What are your solutions for wireless Time Machine these days?

[tekcor]

I need to get my parents setup with Time Machine. They have laptops, so a wired drive is not an option. Used to be Time Capsule was the go-to answer, but that isn’t the case these days. I do not have a dedicated Mac I could use as a server, and buying one is cost prohibitive.

Google searching returns lots of options, but I don’t know what to trust because most include the WD MyCloud drives on the list and I know from personal experience that they support Time Machine in theory only. In practice, they produce corrupted backups.

So what options do you guys use? BackBlaze, Arq, Dropbox, iCloud - none of them are options because they are not full system backups. I specifically want to use Time Machine for them.

 

[jpn]

I need to get my parents setup with Time Machine. They have laptops, so a wired drive is not an option. Used to be Time Capsule was the go-to answer, but that isn’t the case these days. I do not have a dedicated Mac I could use as a server, and buying one is cost prohibitive.

Google searching returns lots of options, but I don’t know what to trust because most include the WD MyCloud drives on the list and I know from personal experience that they support Time Machine in theory only. In practice, they produce corrupted backups.

So what options do you guys use? BackBlaze, Arq, Dropbox, iCloud - none of them are options because they are not full system backups. I specifically want to use Time Machine for them.

i think the easiest and least costly way is to simply use a USB flash drive that is put directly into your home wifi router.
for this to work you need to have:
- available USB port on yr WiFI router that can be used for a hard disk kind of application
- USB storage device to be used for TimeMachine

for the USB storage device i recommend a SANDISK EXTREME PORTABLE SSD with 1TB (about USD 175).

if your WiFi router has only available LAN ports for use, then find the cheapest SSD with 1TB that has a LAN port.

you can use 1 such device for both parents to be sending their respective machine's data to the Time Machine by setting it up for multiple users backing up to their separate password protected folders.

 

[tekcor]

No go on that one, the router is an eero so no hard drive hosting. So an NAS of some variety would be best, but need to know ones that actually work with Time Machine, not just claim to.