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Forum Discussion
GL1zdA
Feb 18, 2016Guide
Sync to USB drive instead of clear and full backup
Is there a way to sync a folder on the ReadyNAS to an USB drive instead of having it cleared and fully backuped? I have a large share on the NAS and a 2 TB USB drive attached. On this share new files will often be created and old deleted and this will quickly fill the USB drive when using incremental backups. Clearing the whole backup and then copying over 1 TB of files which were already there doesn't seem like a great idea.
I've found a workaroud here: How to sync NAS and USB drive , but maybe there is a cleaner way of doing it in the current firmware?
local rsync backup would be a good feature. I suggest posting it in the idea exchange ( https://community.netgear.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-ReadyNAS/idb-p/idea-exchange-for-storage?topic-zoom=&sort-by=&date-range=all )
9 Replies
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- mdgm-ntgrNETGEAR Employee Retired
As that linked thread indicates you can use Rsync. With Rsync only the changes are copied across on incremental backups and you can remove files on the backup destination that were deleted on the source.
- GL1zdAGuide
Okay, I have configured it that way and launched the backup. After 24 hours it still haven't completed. The size is about 1 TB and almost no files have changed (something like a dozen files added on the backed up share) - I know rsync is quite intelligent, but it seems forcing it to talk locally over TCP/IP is to much overhead for the little RN102. What is more, most of the admin UI is unresponsive - it won't for example load anything in the shares tab.
Does it matter what FS is on the USB drive? This drive was my archive drive before I bought the ReadyNAS. It is NTFS formatted. I have copied all files from it to a share on the NAS (through a local backup job) and the new backup job is set up to copy files from this share to the USB drive using remote rsync with all default settings.
- StephenBGuru - Experienced User
If this is the first time the backup job is running, it will do a full backup (overwriting files that are already there).
I recently rebuilt my RN102 using rsync to restore data from my pro-6. It ran at approximately 1 TB a day. I haven't used rsync to usb on the RN102, but it is possible you simply haven't waited long enough for the first backup to complete.
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