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Backup of RN516 to External HDD EXT4 or NTFS
My readynas 516 has NFS enabled as all my files are large 5-35GB movie files when configuring the backup in NAS frontview the suggested format is EXT4 will this not cause a problem if i ever need to ...
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Your reply didn't really answer my question but perhaps i had not asked it in the correcy way
The Qustion was in format should the Backup drive be in
1, I did not know what format my 516 shipped to me in i assumed it was in NTFS the suggested backup format is EXT4 my concern was that having done what was recommended in the event of the backup being required and dragged back to the Nas would i have a problem accessing it as i had been doing
2,The conclusion i came to was Formats are like houses you can put info inside take it out and put it in a new house
The answer to this was i formatted the Back up drive to EXT4 in a Mac envioroment using Paragon ExtFS for Mac
And of course the furniture you put in a house your files im my case Large MKV,M4V,MP4 dont mind where they are
The ReadyNAS units are linux based and therefore do not do NTFS. NTFS is a Microsoft file system used by Windows (you can load apps to mount those drives in MAC/Linux)
The Readynas uses an EXT4 format but please remember since the unit uses RAID, the drives cannot simply be removed from the NAS and connected to your MAC. That seems to be a falacy many folks have.
However you are right, the system will translate between file systems and you can mix and match as you move files across "houses". As long as you are not using a FAT file system, then you will be able to store those larger files with no issues.
funglenn wrote:
The Readynas uses an EXT4 format
The internal drives in the RN516 use the BTRFS file system, not EXT4.
A USB backup drive can be formatted as BTRFS, FAT32, NTFS or EXT4 (http://kb.netgear.com/7009/ReadyNAS-OS-6-USB-Port-use?cid=wmt_netgear_organic)
I recommend using a format that you can read on other systems you have. FAT32 has a file size limit of 2 GB, so it is probably not the best choice. You can connect the USB drive to a PC (windows or OSX) instead of directly to the NAS, and back up the NAS over the network. If you have a mac, that allows you to use any OSX format, and on both types of PCs allows you to encrypt the backup disks.
So really the two choices sensibly are NTFS or EXT4 Netgear recommend the Nas Backup is in EXT4
I assume that if my Nas got into trouble i carry one spare new drive but if i lost two and lost data then once the faulty drives had been replaced one would reinstate the Nas from the backup.In what circumstances would i want to access the backup drive as its pure purpose is a backup for the Nas an expense i didnt really want to go to but as my movie library grows there is an awfull lot of hours days work putting it all back and as you all keep saying you need a backup apart from your nas.
If i had know all of this from the beggining i would have set up the nas in raid 1 but to do that i guess i would have needed to install 6 drives all at once or could i have done it 2 at a time ?
Sorry i forgot to say the only data on the Nas are movies for streaming using plex i use Mac and windows Mac for transcoding and a windows Htpc for running the show which is a i7 quad core 4ghz 16 gb ram etc the mac is a mac pro 6 core 3.5ghz which unfortunately cant not passthrough DTS-HD MA or truehd which is why i had the htps built i must admit having a USB drive attached to nas could have drawback in as much as if someone broke in and stole the nas they would probably steel the back up drive as well
So if the backup drive was attached to the mac when setting up the backup job and click on browse how do you find the backup drive attached to the mac
pgjscottieuk wrote:
So really the two choices sensibly are NTFS or EXT4 Netgear recommend the Nas Backup is in EXT4
No matter what Netgear recommends, a backup you can't read on other systems isn't useful.
NTFS is widely supported (and there are some inexpensive packages for OSX that add write support).
If you can read EXT or BTRFS on other systems, then those are also good choices.
pgjscottieuk wrote:
as my movie library grows there is an awfull lot of hours days work putting it all back and as you all keep saying you need a backup apart from your nas.
I agree with your assessment, and I do back up my media library for that reason. RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe - and there other other possibilities than disk failures.
pgjscottieuk wrote:
If i had know all of this from the beggining i would have set up the nas in raid 1 but to do that i guess i would have needed to install 6 drives all at once or could i have done it 2 at a time ?
There are other RAID options (RAID-6 and RAID-10) which have more redundancy than the default RAID-5. But you'd still need a backup. For most home users the combination of RAID-5 and backup is cost effective - and is a better choice than no backup with RAID-6, RAID-10, or multiple RAID-1 volumes).
pgjscottieuk wrote:
i must admit having a USB drive attached to nas could have drawback in as much as if someone broke in and stole the nas they would probably steel the back up drive as well
There are a couple other similar threats - a lightning strike, small fire or flooding could also take out both the NAS and the backup.
One option is to augment a local backup with cloud backup. There are several options for cloud backup - personally I've been using crashplan for some years. You could potentially install it on your Mac (and it can be set up to backup your NAS shares). Cloud backup does need a reasonably fast internet uplink (with no upload limits).
Another is to make a second USB backup, and store the disk(s) of the second one somewhere else - a safety deposit box, or perhaps exchange backups with a trusted friend.
BTW, there are several cloud offerings that do sync (amazon, dropbox, ...). But sync is not the same as backup. If you accidentally delete your media (either on the NAS or in the cloud), the sync will propagate the deletion - which is not what you want in a backup solution.
pgjscottieuk wrote:
So if the backup drive was attached to the mac when setting up the backup job and click on browse how do you find the backup drive attached to the mac
I'm not a mac owner, so I can only give general guidance.
One option is that you can share the USB drive on the mac, and then the normal backup jobs on the NAS can be set up to use the USB drive as a destination.
Though that is possible (and some do it that way), personally I think it is better to use a utility that runs on the mac to copy the files from the NAS. Ideally you'd have a copy utility that can verify, and which supports incremental updates. With Windows you use teracopy or robocopy (and several other choices). But I can't give a similar recommendation for the mac, since I don't own one.
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