Originally Posted By: Roger
I've had problems doing that; the backup doesn't always run, and it often decides to blow the entire backup away and do it again from scratch.
Originally Posted By: andy
I've never bothered trying to get network TimeMachine working, I've heard far too many horror stories.

Yep, that's the main issue with using a non Apple destination for Time Machine, and it appears the newer Netatalk stacks don't fully solve the issue.

The setups I've done with an Apple hardware piece in the mix (Time Capsule or the newer Airport Extreme) have been solid. And thankfully the units I helped with never ran into the overheating deaths many of the first Time Capsule units experienced.

For the family, the Time Capsules are becoming less important though. This Christmas will be the point I migrate the last member up to iCloud Photo Library. Any old documents they had from their now unused Macbook will move into iCloud Drive and be accessible via the iPad. Slowly, my own setup is moving in this direction.

Originally Posted By: Roger
The first problem could be down to the fact that I don't use the Mac that often: my daily computer is a Linux Mint desktop; the Mac is only for when I'm out. It takes weeks until it actually gets around to installing updates as well (this is something that Windows Update gets right, imo).

If you have a Mac that supports PowerNap, it will take care of a Time Machine backup and system update downloading while the system is inactive and in low power mode.