Backing up Macs to a Sinology NAS
April 27, 2024 12:31 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for simple reliable software that will backup several Macs to a Synology NAS in my home. Does such a thing exist?
I bought a Synology DS220+ with a goal of having a set-it-and-forget-it backup system for several Macintoshes used by my family members. It has never really worked. I was replacing my Apple Time Capsule.
I've gotten the Synology/Time Machine combo to work for a few days or a few weeks, but then it just stops working. It usually takes me a while to notice that it has failed, and then even longer to try to fix it. The result is that our computers aren't being backed up.
Sometimes I can get it to do one backup, or a few backups, but then it starts failing again. The symptom is usually along the lines of "Network Device Cannot Be Found". Once it starts to fail I often end up having to delete the existing backup file before I can get it to work again.
I just replaced my wireless router. I've updated the Synology software (multiple times). We are running recent versions of MacOS. It still isn't working reliably.
It is not clear to me whether the problem is in the network connection between the devices, whether the backup files are getting corrupted, or whether the Time Machine software on my Mac or the Synology software just suck.
How to debug this?
Is the problem likely Time Machine? Is it just that Time Machine is crufty and clunky and awful? If so, is there some good incremental backup software I can set up on our Macs that will run automatically in the background and keep our devices backed up? We don't really need the versioning features: just one complete, recent backup of each device that gets updated regularly.
Alternatively, is there something I can do to debug the Synology device? I spent a bunch of money on this, including getting RAID drives for it. It would be nice to get some actual value out of it.
The Synology NAS has a wired connection to the router. Our Macs connect to the router over Wifi.
I bought a Synology DS220+ with a goal of having a set-it-and-forget-it backup system for several Macintoshes used by my family members. It has never really worked. I was replacing my Apple Time Capsule.
I've gotten the Synology/Time Machine combo to work for a few days or a few weeks, but then it just stops working. It usually takes me a while to notice that it has failed, and then even longer to try to fix it. The result is that our computers aren't being backed up.
Sometimes I can get it to do one backup, or a few backups, but then it starts failing again. The symptom is usually along the lines of "Network Device Cannot Be Found". Once it starts to fail I often end up having to delete the existing backup file before I can get it to work again.
I just replaced my wireless router. I've updated the Synology software (multiple times). We are running recent versions of MacOS. It still isn't working reliably.
It is not clear to me whether the problem is in the network connection between the devices, whether the backup files are getting corrupted, or whether the Time Machine software on my Mac or the Synology software just suck.
How to debug this?
Is the problem likely Time Machine? Is it just that Time Machine is crufty and clunky and awful? If so, is there some good incremental backup software I can set up on our Macs that will run automatically in the background and keep our devices backed up? We don't really need the versioning features: just one complete, recent backup of each device that gets updated regularly.
Alternatively, is there something I can do to debug the Synology device? I spent a bunch of money on this, including getting RAID drives for it. It would be nice to get some actual value out of it.
The Synology NAS has a wired connection to the router. Our Macs connect to the router over Wifi.
I'm sorry that you're having trouble - it sounds incredibly frustrating, and I've been there.
For my bona fides: I have one Mac backing up via wifi to a Synology NAS, plugged directly into a UPS and a router. backups are happening via time machine, and its working fine, as best I can tell - so what you are asking to do is practically possible, and I have some level of expertise.
If the symptom is that your computers aren't able to use wifi to find the network cable-connected NAS, I'd pursue as follows to methodically debug:
0. check with Apple's website for support before trusting advice from a stranger on metafilter.
1. Swap out network cables for a new cat 6 cable (relatively inexpensive and shouldn't hurt, also confirms solid connections). Don't bother with 5 or 5e cables or anything older than 2 years old if you're trying to eliminate sources of error. Swap out any power strip surge protector as well if there's any chance of error introduced there.
2. Is your router, modem, and NAS all jammed in an unventilated space and/or close on top of one another? Is the power daisy chained through multiple power strips/surge protectors/extension cords? Heat and interference cause weird problems that don't appear immediately. Cool devices save lives.
3. Confirm that the router is configured to assign a specific IP address to the NAS - if its dynamically assigned, rebooting the router might assign a different unexpected IP address.
4. If the computer you're working on can't connect to the NAS for Time Machine backup (and has thrown an error) can you get to the NAS via web interface from that same computer? Does the problem happen to all the computers at the same time (implying a server problem), or is it just the one (implying a computer problem)?
5. If the computer can't connect to the NAS via automatic time machine backup, does a reboot fix it? Is the computer actually on the right wifi network (and not a neighbor's?)? Does plugging the mac in directly to the router with a network cable allow the backup to go through?
6. There's a Preferences setting for Time Machine specific to whether a backup happens while on battery power, for laptops. Does connecting to power impact the ability for the Time Machine backup to go through?
7. If you're at all command line savvy - can you get at the logs for your version of mac OS and Time Machine? Does reviewing them help or point to when something stops working, or offer any further troubleshooting detail?
8. Is it always the same failure message in Time Machine? If not, what else does that app tell you?
9. Are you doing all the things that Synology tells you to do, that keep your warranty valid, like using drives from their recommended list?
10. Any weird or wacky things going on with your network setup, like VPN's, cheap-o routers, pi-holes, overzealous radio towers, or anything that might possibly be interfering with regular internet backup traffic?
posted by enfa at 2:43 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
For my bona fides: I have one Mac backing up via wifi to a Synology NAS, plugged directly into a UPS and a router. backups are happening via time machine, and its working fine, as best I can tell - so what you are asking to do is practically possible, and I have some level of expertise.
If the symptom is that your computers aren't able to use wifi to find the network cable-connected NAS, I'd pursue as follows to methodically debug:
0. check with Apple's website for support before trusting advice from a stranger on metafilter.
1. Swap out network cables for a new cat 6 cable (relatively inexpensive and shouldn't hurt, also confirms solid connections). Don't bother with 5 or 5e cables or anything older than 2 years old if you're trying to eliminate sources of error. Swap out any power strip surge protector as well if there's any chance of error introduced there.
2. Is your router, modem, and NAS all jammed in an unventilated space and/or close on top of one another? Is the power daisy chained through multiple power strips/surge protectors/extension cords? Heat and interference cause weird problems that don't appear immediately. Cool devices save lives.
3. Confirm that the router is configured to assign a specific IP address to the NAS - if its dynamically assigned, rebooting the router might assign a different unexpected IP address.
4. If the computer you're working on can't connect to the NAS for Time Machine backup (and has thrown an error) can you get to the NAS via web interface from that same computer? Does the problem happen to all the computers at the same time (implying a server problem), or is it just the one (implying a computer problem)?
5. If the computer can't connect to the NAS via automatic time machine backup, does a reboot fix it? Is the computer actually on the right wifi network (and not a neighbor's?)? Does plugging the mac in directly to the router with a network cable allow the backup to go through?
6. There's a Preferences setting for Time Machine specific to whether a backup happens while on battery power, for laptops. Does connecting to power impact the ability for the Time Machine backup to go through?
7. If you're at all command line savvy - can you get at the logs for your version of mac OS and Time Machine? Does reviewing them help or point to when something stops working, or offer any further troubleshooting detail?
8. Is it always the same failure message in Time Machine? If not, what else does that app tell you?
9. Are you doing all the things that Synology tells you to do, that keep your warranty valid, like using drives from their recommended list?
10. Any weird or wacky things going on with your network setup, like VPN's, cheap-o routers, pi-holes, overzealous radio towers, or anything that might possibly be interfering with regular internet backup traffic?
posted by enfa at 2:43 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]
Check that the router is assigning the IPv4 address that your Mac expects the NAS to have for Time Machine. Most routers have the ability to fix the address for a given (device's) network adapter, or make sure that you're connecting to the router's Bonjour/mDNS name ending ".local".
posted by k3ninho at 4:06 PM on April 27
posted by k3ninho at 4:06 PM on April 27
I had the same problem with synology / Time Machine. Then also had it with current qnap nas. My wired desktop has worked well with both. Something about WiFi I’ve always thought…
I’ve never resolved it. Very annoying. Curious about the thread to see what happens.
posted by creiszhanson at 6:01 PM on April 27
I’ve never resolved it. Very annoying. Curious about the thread to see what happens.
posted by creiszhanson at 6:01 PM on April 27
I have a couple of scheduled tasks in Get Backup Pro that automatically archive my Photos and Music libraries to a share mounted from a Synology every day. Time Machine kind of sort of feels like it's falling out of favor at Apple, with a "just put all your valuable data in unaccountable cloud services" winning the day. Anyway, I've tested recovering from those backups, and they seem to work fine, but your mileage may vary.
But yeah, same same as everybody else who's tried to use Time Machine to a 3rd party AFP backup, even using disk images and unique file shares per machine with quotas and whatnot, nothing really works long term. (Well, no, I had a mostly idle machine backing up to a time machine share from a synology that worked for a long long time, but I think it mostly worked due to neglect and low change volume.)
Wildly, I think that time machine backups to another mac's shared drive works just fine, but that's a kind of tall order, hanging a storage array off a Mini. I mean, unless if you have a desktop mac that you could connect a chonky 16tb disk off of with a stack of individual partitions for clients so they don't compete for storage.
posted by Kyol at 8:10 PM on April 27
But yeah, same same as everybody else who's tried to use Time Machine to a 3rd party AFP backup, even using disk images and unique file shares per machine with quotas and whatnot, nothing really works long term. (Well, no, I had a mostly idle machine backing up to a time machine share from a synology that worked for a long long time, but I think it mostly worked due to neglect and low change volume.)
Wildly, I think that time machine backups to another mac's shared drive works just fine, but that's a kind of tall order, hanging a storage array off a Mini. I mean, unless if you have a desktop mac that you could connect a chonky 16tb disk off of with a stack of individual partitions for clients so they don't compete for storage.
posted by Kyol at 8:10 PM on April 27
A long time ago (before the advent of Time Machine), I used SuperDuper! to do regular backups of my Macs. It can do incremental backups like Time Machine, but it doesn't keep file history like Time Machine does (though it has a kind of similar functionality done using the APFS snapshot feature). One advantage it has over Time Machine is that it can make bootable backups of your drives. It's been a while since I've needed that functionality, but I still use it on occasion when I want a straight up image/copy of a Mac, rather than the multi-version backups that Time Machine provides.
One thing to note is that AFP was deprecated in Mavericks and Big Sur even removed the ability for Macs to act as AFP servers. I think SMB is supposed to be the current recommendation for network-based Time Machine shares. In my experience, it has been at times fairly common for network-based Time Machine backups to eventually "go bad" and fail one of the periodic backup verifications that macOS will run against network backups, but it sounds like you're running into some other sort of issue where Macs just stop backing up. Can you be more specific about the issue you're running into?
Personally, I keep two sets of Time Machine backups: one on a QNAP NAS and another on a small portable USB drive that I normally keep connected to the docking station at my desk (and bring with me if I travel). I think of the NAS copy as the "easy" copy that gets the most frequent updates, but the one on the separate drive as the more durable one, as I've seen network-based Time Machine backups go bad on occasion, but never backups done to direct-attach storage. I still use SuperDuper! on occasion too, but only really when I retire a machine and want to make one last backup before I reset/wipe it (at which point I'll eventually delete my Time Machine backups too).
posted by strangecargo at 5:25 AM on April 28
One thing to note is that AFP was deprecated in Mavericks and Big Sur even removed the ability for Macs to act as AFP servers. I think SMB is supposed to be the current recommendation for network-based Time Machine shares. In my experience, it has been at times fairly common for network-based Time Machine backups to eventually "go bad" and fail one of the periodic backup verifications that macOS will run against network backups, but it sounds like you're running into some other sort of issue where Macs just stop backing up. Can you be more specific about the issue you're running into?
Personally, I keep two sets of Time Machine backups: one on a QNAP NAS and another on a small portable USB drive that I normally keep connected to the docking station at my desk (and bring with me if I travel). I think of the NAS copy as the "easy" copy that gets the most frequent updates, but the one on the separate drive as the more durable one, as I've seen network-based Time Machine backups go bad on occasion, but never backups done to direct-attach storage. I still use SuperDuper! on occasion too, but only really when I retire a machine and want to make one last backup before I reset/wipe it (at which point I'll eventually delete my Time Machine backups too).
posted by strangecargo at 5:25 AM on April 28
Mac networking is shit, whether wired or wireless, this is simply a fact of using Macs. The network stack is a terminally broken utter piece of garbage shit, and this is a direct quote from an ex Apple network engineer. There is no hope. Have you noticed Apple doesn't sell Time Machine backup devices any more? That's because even they can't make them work reliably.
The answer is to get small USB-based SSD drives, one for each Mac, and use them exclusively for backup purposes. We have three Macs in the house, each one has its own little SSD that acts as its backup. The Synology system I tried to make work with Time Machine on these macs for over a decade now just holds infrequently used data, videos, photos, and other things manually put there for safekeeping.
Everything runs so SO much better without Time Machine fucking up the network 3x an hour (three macs once an hour).
The lesson is: don't backup your Macs over a network, ever.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:29 AM on April 28
The answer is to get small USB-based SSD drives, one for each Mac, and use them exclusively for backup purposes. We have three Macs in the house, each one has its own little SSD that acts as its backup. The Synology system I tried to make work with Time Machine on these macs for over a decade now just holds infrequently used data, videos, photos, and other things manually put there for safekeeping.
Everything runs so SO much better without Time Machine fucking up the network 3x an hour (three macs once an hour).
The lesson is: don't backup your Macs over a network, ever.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:29 AM on April 28
I have the same synology in my office but we use it as a server. The two or three Mac’s only save files to the NAS and I BU the NAS to external drives that I manually alternate each night. Works reliably.
posted by pmaxwell at 6:49 AM on April 28
posted by pmaxwell at 6:49 AM on April 28
I have a much older Sinology, and it's been a wifi TimeMachine host for years. I created a separate AFS share for each Mac on the Sinology and (critically) set a quota for each of them. It's not fast, but it's been there when I needed it.
posted by scruss at 12:54 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]
posted by scruss at 12:54 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]
I have a Synology NAS and use the Synology Drive client to back up my Mac to my local device. Works great, never misses a beat. Lose the Time Machine and just go direct to the NAS using the software they provide for all platforms including Mac OS.
I have rotating USB drives on the NAS that back up the Synology volume using Hyper Backup and one set is cloud based. The local Drive backup to the Synology got set up a year ago when I got the NAS and I almost never think of it because it's so stable and reliable. I have a couple of external SSD drives, occasionally I will run a direct copy of my Airbook's internal HD to an external drive just in case.
Better off just giving the Time Machine to the recycling gods than messing with it.
posted by diode at 8:42 PM on April 28
I have rotating USB drives on the NAS that back up the Synology volume using Hyper Backup and one set is cloud based. The local Drive backup to the Synology got set up a year ago when I got the NAS and I almost never think of it because it's so stable and reliable. I have a couple of external SSD drives, occasionally I will run a direct copy of my Airbook's internal HD to an external drive just in case.
Better off just giving the Time Machine to the recycling gods than messing with it.
posted by diode at 8:42 PM on April 28
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If your model supports it, maybe try Synology's ActiveBackup.
Or, Carbon Copy Cloner.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:44 PM on April 27