I purchased a nice external drive to use for TimeMachine on my Mac.1 After formatting the drive and configuring encrypted TimeMachine backups I noticed it was taking a very long time to complete. I waited a day for it to complete and discovered I had a new problem. Every backup took an hour to complete and several more hours to encrypt. That definitely didn’t seem right.
I stumbled across this MacRumors thread about properly creating an encypted TimeMachine volume so I thought it was worth summarizing what worked for me.
The Backblaze alternative to Amazon S3 is out of beta with new support for Synology Cloud Sync. I’ll be sticking with my Amazon Cloud syncing because it works for me and is cheaper. But I have to say the Backblaze B2 option is pretty compelling. By my calculations it would only cost about $35 per month to store 7TB of data.
I installed the DSM 6 release candidate several weeks ago. As usual, it’s a great update for the Synology NAS. The most notable improvements over DSM 5 for me is the file indexing. Now it’s available as a final release for owners of many Synology NAS boxes.1
From the Mac Finder I can now do a spotlight search on 7 TB of data within a few seconds.
Not to mention, some of the contents of text files are also indexed by DSM 6.
Synology’s DSM 6 has reached “RC” status. Now’s probably an OK time to consider it. Try at your own risk, but I’m envious if you do.
This latest beta sounds pretty great.
Content Search You can now use Mac Finder to quickly search the content of indexed files within mounted folders on your Synology NAS.
Even the little bits are huge improvements. Like this little note about synchronizing with Google Drive:
You can now convert Google Docs to Microsoft Office or jpeg formats in download-only tasks to keep an offline backup copy.
I love this little computer more every year.
I mentioned in a recent post about Synology that once Arq for Mac supported Amazon Cloud, it would be a great backup alternative. Well, as of this week Arq supports Amazon Cloud.
For $60 a year, Amazon Cloud is a great deal for unlimited storage and bandwidth. Are is great because it encrypts backups before they ever leave my Mac. While there are still advantages to a service like Backblaze (like mobile apps and web access to download files) Cloud Drive with Arq and Synology are very compelling.
The latest Synology DSM update out this week adds some critical security fixes but there’s also a nice update to the Cloud Sync application.1 If you are using Amazon’s new Cloud Drive service your Synology can now automatically sync (both directions) with the service.
The Amazon Cloud Drive is free for unlimited storage of photos and videos with a Prime membership. Or, you can sync an unlimited amount of data of any kind for $60 per year.
BitTorrent Sync, Dropbox, Amazon Cloud, Google Drive — There’s no shortage of ways I can store files on the Internet. I’ve been a dedicated Dropbox user for many years and continue to pay for their “Pro” consumer product. The announcement of a new Amazon unlimited storage option is compelling but the lack of options for access as well as limited app support will likely keep me using Dropbox.
But, I find myself using my own hosted Cloud Station on my Synology NAS more often as my way of getting files moved between devices.
Use at your own risk, but these are pretty nice third party packages for Synology NAS. Many of them do not work with the latest DSM 5.1 beta but some do and they are great. I’m a huge dummy with an expensive hobby. Same as it ever was.
The most common question I get about using a massive NAS at home, is how do I back it up. While a 9TB NAS can be a challenge, backing it up has the same considerations as any other disk drive. A backup has to satisfy a few requirements:
It has to be triple redundant A backup is no good if restoring it is not realistic At least one of the 2 backups must be located outside of my house Those are the basic rules for the backup destination.
