Time Machine Server

[trifona]

My daily machine is 2019 i9 MBP running Sonoma. An old 2007 iMac running El Capitan has been running as a fileserver on our home network. The iMac has had an external HDD formatted in Mac extended journal serving as a dedicated time machine drive. I'm now looking to replace the iMac and was looking over options for a new Mac Mini or maybe even a Synology Raid; leaning towards the Mini right now.

I'm writing to revisit an old issue with Time Machine that I never solved several years ago to understand what did I "break". For about 5 months after purchasing the MBP in late 2019 I was able to connect over wifi to the external HDD that is connected to the iMac. I know not the best practice, but I had not purchased portable SSD yet at that time.

In April 2020 I know I replaced our router, and immediately Time Machine over wifi stopped working completely. For the longest time I assumed the new router blocked a port/protocol/something. I don't recall if I updated Mac OS at that time or no, but perhaps? The old router was an Asus, and we had switched to a Netgear. I just bought a new router again this month, another Asus, and I still cannot get this old functionality back.

On my MBP I have file sharing turned on, and can access everything on the iMac's internal HDD as well as the external drive hanging off of it. I just cannot get Time Machine on the MBP to recognize the external drive as being an option. The reason why this is important to me now is I'd like to solve this issue so I can hang 2 external HDDs on a Mini, to serve as backups for the Mini & MBP respectively.

I've confirmed that file sharing on the MBP is set up as per the instructions I found in the links below:

https://512pixels.net/2023/09/how-to-set-up-time-machine-server-ventura-or-later/
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/back-up-to-a-shared-folder-mchl31533145/mac

There has to be something in MAC OS that explains this, no?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

When wanting to back up TWO+ different Macs on the same network, the best & easiest (to understand) option is to use a NAS drive. Your thoughts about buying a Synology NAS should easily do this trick in a reliable way. They even directly support Apple Time Machine. I have one set up myself and multiple Macs TM backup to it with no issues over the last 10+ years. It is great for exactly what you want here.

OPTION 2 which may or may not work, but will probably work per this help article: if the new ASUS has a USB port, you might be able to create a NAS-type setup in 2 pieces by connecting a hard drive to the router and then it becoming the home network shared TM drive. This would work like Apple's old Time Capsule Router/HDD combo.

My (completely wild) guess speculation on that old iMac TM setup was that you had it wired with ethernet and were using it as a wifi access point, like a wifi expander/extender (you might think of it like standing in for a router). It got its internet data via ethernet and its wifi hardware was then repurposed like an access point for the other Macs. They (other Macs) could access that "access point" when connecting to wifi and the TM hard drive would be available to them much like the Synology of ASUS options described above.

I'll further guess that in 2020, the iMac ethernet option was switched to wifi to connect to the new router. If so, this flipped it from being an access point for the other Macs to using its wifi hardware to actually connect it to the Internet itself. This "cut off" the former TM drive access as you had it.

If nothing else changed and this seems plausible, you could possibly get that version of TM back by reconnecting iMac with ethernet and using its wifi hardware like as extra access point... UNLESS- and this is also likely- when you added the new router in 2020, it offered superior wifi hardware and thus you started bypassing the wifi link to the old iMac (which would be slow/OLD wifi connections) in favor of new faster, direct-to-router connections. If so, that would- effectively- abandon the iMac usage as router-like "extender" with the other Macs and thus they would no longer "see" the attached TM drive in the same way as before.

Now that's a lot of speculation on very limited clues... so it could easily be wrong. But the remedy to get back to having a "central" TM drive for multiple Macs is those option 1 or option 2 concepts shared above. In short, stop thinking about using a Mac for the shared TM connection and instead link the TM drive directly to the home network where all computers can directly "see" it and use it. The Synology option will definitely do this. The ASUS option is likely to work too.

If you buy a new Mac Mini, buy it to use it as another household Mac... not as a TM server to other Macs. You can very likely find the configuration to make it work that way but it will be easier to simply attach a NAS drive to the network itself (router or Synology NAS storage) and do your TM backups from various Macs there.

I hope this is helpful (even if the wild guess paragraphs might be wrong). You are on the right track to get "whole house" TM again by thinking Synology or (probably) hooking a drive to the new ASUS router.

All that shared, if you want to use one Mac anyway in lieu of a NAS, there are a number of step-by-step tutorials for the setup like this one and this one.

 

[trifona]

Thank you for investing the time in your detailed response last night I do appreciate it!

I finally figured it out! I was not logged in / connected to server via AFP. I kept digging at this this morning, because I could mount every other shared folder from the iMac, except for the external drive and my Pictures folder. This feels like such a buried element on its own. I was always able to access the iMac's primary drive , the external drive and all subfolders from both drives from the Finder from my MBP, but not logging in via AFP was not permitting the external drive to "Mount".

MBP is backing up over WiFi for the first time in nearly 4 years. Mystery solved.