How can I connect OS X to a QNAP Time Machine volume?

Question

I have a QNAP TS-212 NAS running the latest 4.0.2 firmware. This firmware has a Backup Station option where it creates a Time Machine backup volume for OS X to use. In my case OS X 10.8.5.

When I enable Time Machine from OS X, I can actually see the backup volume called TMBackup in the list of volumes to choose.

However, selecting it, it tries to connect, and then tells me that the connection failed. I can connect to other AFP shares on the NAS without problem, but it won't connect to the TMBackup one.

What can I do to be able to make backups again?

Answer 1

I had the same problem with my new macbook pro running OSX Mavericks 10.9.1 and a QNAP TS-219P with firmware 4.0.2.

In the end I had to bypass the Time Machine GUI and set the backup volume through the command line using this command:

sudo tmutil setdestination -ap afp://[email protected]/TMBackup

where NAS.local is the network name of my QNAP. Once that way set the backups worked fine and the GUI responds properly also.

*** the afp:// part of the above command can just be used in the "Connect to Server" menu item from the Finder. I found that the use of the username "TimeMachine" made all the difference, given that I also use the same network server for my normal network shares.

Answer 2

What I did and what surprisingly worked was forcing OS X to connect to the share once. Open up Terminal.app and enter the following, replacing qnap.local with your actual NAS hostname:

ssh [e-mail]

The problem is that the Time Machine volume needs to be accessed by a different user account, namely TimeMachine. It can access the NAS via SSH and AFP. The password is the one you set in the Backup Station control panel. Other shares might be guest-only or accessible from another user, but I believe that OS X refuses the connection to TMBackup entirely if it hasn't seen that machine yet.

You should be able to enter your password. Then you'll get kicked out again. After that, once you try to connect to the Time Machine volume from OS X' System Preferences, it works without problems.

Answer 3

I had the same problem too with Yosemite and a QNAP HS-251 NAS with 4.1.3 firmware. None of these solutions worked for me.

I found an improvement based on Phil answer:

sudo tmutil setdestination afp://TimeMachine:yourpassword@yourIPaddress/TMBackup

where "TimeMachine" is the user, "yourpassword" is the TimeMachine password filled in the NAS interface, "yourIPaddress" the IP address of the NAS and "TMBackup" the display name.

The disk appeared magically in the Time Machine list and I can connect to it.

Answer 4

For user name use timemachine instead of TimeMachine, that solved the problem to me