How good is the WD implementation of time machine?

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX Series
1

having some issues with time machine backing up to my new WD NAS - very slow.
read a lot of posts looking for answers. one says
“Apple has published a specification for network devices that work with Time Machine. None of the third-party NAS vendors, as far as I know, meets that specification. They all use the incomplete, obsolete Netatalk implementation of Apple Filing Protocol.”

is this right? would i have been better off buying an airport extreme and a usb disk?

2

All Linux based NAS are using the same netatalk, the one that is available. Beside this, there seem to be some specialities for Time Machine which cannot be solved by the given software.

The slow speed ot Time Machine backup is related to how Time Machine is working internally. It is a block based mechanism but using file based transport. At the end, the slowness of Time Machine is well known since a long time and cannot be solved as it is a built-in “Gordian knot”.

Best practise: let Time Machine run in the background. The slow speed is realted to the first full backup only, as soon as the whole setup is created on a Linux based NAS, then Time Machine is fast.

1 Like
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Per my other comment/post the slowness is not solely based on the first back up.
I finally achieved the first back up on WDMyCloud by using the ‘Restore’ approach twice during the 500GB back up.
2 weeks later the incremental back up is now back to a very slow pace. (specifically 2GB 15 hours…)
There is a problem here.
My current view is the MyCloud is not performing adequately as a Time Machine server. Would be very helpful if we can get some insight into how this is being resolved.
Look forward to your feedback.