What do you all use for locally backing up your Macs?

My Airport Extreme (!?) finally died. I'm considering buying a Synology NAS but I've heard they aren't super reliable for Time Machine backups? I'm considering just grabbing some external SSD as well, but ideally want something to back up 3 devices to over the network.

@jefframes We weren't doing TIme Machine backups but were using CCC for backup and Synology worked very well for the two of us (me and the wife) for years.

I don't really like Time Machine since it caused way too many issues for our own needs 🙂

We've also just used rsync to backup stuff and that has worked very well and was much faster in some cases than CCC. But basically, CCC is really fast after the first backup but the first backup takes a long time. rsync was consistently fast but is slower than the secondary backups for CCC, if that makes sense 🙂

The only reason we switched away from Synology was because the Synology is too big to travel with.

@jefframes I rotate a monthly backup with offsite storage on USB drives, and keep a current backup shared off an old mini that I use for file storage and av server duties. Works great.

@jefframes I have a Synology, which I use for many things Time Machine included. Works with no issues at all.

@f ah, good to hear. I may try Time Machine to start - just because it's 0 work to configure and has worked for me in the past - but it's good to know CCC is a solid backup...backup solution ;)

@mattiem Nice! I had heard some complaints, but I'm seeing more people giving it the thumbs up. My goal is to use it for TM, possibly a media server and for some lightweight Home Assistant related tasks.

@jefframes watching with interest. Been considering hanging a drive off my Home Assistant box for Time Machine backups, but am interested in other ideas and approaches too.

@SeanMcTex I've really seen a lot of positive feedback on using a Synology NAS for Time Machine, though a couple (including a good friend) have warned about some headaches it has caused them.

I like the idea of the NAS in part because I may run some HA services on it, in addition to using it for backups! I'll let you know what I end up with but I'm leaning again towards a NAS.

@jefframes I’ve used it for TM for years, and general storage tasks. Plus does an automated offsite backup which is honestly pretty amazing.

I also have used it for docker and it’s a game changer because it is already running Linux so the ram requirements are super low compared to using a Mac.

It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty hard to beat.

@jefframes Another vote for a Synology. We use it as a family server, plex server, local git server and Time Machine. I think the only time I had issues with Time Machine was due to hitting quotas on the Synology, but its been a while since that happened.

@jefframes as others have said, Synology seems to be fine with Time Machine backups - TM will eat any and all storage you make available to it, so be sure to limit the space available to the TM user, but otherwise it’s been fine

I think TM has been unreliable in the past with network backups in general, but it seems to be much improved in recent years

@matt1corey awesome, thank you!

@chontorres perfect, that covers a few things I plan to do. Think I'm going for it.

@jefframes @mattiem Can confirm that I use mine for all of the above with no issues. TM via the native OS and the rest via Docker containers.

@jefframes My external drive died recently and I replaced it with a tiny SanDisk SSD. Also backup online with BackBlaze.

@jefframes I have occasional Time Machine hiccups, but from what I’ve heard this is kinda standard with any backup-over-network solution. Synology is pretty great.

@bens yea, makes sense and that was certainly my experience with my AirPort Extreme. I'm not doing anything critical on these machines where losing a couple hours due to a failed backup would be a catastrophe. Sounds like this should work!