- [Instructor] In this video, we're using the entry-level,
Synology DS220j NAS
we're gonna use it to create
a Time Machine backup destination for our iMac.
And this creates a super simple
and budget friendly backup solution.
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So here it is the Synology DS220j NAS.
Now, as I stated at the outset,
this is a very budget friendly model.
In fact, this is the entry-level Synology NAS for consumers.
Now I covered a lot of Synology products over the years
and they're usually on the high end of the scale,
but this one is definitely without a doubt entry-level.
It comes with two USB-A ports, a gigabit Ethernet connection
and yeah, that's pretty much it.
So what you're gonna find inside are two bays.
Now, in most cases, when you purchase this NAS,
it's going to come diskless that is without any disk inside,
you provide your own hard drives.
And as you can see, it actually has two bays
to accommodate those hard drives.
We have two 16 terabyte Seagate drives inside here.
So that fits real nicely in a very compact package.
I'm gonna go ahead and plug it in.
Then you wanna connect the Ethernet cable to your router
or in some cases, even directly to your Mac,
just depending on your setup.
Now, I just recently jumped on the eero bandwagon
and I'm gonna just connect it directly
to one of these guys right here,
which, actually I'm really digging the eero.
Let me know if you wanna see more coverage on that,
and I'll make a video with my eero experience,
but I have it all connected.
Now, just gonna fire up the Synology NAS,
it's going to initialize.
Then you load up this DiskStation Manager in a browser
and it holds your hand through the entire process,
including creating your volume.
So let's talk about establishing a Time Machine backup.
First thing you wanna do is open up File Station
and then go to where it says, Create New Shared Folder.
All right, so now you want to give the shared folder a name
and I recommend just naming it Time Machine.
So let's go ahead and do that right here.
So it's already populated my location, the volume one,
there's only one volume on this machine.
So I'll select that and then just simply click Next.
And now it's gonna ask you about encryption
and I recommend skipping this step
because we're actually going to encrypt on the Mac side.
So just go ahead and click Next there and then click Apply.
All right, so once you click apply,
you're gonna see processing and then it's going to present
the permissions for that shared folder.
Just go ahead and click Okay.
We're not gonna touch anything here at all.
Okay, so the next step is to create a Time Machine user.
So we're back at our desktop.
We're gonna open up control panel
and then you want to click on User.
All right, so we're gonna click where it says Create
and then we're gonna give the user a name.
Now, no spaces are allowed here.
So just type in Time Machine,
no spaces, insert a password.
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And just give me a second while I compose that.
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All right, so once you have those things in there,
go ahead and click the next button.
Then after that is gonna ask you to join groups.
Nothing you need to change here, so just click Next.
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All right, so it's gonna ask you
to assign shared folder permission.
So on the screen, you definitely do need to add,
read, write access to the Time Machine shared folder
for the Time Machine user.
So click next and then here for the quota.
I'm just gonna set it up
so that Time Machine won't use all the storage space,
but I'm gonna limit it to about four times the space
of my iMac, which is 256 gigabytes.
So I'm gonna give it about a thousand gigabytes
or one terabyte, and then go ahead and click Next.
And then on the sign application permissions,
nothing to change here.
So just go ahead and click Next.
In the, nothing to change on the user's speed limit setting,
go ahead and click Next there as well.
So everything looks good
and now it's just a matter of hitting the Apply button.
All right, so we have our Time Machine shared folder.
We have our Time Machine user.
Now we need to establish the backup location.
So in control panel,
you wanna click where it says File Services,
make sure SMB is enabled, click Advanced
and then Enable BonJour Time Machine Broadcast via SMB.
So just click that little check box
and then click where it says,
Set Time Machine Folders right there below.
And now choose your location.
Of course you wanna choose the Time Machine folder,
click Apply and you can click Apply again.
Although it's gonna say no settings were changed
and now you can close out of control panel.
And in fact, you can actually close out the browser,
close out of DSM because we're done here.
Now, It's time to head over to our Mac
and complete the final step
of this Time Machine Synology setup.
So the first thing you wanna do on your Mac
is to open up system preferences
and then click where it says Time Machine.
Now you wanna click where it says Select Backup Disk
and then find the name of the shared folder
that you have SMB access enabled for.
So in this case Time Machine on the name of your Synology,
which in my case is called a fire Flowerflower.local.
So you wanna select that and then click where it says,
Encrypt backups and then click Use Disk.
All right, so it's gonna wanna connect
to your Synology to that shared folder.
So go ahead and put in the username and password
that you created in that second step.
So we're gonna put in Time Machine,
put our password in and then click the Connect button.
And now, since we selected to encrypt backups,
you're gonna want to establish a password,
a separate password that TimeMachine
will use to encrypt the backup.
So this can its own unique password to encrypt the disc.
Be sure not to forget this password,
otherwise you will not be able to restore
any data from the backup disc.
So once you have the password entered,
go ahead and click the Encrypt Disk button.
And now Time Machine is ready to go.
You can see where it says next backup
and it's counting down.
Now you wanna click where it says,
Show Time Machine in menu bar because that allows you
to actually go ahead and kick off these backups.
You can also click options to restrict or exclude items
from the backup if you wish to do so.
All right, so up to our menu bar,
we're gonna click the Time Machine icon
and then click where it says Back Up Now.
So that'll force the backup to start
and you should also have backup automatically enabled
so that daily backups will run hourly.
Backups will run, et cetera.
So you can see this thing is kicking off.
It's preparing the backup and expect this initial backup
to take a while because it has to dump everything
over to the backup location.
And lot's gonna depend on your connection speed,
the speed of your disc, both on your Mac
and on the Synology NAS.
just a lot of different variables involved here.
But generally speaking, as you can see there,
it says two hours remaining,
just to back up a little over a hundred gigabytes.
If you have a much bigger disk
expected to take a lot longer.
But remember you're connected wirelessly,
at least in my case, I'm connected wirelessly.
And this is gigabit Ethernet, not 10 gigabit Ethernet,
like some of the more expensive NAS machines.
But here's the benefit here folks,
I've had these Time Machine backups running
for just a few days already
and I already have lots of backups available there
to back up my precious data
that I don't wanna risk losing.
And I just really love the overall simplicity
and ease of use of the Time Machine interface.
You can easily go back in time,
so to speak and find files that you may have deleted
or may have changed et cetera.
So if you appreciate how to videos like this
with an entry-level NAS like the DS220j,
let me know down below in the comment section.
If you want more regular NAS content,
how to do things like run a Plex server,
how to set up your own private cloud backup solution.
Let me know as well, so thanks again for watching folks.
This is Jeff Benjamin with 9to5Mac.
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