In this article, we’re going to look at how to backup to a Synology NAS with Time Machine with the most recent macOS (Monterey).
Time Machine allows you to back up the local files on your Mac to a separate device like a hard drive or NAS. The process that we will follow utilizes SMB and allows you to back up your Mac using the latest OS to a Synology NAS.
A Synology NAS is a great device for Time Machine backups, as well as various other things. One of the main benefits of using a Synology NAS is that the data will stay on your local network and you’ll control everything. It also avoids any cloud storage expenses, though it’s important to keep in mind that for extremely important data, you should be following the 3-2-1 backup rule.
How to Backup to a Synology NAS with Time Machine
Before configuring our Mac, we need to change a few settings on our Synology NAS. First, we need to enable the Bonjour Time Machine Broadcast for SMB on our NAS, ensure that one of our user accounts has access to the shared folder, then set a shared folder quota.
1. Create a Shared Folder where you’d like to store the Time Machine backups.
2. Inside of the Control Panel, select Shared Folder, then Edit on the shared folder you’ll be using for Time Machine.
3. Select Advanced, then Enable Shared Folder Quota. Set a quota (preferably, at least two times larger than your Mac’s hard drive size, though this can be more/less depending on your needs), then Save. This will ensure that Time Machine doesn’t utilize all of the free space on your NAS and will stop once the quota is met.
4. Select File Services in the Control Panel, then Advanced, then Enable Bonjour Time Machine broadcast via SMB.
5. Select Set Time Machine Folders, then check the folder where you’d like the Time Machine application to back up to on your Synology NAS.
How to Configure Time Machine on a Mac
1. Navigate to System Preferences, then select Time Machine.
2. Select Back Up Automatically to ensure that Time Machine is constantly backing up your Mac.
NOTE: If you’d like the Time Machine icon to display in your menu bar, select Show Time Machine in Menu Bar.
6. Select your Synology NAS’s folder as the destination (in my case, backups), then select Use Disk.
NOTE: If you’d like to encrypt the backup, you can select Encrypt backups. A password will be required at a later step to encrypt the backup.
7. You should receive a popup asking you to connect. Select Connect, then at the next step, enter the user and password that you’d like to use to connect to your shared folder. This will be a DSM user, so you must ensure that the user you’re connecting with has permission to the folder selected above.
9 Your backup will now run! Depending on how large your system is, it will take some time to fully back up from macOS to your NAS.
How to Restore Files with Time Machine
Now that Time Machine has been set up on our Synology NAS, we can restore files from it if we ever need to. I am not going to discuss how to restore an entire Mac, however, we’ll look at how to restore individual files below.
1. Open Launch Pad.
2. Search for Time Machine and launch the application.
3. A window will open up with your backed-up files. You’ll be able to use the slider on the right-hand side to navigate through your past backups and can right-click and restore to restore any folders/files if necessary.
Conclusion & Final Thoughts on Backing up to a Synology
In this tutorial, we looked at how to back up a macOS device to a Synology NAS using Time Machine. Time Machine on macOS is slightly finicky, but the process isn’t too complicated after configuring the Synology. Just make sure that you set a quota in the shared folder or your backups might take up more space than you initially expected…
