NV+ USB External drive needed

2 TB is the limit, and frontview does not compress.

You can use multiple USB drives, and back up shares. Or back up to a larger device over the network (which is much faster btw).

Hi There
Saw your other post, so yes, I'll just put the 4 TB drive attached to my PC or Mac (I have both, so I'll do one of those) then do the backup from there. could I buy a USB > Ethernet adapter and put the WD on the network too and back up that way so a computer is not left on? I'd like to do that to get auto backups of the NAS periodically?

I don't think a USB->Ethernet adapter will work on a hard drive.

You can of course purchase an inexpensive NAS - for instance an RN102, with a 4 TB drive. Then the RN102 can do the backups with no PC needed.

Will the RN102 or the WD External HD be allowed to do incremental backups, ie only what has changed since the last backup? I am assuming so otherwise it would be hard to manage such large volumes of data.

I think for now I'll stick with the external HD and just set up reminders to periodically back up the NAS over night.

This forum has always been helpful, but it is almost yearly I have issues with the NV+ for the last 3 of 4 years of ownership. If I were to put the money into a new NAS I'd likely get something new and more powerful/robust, then take the drives out of the NV+ and use the NV+ as a backup machine and get a new NAS for my daily use.

An RN102 can do incremental backup (using rsync). Robocopy also supports incremental backup. It's a good idea to verify the backup integrity periodically if you use incremental backup. With the new OS6 NAS that can be done with RAID scrubs and bit-rot protection. With other devices, you can attempt to read the full file system (including the file data) periodically, or just re-write the a full backup from time to time.

ezlotogura wrote:
If I were to put the money into a new NAS I'd likely get something new and more powerful/robust, then take the drives out of the NV+ and use the NV+ as a backup machine and get a new NAS for my daily use.

That is a reasonable approach - I use my NV+ to backup my my current main NAS (a pro-6). One drawback is that the max space available on the NV+ is 8 TB (4x2TB disks in jbod mode), so it might not be capable of fully backing up your replacement.

I've had 4 1.5 TB drives for 4+ years and I am barely half way full. I think my total data is about 2.3 TB or so. So I appreciate the heads up but by the time I get up to 8 TB I'll be onto another solution :-)