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PeteCress's avatar
PeteCress
Apprentice
Jan 19, 2017
Solved

Backup: Keeping superceeded versions?

I currently have an Ultra-6 as my main storage device and it is being backed up to a DriveBender box using something called SecondCopy - which keeps up to 20 versions of any given file.   I think I...
  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Jan 20, 2017

    This has helped some users: https://community.netgear.com/t5/ReadyNAS-in-Business/ReadyNAS-312-Need-Help-Understanding-Snapshots/m-p/936586/highlight/true#M3041

     

    Each snapshot holds the entire share at the time the snapshot was taken - all the files are visible.  The reason it is space-efficient is because the data blocks that haven't changed are referenced by both the main share and the snapshots.  So unchanged files are only stored once, files that changed once are only stored twice, etc.  But they appear in the share and all the snapshots.

     

    There are some shares where snapshots can create problems.  Two common examples are shares holding SQL databases that are frequently updated and shares for downloading torrents.  The frequent changes result in a lot of snapshot space being used, and also a lot of file fragmentation.  Just something to keep in mind.

     

    Note that if you are using Windows 7, 8, or 10, there is a right-click function that shows previous versions of a file.  If you are using snapshots, you can right-click on any file in the share (or any folder) and see the previous versions for that file.  That simplifies your use-case considerably.  (There is a way to turn that feature off if you use custom snapshots).

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