I’m really looking into building a NAS for my Mac. I got the 256gb MacBook Air and currently back up the machine using a nvme drive over type c but having to plug it in to access video files and backup every couple days is not ideal. With how cheap physical storage is now, a NAS seems like a good solution. Does anyone have a NAS at home and can share the software and hardware needed to make it run smoothly?
My router has a USB port and supports time machine backups over Wi-Fi. I just connected an external hard drive and it works very well. It ended up being the easiest solution for me without needing to invest in a whole NAS.
If you aren’t already, you may want to use a solid state external drive or be sure that your router it allows the hard drive the sleep. I killed 3 external drives by doing this before I realized what the issue was.
I did notice that it wasn’t sleeping properly, so I just SSH in and kill the offending process as needed. The issue only comes back following a restart, but otherwise the HDD works great. The disk is asleep unless I am actively backing up or using it.
I also have an offline external SSD I use as a redundant backup to be safe.