in such a way that the network storage was available to my Windows machines as well. That does not appear possible and perhaps the best solution is to buy some HFS+ software for the Windows machines. Paragon makes something like that and perhaps that is the best option for me.

You *can find a NAS device that is Time Machine compatible (I believe Drobo is). This device can also be used as a network storage (don't use the same disk, though), but don't try to ask that it will have dual formatting.

You appear to want to look back in time by 12 months with your Time Machine incremental backups. So do I, with two parallel disks (the time capsule internal and an external USB2 disk). I reformat and clean up one of them once the other contains 12 months history, but my GB consumption, with two Mac to backup, appears to be around one fourth of yours. Maybe you can streamline your incremental backup strategy (movies or photos maybe), maybe you should reduce your expectations and shoot for 6 or 9 months history only.

Last, it seems difficult for me to believe a Windows machine would day after day enjoy contact with an apple-formatted drive. Also, Windows machines want to be backed up as well, and Windows backup does not appear to live in the same universe as Mac OS backup. Maybe, once you address that, you would also want to host there your shared files (movies, music, other). A Mac can read natively NTFS drives (of the Windows world) and you can teach one of your macs to write on NTFS drives. Just my 2c.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

but don't try to ask that it will have dual formatting.

So I have found out through some research. It does seem a shame as there is a market for such a setup.

You appear to want to look back in time by 12 months with your Time Machine incremental backups. So do I, with two parallel disks (the time capsule internal and an external USB2 disk). I reformat and clean up one of them once the other contains 12 months history, but my GB consumption, with two Mac to backup, appears to be around one fourth of yours. Maybe you can streamline your incremental backup strategy (movies or photos maybe), maybe you should reduce your expectations and shoot for 6 or 9 months history only.

My machine is mostly used for editing travel photos and that means stuff is moving on and off all the time so the TM backup is very busy. I have since moved the photo storage to an external ssd so it is still quite speedy but no longer takes up space in a backup and that should slow down the disk usage considerably.

Last, it seems difficult for me to believe a Windows machine would day after day enjoy contact with an apple-formatted drive. Also, Windows machines want to be backed up as well, and Windows backup does not appear to live in the same universe as Mac OS backup. Maybe, once you address that, you would also want to host there your shared files (movies, music, other). A Mac can read natively NTFS drives (of the Windows world) and you can teach one of your macs to write on NTFS drives. Just my 2c.

No, I do not need daily access from the Windows machines - more like bi-weekly access - but it is certainly convenient to have it when I need it. I can only do TM backups on HFS+ and, of course, the Windows machines have no access to that unless I buy some software to allow them to understand the file system format. Similarly I could use something like exFAT (which is what is on my current NAS) but then I could not do a TM backup. It is a pain in the neck having a restriction like the requirement that both disks be formatted the same and it seems unnecessary to me, but then what do I know?