Step 2: Go to Control Panel → User → Create to make a new user called Time Machine.īe sure to provide Read/Write access for the Time Machine user to the Time Machine shared folder. Step 1: In DSM, go to Control Panel → Shared Folder → Create to make a new shared folder called Time Machine. In this tutorial we’re using all default settings where possible, but you can customize your settings to meet your specific needs.
Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more videos How to use the Synology DS1618+ for Time Machine backups Storage quotas guarantee that I will still have space left over for other things besides Time Machine images. Thanks to Btfrs, which is supported by Synology’s + models like the DS1618+, I can establish a specific storage quota for my Time Machine backups as well.
This affords me about 10TB of free storage when taking into account SHR.
In this tutorial I’m using just four 4TB drives in the 6-bay DS1618+. It is recommended that you use Synology’s Hybrid RAID (SHR) for redundancy in case of a failed drive, which provides another advantage over a single disk Time Machine backup like the Time Capsule provides. It’s much quieter than some of the direct attached storage solutions that I’ve tried recently, and a quieter setup than the DS1817 that I tested a few months ago. Fans are audible, but hardly an annoyance, and although mechanical hard drives are being used, I could hardly tell unless I put my ear up to the box. Using these drives, when combined with the DS1618+’s Quiet mode setting, results in remarkably quiet operation. Synology provided me with a DS1618+ loaner unit and it came equipped with 4 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drives. This written tutorial assumes that you already have drives installed, and have a volume created from those drives.
Synology’s DSM does a good job of walking you through the initial set up step-by-step. Before starting, you’ll need to go through the basic set up process for your NAS. There may be a few differences between various NAS versions, but the basic methodology of setting up Time Machine backups is the same. In this hands-on video, I show you how I use the DS1618+ as a quiet and reliable Time Machine backup solution.
Others, perhaps those in corporate environments, like to use NAS setups as a storage solution for video editing.īut there is another key reason why you might want to consider a NAS, especially in light of Apple’s decision to abandon its AirPort and Time Capsule products - Time Machine backups. In household environments, they can act like a media server, storing high quality video rips for local streaming. There are many reasons why individuals and companies employ the use of NAS boxes. Such an addition makes the DS1618+ ideal for connecting to machines with 10 Gigabit Ethernet, such as the iMac Pro. The DS1618+ features a PCIe 3.0 x8 expansion slot that can accommodate either an M.2 card for cache, or a 10GbE NIC for significantly faster throughput. What makes the DS1618+ particularly special is its expandability - and not just eSATA storage expandability that we usually associate with Synology products. This 6-bay machine comes with a quad-core 2.1GHz CPU, and 4GB of DDR4 non-ECC memory that can be upgraded to 32GB of ECC RAM. Synology just launched its newest prosumer NAS box, the DS1618+.