Time Machine - Synology NAS - Ventura

Since the same-named topic dated January 2023 has been closed off, so helpful, I reopen one.

This for sharing my experience while creating a new Time Machine-enabled Shared Folder on DSM 624 / DS212j using Ventura 13.2 on an 2019 Intel iMac. The devices are connected via wires, no WiFi involved.

Using Monterey on this machine before, I was able to create a proper TM enabled share on the NAS and have TM use it; a way of working I have been doing for the past 10+ years successfully with other machines and OSs on the same NAS. After upgrading to Ventura the backups were continuing without TM complaining. But after a few months I noticed a huge increase in space, trice the amount to be back-upped. There is no reasonable explanation for that increase that I am aware of, certainly while compared to other backups I make (Carbon Copy Cloner e.g.) and TM backups to local-attached drives.

I decided to create a new Shared Folder on the NAS to make a fresh start. But this has not been successful twice. TM will see the new share and let me select it to be used and will start connecting to it, then it will abort saying "The backup disk image could not be created". Leaving some .sparsebundle files as garbage.

All permissions and other settings on the DSM are exactly the same as the previous Share Folder as well as a couple other TM-enabled volumes (for other Macs).

So it seems Ventura means the end for using Time Machine with an DSM Synology NAS. I have read that newer DSM OS and devices have similar problems.

If anyone has any progress or insight on the issue, please reply.

However, I do now really hesitate to trust this configuration for safety reasons; backing up should be done in a stable environment obviously.