I use the same setup and was able to restore some files I recently deleted. My SMB settings in Synology were set to what the recommended settings were already. Not sure what happened in this person's case, but it also seems like he backed up and didn't test the restores. Which isn't good practice.

▲

Aurornis 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> but it also seems like he backed up and didn't test the restores. Which isn't good practice.

For a professional devops person managing a custom backup solution, I agree.

For someone using mainstream consumer technology on a consumer laptop, it's not realistic to expect this. It needs to just work.

▲

ndegruchy 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not in devops. I don't even have a server aside from the basic usage I get out of my Synology.

However, I have lost data in my lifetime. If you value your backups, check on them.

Also, if you're the kind of person who has a Synology, it means you had to buy a NAS, drives, and setup all the associated machinery for Time Machine over your network. Therefore, I feel it's not outside of the expectation that you can check on your backups. Even if it's just a quick test of a restored file or folders.

▲

Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Also, if you're the kind of person who has a Synology, it means you had to buy a NAS, drives, and setup all the associated machinery for Time Machine over your network

I don’t understand why people think this is complicated or limited only to highly technical people.

NAS units are popular with consumers now, not just tech people. They buy them with drives installed and they come with instructions to set up backups with Windows and Mac.

▲

ndegruchy 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I get what you're saying. I will only quibble that the consumers in the market for a NAS, regardless of ease-of-setup, is still bordering technically inclined. My mother-in-law has enough trouble with her iPhone, let alone a server-type-device that she needs to administer.

I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up.

My impression is that companies like Backblaze and other backup-as-a-service solutions are more consumer-popular because it externalizes the complexity and pitfalls like the author is experiencing.

	▲	Marsymars an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up. The problem is that the typical consumer with a laptop never uses it in a docked configuration and just plugs it in to charge. You may as well tell someone they need to regularly plug a USB hard drive into their iphone to back up their photos.

▲

roadbuster 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> For someone using consumer technology on a consumer laptop

Mounting an SMB share on a Synology NAS to use as a Time Machine backup target is not what most users would consider "consumer technology."

▲

crazygringo 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To the contrary. Time Machine is for consumers. Most people use it either with an external hard drive (good for iMacs that stay in one place) or a NAS (good for MacBooks). Apple even sold the AirPort Time Capsule at one point. Since that was discontinued, Synology NAS is the main consumer-friendly alternative. It comes with dedicated Time Machine support. It's supposed to be easy setup and forget. That's the whole point of using Synology instead of alternatives that require more technical expertise, that aren't designed for Time Machine support straight out of the box.

▲

roadbuster 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> [Synology] comes with dedicated Time Machine support

Your umbrance is with Synology, not Apple.

Apple raised security default configurations in Tahoe. That led to a config breakage with NAS devices which rely on relaxed security configurations.

I agree Apple should publish a technical note / changelog of config changes such as this one, but Apple has never implied to users they'd carry a support burden for any/all third-party hardware vendors. To the contrary, they've notified users that you're meant to consult with your NAS vendor for configuration steps:

> Check the documentation of your NAS device for help setting it up for use with Time Machine

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102423

	▲	crazygringo 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wasn't even assigning blame, did you mean to reply to someone else? I was just replying to your point that a Synology NAS "is not what most users would consider 'consumer technology.'" It's firmly in the consumer technology category.

▲

Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s definitely in the range of what consumers do these days.

The consumer NAS business is large. These are popular items with average consumers who understand the importance of backups.

It’s reasonable to expect it to work properly.

▲

PunchyHamster 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Not sure what happened in this person's case, but it also seems like he backed up and didn't test the restores. Which isn't good practice.

Regardless he should've gotten alert if backup target is unusable, not silently break

	▲	ndegruchy 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		100% My biggest gripes with Time Machine are the lack of visibility, the silent failures and the inflexible scheduling. I know there are methods to work around the last one, but the first two are paramount. It does do consistency checking, at least as far as the logs say, but it says nothing about the health of the backup container. While most users don't really want to know about this stuff, I feel like it's important enough to have a more comprehensive UI to provide some insight into the feature and the associated health.

▲

rcarmo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hi! OP here. No, that was not it. Time Machine just quietly failed to do any backups and I failed to notice they weren't happening.

	▲	fmajid 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don’t complete. Of course TimeMachine doesn’t have a way to signal successful completion, unlike, say, Carbon Copy Cloner. Given Apple software quality’s accelerating downward trend, I’d suggest switching to rsync/rclone instead, or Borg/Kopia if you want GUI-driven restores for non-technical members of your family. It’s long past time you flipped the bozo switch on Apple, the title of your blog notwithstanding.

▲

gghffguhvc 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Time Machine is for the everyday person. The everyday person doesn’t have a few thousand dollars to buy a second machine just to properly test a full restore backup periodically.

	▲	MBCook 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They don’t cost that much. And there are cheaper options. Most computers Apple sells are laptops. By a huge margin. So what am I supposed to do? Put my laptop in the same spot every night, plug it in, plug in the drive, and then the next morning carefully make sure the drive is unmounted before I move my laptop anywhere? That’s kind of ridiculous. Network storage works. Apple has supported it for years. If they don’t want to support this, don’t let the OS do it. Until then, don’t break my backups.
	▲	ndegruchy 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Just as a quick follow up, I completely forgot about the tool BackupLoupe[1]. It allows you to slice into your existing Time Machine backups and find out all manner of information on what's going on, what is backed up, when and what is taking up so much space. [1]: https://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
	▲	ndegruchy 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't have a second machine to do a full restore. I just do spot checks every month to see if I'm able to restore files from various locations. It's not scientific, but it's helpful to know if a spot check fails, that there may be a larger issue. Time Machine is absolutely for the layman, and something I feel can be improved upon with a bit more visibility in to the status.