NAS backup to external drive

Mickb

Hi,

Looking to back up my day to day NAS box to a external drive.

Want to use something with a bit more 'intelligence' than drag and drop between to file windows.

Any recommendations for software to sync the data on the NAS to the external drive.

Thanks,

MiCk B. :-)

ED E

Synctoy. Done and dusted.

FishOnABike

What OS is the NAS running - rsync should come by default with most Linux distributions.

Fysh

ED E wrote: »

Synctoy. Done and dusted.

I like synctoy a lot, but there have been odd issues of it misbehaving badly (like, losing track of source directory files and then deleting them in the target directory level misbehaviour) that made me stop trusting it a while back.

I use a batch file for a series of robocopy jobs to copy directories from my home media server to an external drive, though it's not the same as the OP's request because I'm using an Icybox enclosure that I connect via eSATA and only power on when backing up data or recovering files. If the NAS is perpetually on, it's trivial to set a scheduled task with a similar script to back up drive contents on Windows. Ditto a cron job in Linux using rsync.

davo2001

The NAS should have its own built in back up software to do this, what NAS do you have? What OS is it running?

ED E

Fysh wrote: »

I like synctoy a lot, but there have been odd issues of it misbehaving badly (like, losing track of source directory files and then deleting them in the target directory level misbehaviour) that made me stop trusting it a while back.

I use a batch file for a series of robocopy jobs to copy directories from my home media server to an external drive, though it's not the same as the OP's request because I'm using an Icybox enclosure that I connect via eSATA and only power on when backing up data or recovering files. If the NAS is perpetually on, it's trivial to set a scheduled task with a similar script to back up drive contents on Windows. Ditto a cron job in Linux using rsync.

Thats interesting. I rely on it to keep my user directory syncd on the NAS which then replicates it with Crashplan. No problems yet but must check it out.

Mickb

davo2001 wrote: »

The NAS should have its own built in back up software to do this, what NAS do you have? What OS is it running?

Hi,

It's a NetGear Ready NAS. I'll take a look on the NetGear site and see what options the give.

MiCk B. :-)

sphinxicus

I have a really old Netgear readynas Duo v1 still chugging along nicely and there are builtin tools in that to enable you to schedule backups of various shares/directories etc to various sources (another NAS/SMB location/external hard drive etc.)

If the web-UI is still similar enough to my old box (think its called Frontview from memory) then you will see all the options in there (navigate to ipaddress_of_NAS/admin e.g. 192.168.1.50/admin in your browser (obviously change your IP address to match your network range)). Check your manual as it may be different.

You can schedule, full backups plus differential backups etc. on a schedule of your choice.

I have a 3TB external disk connected to one of the rear USB ports of my NAS and it does the trick. A word of warning though, I dont know what model your NAS is but mine takes an eternity to complete a full backup of circa 1.5TB of data. So do a few test runs first so you know what time window you have to complete your backup. No point scheduling it to backup every 24hrs if it takes longer than that for the job to complete.

Hope that helps.

Mickb

Hi,

Thanks for the information.

I'll see what options I have for connecting the back-up drive to the NAS.

MiCk B. :-)