Finally replaced my Time Capsule - 2009 vintage.

[philstubbington]

My Time Capsule stopped working around a year ago, and thought I'd (at last) get around to replacing it.

After dismantling it to strip out the hard drive, and taking another external drive out of its chassis, I added both drives to a Synology 220J NAS enclosure (£170.99 from Scan in the UK) - which takes two drives - so I now have 2TB internal storage - and 8TB external storage with a WD drive (connected via USB to the Synology)

So, far the experience has been pretty good - it works with the Time Machine software (once you go through the setup - nowhere near as friendly as Apple's - but then the Synology isn't an Apple specific device.

So, from early impressions, if anyone else is looking for a backup option, the Synology looks pretty good.

 

[rm5]

That seems like a great option, and I'm glad it's working! Personally, I'm not into Synology (and NAS systems in general). They're clunky and use proprietary software and operating systems. I much prefer servers (HP ProLiant, Dell PowerEdge, etc.) I have a couple of those (see signature), and they work quite well and are pretty fast. I have one server with 8x 146 GB drives (the ProLiant) which is my "working storage" of little over a terabyte which isn't much but is enough for me. Then, I have "archival storage" on the PowerEdge with 8x 2 TB drives in one array, 2x 3 TB in another array, and 1x 2 TB in the boot array (stripe). The PowerEdge is actually not working right now, so I'm purely working off the ProLiant, which I don't prefer, but just haven't had the time to fix the PowerEdge.

To be honest, it seems a little janky that you are connecting external hard drives (if I'm understanding correctly) via USB to the Synology, but at least it works...

 

[philstubbington]

That seems like a great option, and I'm glad it's working! Personally, I'm not into Synology (and NAS systems in general). They're clunky and use proprietary software and operating systems. I much prefer servers (HP ProLiant, Dell PowerEdge, etc.) I have a couple of those (see signature), and they work quite well and are pretty fast. I have one server with 8x 146 GB drives (the ProLiant) which is my "working storage" of little over a terabyte which isn't much but is enough for me. Then, I have "archival storage" on the PowerEdge with 8x 2 TB drives in one array, 2x 3 TB in another array, and 1x 2 TB in the boot array (stripe). The PowerEdge is actually not working right now, so I'm purely working off the ProLiant, which I don't prefer, but just haven't had the time to fix the PowerEdge.

To be honest, it seems a little janky that you are connecting external hard drives (if I'm understanding correctly) via USB to the Synology, but at least it works...

One external that I had already, and two internal.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Glad it is working.

I prefer Synology's Drive tool for backups, as it has more options and granularity. The only issue I have ever had with it is that I can't just backup the full user Library without issues...likely due to things like cache constantly changing. But excluding the stuff that is not unique user data has always been an acceptable workaround.

You could use both TM and Drive for more redundancy.

Regardless or the tool used, it would be wise to do a few test restores to verify the backups.

 

[philstubbington]

Glad it is working.

I prefer Synology's Drive tool for backups, as it has more options and granularity. The only issue I have ever had with it is that I can't just backup the full user Library without issues...likely due to things like cache constantly changing. But excluding the stuff that is not unique user data has always been an acceptable workaround.

You could use both TM and Drive for more redundancy.

Regardless or the tool used, it would be wise to do a few test restores to verify the backups.

The only thing I’ve noticed about it so far is how noisy it is, especially in comparison to Apple’s product. It’s sitting on a shelf in a bedroom above the staircase and you can clearly hear it downstairs. Might have to put some soundproofing underneath it!

 

[hoo-man-b-ing]

I’ve been quite pleased with both Synology’s NAS line and its routers. While not Apple-y, their stuff does ”just work” and security fixes are rolled out significantly faster than their competitors.

Plus, with their NAS line you can have your Time Machine backups sync to a cloud location (e.g., Azure, AWS, etc.) This is especially nice in case you had multiple simultaneous failures or if something were to happen to your NAS.

I actually just replaced one of my 4TB drives with a 16TB this last weekend and it went incredibly smoothly. Should you ever need to increase your storage beyond your current setup, know that it’s about 5 minutes of active work and then about 8 hours (depending on drive speed and amount of data) for it to heal (assuming you‘re using Synology’s Hybrid RAID configuration).