Network TM drive options

[thecounthahaha]

Hi,

Our household has got 2 macbooks which every now and again get plugged into the desktop time machine drives we have - less often that I'm comfortable with!

I'm looking for a network drive that I can just plug into our Virgin Media Superhub 1 and set both macs to also TM backup to that.

I've found the WD Cloud which looks like it might do the job, although I'm not interested in most of its features at this time! There also seem to be a few bad review to do with TM speeds too. And it doesn't seem to support Mavericks (although we're on Mountain Lion atm).

Is there a safe good 4tb (ish) option? For the same price as a 4tb My Cloud, I could upgrade our router to an airport extreme and use the usb port for a standard drive (and get better wireless too?).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[FreakinEurekan]

There are only two Apple-supported method for Time Machine backup to remote disk. You can use a Time Capsule (or 802.11ac AirPort Extreme with an external disk), or if you have a desktop Mac you could install OS X Server on it for US$19.99 and back up to a drive attached to that.

The difficulty with any other solutions (Synology, MyCloud, whatever) is that the device manufacturer is the one supporting Time Machine backup, Apple is not - and so every time Apple updates OS X, you rely on the device manufacturer to make sure their device still works, or update its firmware. Personally, I'm not comfortable enough with that scenario to rely on it for my data backups.

I use a Time Capsule, the 3TB works fine for my purposes but you could use the 2GB with a second external disk & dedicate one disk to each Mac if you need more than that. Or, you could get the 802.11ac Extreme and plug in an external 4TB disk and use it for both.

 

[thecounthahaha]

So as we're on a virgin media superhub at the moment our best bet would be to set it to modem mode and use an airport extreme/time capsule instead?

Does anyone know if there'll be any noticeable improvements between the airport extreme and the superhub?

Thanks again!

 

[Altemose]

So as we're on a virgin media superhub at the moment our best bet would be to set it to modem mode and use an airport extreme/time capsule instead?

Does anyone know if there'll be any noticeable improvements between the airport extreme and the superhub?

Thanks again!

I can guarantee that the Extreme or Time Capsule will be the better router! The Extreme can be an official Time Machine location in the new tower style (6th generation) models. Just plug in your USB hard drive to it and set Time Machine point to it. Plus you can use partitions with that like I do. I would recommend getting a desktop style external hard drive rather than a portable so it has its own power supply.

 

[thecounthahaha]

I can guarantee that the Extreme or Time Capsule will be the better router! The Extreme can be an official Time Machine location in the new tower style (6th generation) models. Just plug in your USB hard drive to it and set Time Machine point to it. Plus you can use partitions with that like I do. I would recommend getting a desktop style external hard drive rather than a portable so it has its own power supply.

Brilliant news. Does running a few powered HDDs off a powered hub work too? So we could have 1 drive each?

 

[Altemose]

Brilliant news. Does running a few powered HDDs off a powered hub work too? So we could have 1 drive each?

Theoretically. However you would want multiple powered externals connected to the powered hub to not put any power strain on the Extreme. Also, this is not not a full NAS and it isn't promoted as one. If you connect more than one or two people to a drive or two it may slow down. That being said I have no issues here and the account solution in AirPort Utility is fantastic and simple!