Time Machine, Time Capsule, NAS, & TP-Link...The Rollercoaster Compatibility Saga

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BMBell1919 Author

Level 1

37 points

Time Machine, Time Capsule, NAS, & TP-Link...The Rollercoaster Compatibility Saga

It's been a saga lately trying to get Time Machine to work in 2025 with various generations of Mac computers. The whole Journaled to APFS migration is throwing a wrench into the backup agenda. Time Capsule doesn't speak APFS...so that makes it less than favorable as a viable option for newer machines. Similarly they don't recognize APFS USB drives either. So with Time Capsule running its course with modern devices, a natural evolution would be local USB hard drives or NAS storage solution. Since our house uses multiple machines, I am working on configuring a NAS setup. But, TP-Link doesn't speak APFS.

That being said, does anyone have a router solution that speaks APFS? Similarly, I am wondering if an APFS machine can backup to a NAS drive formatted as Journaled. Thank you.

Mac mini (M4)

Posted on Jul 15, 2025 01:40 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

John Galt

Level 10

153,538 points

Jul 15, 2025 05:10 PM in response to BMBell1919

Time Capsule doesn't speak APFS...so that makes it less than favorable as a viable option for newer machines.

Not a problem because like all NAS devices the TC has its own operating system and manages its own file system format. It happens to be OS X and HFS+ respectively but it doesn't matter what it is.

For that reason, APFS is not a requirement for an NAS device. It could use some Windows file format. It's like asking what file format is used for anything served by a network device. It doesn't matter.

Similarly they don't recognize APFS USB drives either.

That's a problem. They have to be formatted HFS+ for a TC to recognize them.

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

16,703 points

Jul 15, 2025 02:14 PM in response to BMBell1919

Last year I set up my NAS on my TP-Link router using APFS and it worked fine. Since then I no longer needed a NAS so I just have my drive connected directly to my Mac. Not sure why your NAS would not communicate with your APFS drive.

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Answer 3

BMBell1919 Author

Level 1

37 points

Jul 15, 2025 04:19 PM in response to tbirdvet

Thank you for your response. Your NAS drive was formatted APFS? What TP-Link router did you use? I honestly haven't seen any documentation saying that TP-Link routers recognize APFS formatted USB drives. Any references I've found state that it isn't a compatible NAS format. Thank you again.

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Answer 4

tbirdvet

Level 6

16,703 points

Jul 15, 2025 04:34 PM in response to BMBell1919

I have an AX-3000. I thought I had it formatted to APFS but now that I think about it may have been formatted to exFat. But I usually do all as APFS but perhaps I did not. It was about a year ago when I had that setup.

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