4 hours ago
Good news is you’ve already done the most important step by backing up your actual data to an external drive. That means you’re free to reset the QNAP without risk of losing anything important.
On your TS-451+, you have two main options:
1. Clear only the Time Machine data
• Log into QTS, open Storage & Snapshots, and check which shared folder was used for Time Machine.
• If you just want to reclaim the space, you can delete that folder and recreate a smaller quota-based Time Machine target (for example, 1–2TB instead of unlimited). This way Time Machine won’t grow endlessly and will prune older backups automatically.
2. Wipe and rebuild the NAS
• If you’d prefer a clean start, you can reset the NAS and rebuild the storage pool. For your four 8TB drives, I’d recommend RAID 5 or RAID 6.
• RAID 5 gives you ~24TB usable with one drive of redundancy.
• RAID 6 gives you ~16TB usable with two-drive redundancy, which is safer.
• After creating the pool, make two shared folders: one for your actual data, one dedicated to Time Machine with a fixed quota.
Once rebuilt, you can re-enable Time Machine support under Network & File Services > Apple Networking and point macOS at the new quota-limited folder. For your main data, you’ll want to set up snapshots and possibly use Hybrid Backup Sync to push a copy to an external USB drive or to cloud storage, so you have a true backup beyond RAID.
On your TS-451+, you have two main options:
1. Clear only the Time Machine data
• Log into QTS, open Storage & Snapshots, and check which shared folder was used for Time Machine.
• If you just want to reclaim the space, you can delete that folder and recreate a smaller quota-based Time Machine target (for example, 1–2TB instead of unlimited). This way Time Machine won’t grow endlessly and will prune older backups automatically.
2. Wipe and rebuild the NAS
• If you’d prefer a clean start, you can reset the NAS and rebuild the storage pool. For your four 8TB drives, I’d recommend RAID 5 or RAID 6.
• RAID 5 gives you ~24TB usable with one drive of redundancy.
• RAID 6 gives you ~16TB usable with two-drive redundancy, which is safer.
• After creating the pool, make two shared folders: one for your actual data, one dedicated to Time Machine with a fixed quota.
Once rebuilt, you can re-enable Time Machine support under Network & File Services > Apple Networking and point macOS at the new quota-limited folder. For your main data, you’ll want to set up snapshots and possibly use Hybrid Backup Sync to push a copy to an external USB drive or to cloud storage, so you have a true backup beyond RAID.