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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Wait so Time Machine works over SMB? Huh

Works might be a stretch. Every time I hear someone complaining about Time Machine it turns out they are trying to do it over SMB.

Apple have dropped support for AFP, so SMB is the only game in town.

What are the alternatives to SMB for time machine?

A locally attached drive.

Is this the recommended way to use time machine then, as opposed to over a network?

> If you have a USB drive or other external storage device, you can use Time Machine to automatically back up your files, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents.

* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/104984

The "3-2-1" strategy is even possible if you rotate drives between locations:

> For extra security and convenience, you can back up to multiple disks. If you work in two locations, you may want to keep backup disks in both places.

* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh40739/mac

What would an example of "other external storage device" be in this instance?

You’d think a network drive would be included. Apple used to also provide instructions for connecting a network drive but they stopped with macOS 15 or 26. Now a drive that is physically connected to a Mac is the only method of using Time Machine that Apple officially recognizes.

edit: to be clear you can still use a network drive, but how well that works is the big question. It will probably depend on the user and the setup. The Macs in my house backup to a share on a Pi 4. They can still restore files from it just fine.

They recognize NAS, still, though for instructions they refer you to the manufacturer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102423#nas

Thunderbolt external SSD, would be the only Apple-ish thing. (Formerly of course, FireWire.)

To be absolutely complete, I could mention that at least one SAS HBA PCIe card exists on the market with support for macOS 27, even. Sometimes bundled with other products...

> at least one SAS HBA PCIe card exists on the market with support for macOS 27

Really? I guess now that the Mac Pro is discontinued, products like that are on borrowed time.

You can still have an external Thunderbolt-to-PCIe slots box too.

What would be the benefit of a thunderbolt to PCIe enclosure with an HBA SAS SSD card inside, instead of just a regular external thunderbolt SSD drive? Apart from many thousands of dollars of course.

The point would be to have an enclosure of several/many SAS HDD's that you want to connect. The Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosure holds the PCIe card only, and a separate SAS enclosure holds disks. (The spinning rust type, surely.)

People also connect LTO tape drives using this interface.

Having many SAS drives on the end of a single Thunderbolt connection completely defeats the point though. whats the point of the fast PCIe link and the fast SAS drives when you are bottlenecking them all on a single thunderbolt cable?

I think you're off base regarding the speeds attainable by Thunderbolt (and/or the speeds of hard drives). Feel free to peruse e.g. https://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/pcie-card-exp... ; https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12353459 (on PCIe and SAS bottlenecks).

Besides that, whether a throughput limit defeats the point depends on what the "point" was to begin with, as well as what the alternatives are.

Since macOS 26, it’s SMB only. Time Machine over AFP is no longer supported.

Yep. My household backs up to a Synology NAS via Time Machine: https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/How_to_back_u...

For like 15 years.

I’ve been using Time Machine with my synology nas for ~5 years. Works pretty well. I’d say once every 2 months it looses connection but seems to re-connect itself after a few minutes.

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