With Time Capsule now well & truly on the way out I have been giving some thought to what I would do when the two I use fail. One, the low disk model is 9 plus years old and still chugging along. Of course people used time capsule in slightly different ways, so will see the issue differently. I just watched an utube review on the Synology Router 2600 and it was touted as a time capsule replacement. This is a very interesting router; except it isn’t exactly a time capsule replacement unless you buy some external storage to plug into the router. I liked the time capsule, as it did a couple of jobs for me and never gave me any grief. I have a second more modern time capsule that’s about 5 years old, maybe that will chug on for a while yet and it’s replacement I won’t have to think about.
Any thoughts on this time capsule replacement question?
A Synology NAS is doing a job just fine, but there is a certain configuration effort needed. I have one from 2013 with 2 disks in it and it is just there for doing backups. Some better routers can also act as an endpoint for Time Machine if you attach an HDD to them. But the performance there is only so and so good.
I personally use an old laptop that shares an external drive as a Time Machine backup. This backs up just like a Time Capsule. However, for this to work you need a Mac of some kind to use as a server.
A NAS of some sorts is probably the easiest and most stable solution. I’m using a Synology and it’s pretty close to plug and play. There are many good instructions on the net to set it up for Time Machine.
Less expensive but definitely not for the faint of heart is using a Raspberry Pi with an external USB drive. For this solution too are multiple instructions available on the net. Definitely needs some more tinkering than an off the shelf NAS though.
If you only have once machine just attach and HDD. Since you were using TC I assume you have more than one. If so you can attach a HDD/SDD to one of the Macs and configure it to provide network Time Machine destination for all your other Macs. This used to require MacOS Server but now is built into High Sierra and free. It works quite well.
I bought a Synology 2600ac router and am very happy with it. AirPort Extreme had very limited controls and reporting and I need more functionality. The 2600 performs well and has a great UI. And yes it can provide TM functionality for your machines. I do not use that feature.
I also have a Synology NAS that provides a Time Machine destination for my network (+ doing a long list of other things, it’s basically a Linux server in disguise).
And I use CarbonCopyCloner regularly to create bootable backups of each machine. Yes, I’m paranoid.
Hopefully the above is helpful. If you post more details about your setup and goals folks can provide better feedback.
use a DS218+ for my backup. I have to share folders, one per mac. They do backup TimeMachine to the NAS. I also have a sync process for my Documents folders that will sync with an specific directory almost on real time. I do this becuase I trust Time Machine, sometime I need to access this Documents file from windows and this will help me have the files everywhere. Using the quickconnect for Synology make it easy to access from outside the network easy. Really happy with my NAS.