Need advice for backup / NAS setup

[digitaldave]

Hi all. I need a backup solution for my household that has a Mac and three PCs. We currently don’t have a dedicated backup system other than occasionally making copies of some files, so I need to set something up. Ideally, I’d like to use Time Machine on the Mac, but have no idea what (if any) backup tools Windows 10 has. I have been looking at a number of different options:

1) Use something like a WD MyCloud drive as a basic NAS, and just use that as a target for the backups and possibly use it as general network storage as well.
2) Use something like a Synology DS218+ as a full raid NAS giving disk redundancy.

Option 1 will be cheaper, but I’ve read in a couple of places that you may need to set up accounts with WD if I want to enable cloud access, which I’m not sure I want / need to do. Option 2 would cost considerably more but seems to be more highly regarded than things like the entry level single bay NAS units like the WD MyCloud. I would only need this for backup and file storage, I wouldn’t need it for streaming files or anything like that.

so, any thoughts on which way to go? Is there anything else I should think about?

Thanks,

Dave.

 

[satcomer]

I would get the Synology because there are many videos on YouTube about creating shared folders even Time Machine shares!

 

[HDFan]

I’d like to use Time Machine on the Mac, but have no idea what (if any) backup tools Windows 10 has

From the Mac side both QNAP and Synology support Time Machine. But you do need to have another non-
TM backup clone in case of a TM failure.

Here's an article about Windows backup to a QNAP:

QNAP Solutions for Home | Use a NAS as personal private cloud and multimedia center

Store all your files, photos, videos and enjoy a private multimedia streaming center.

www.qnap.com

Use something like a Synology

NAS solutions you could consider could include WD PR4100, Synology and QNAP. In a reversal of history, Synology now seems to be the low cost option while QNAP is higher priced but offers more features. Right now I'm particularly partial to my QNAP which has thunderbolt 3 and 10 Gb ethernet support. A 20+ TB transfer to my Synology via the slow 1 Gbit interface is going into its second week now. Took just a few days on my QNAP using its thunderbolt/10 Gbit ports.

If you are considering a NAS you need to look at your network to see if it has the bandwidth to support everything. NAS Raid protection is also a nice feature to have, although it is not completely failsafe.

 

[digitaldave]

Thanks for the feedback. I've been playing around with my current setup today, and I have managed to get a USB disk working with my router, and it looks like I can format it as HFS+ for Time Machine and still be able to access it on Windows machines to transfer files around. I'll give that a try before going any further down the NAS route, as this may work for what I need, i.e. computer backups and file storage.

 

[Crash0veride]

Thanks for the feedback. I've been playing around with my current setup today, and I have managed to get a USB disk working with my router, and it looks like I can format it as HFS+ for Time Machine and still be able to access it on Windows machines to transfer files around. I'll give that a try before going any further down the NAS route, as this may work for what I need, i.e. computer backups and file storage.

FYI: If your drive is plugged into the router and using the drive / time machine as a network share, the drive doesn't need to be HFS, and HFS performance is typically poor on routers due to driver performance.