NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Which backup method?
So there are two primary backup methods provided in frontview, for purpose of backing up my volume data. There is the so called "File Backup" and there is ReadyDR. I'm assuming my machine (524x) su...
True if the destination and source are both internal disks. But often one is a USB drive. I believe that is the case here.
well I do think he still makes a good case. yes the USB external drive can go offline without having to be exported and so forth...but in the end I would need to find at the very least another Linux system to plug it into and restore my data should the readynas hardware blow up. I think USB external is better than nothing and particularly since I also have idrive backup happening, but ideally I'd a dedicated backup server. No question. The only reason I'm hesitating a moment on that is because I have itchy hands trying to pull cash out of my pocket to get a new 2025 modern NAS, in which case I'd probably use the 524X as my dedicated backup server rather then the Ultra2Plus.
Also there is the whole ransomware attack argument, if its plugged into the same readynas, then hacker can get to it at the same time they got to the main raid volume. If I don't expose it as SMB then less likely to get hit by ransomware, however I was also going to backup some Macs and PC's to other SMB shares...so they would be exposed. Unless I set them up as rsync also I suppose... But who knows what all weird thing could happen if the readynas were blowing up and did something weird to the USB attached drive. It's definitely best practice to have it in a different place.
The only thing mitigating that for me a little is that I am currently backing up to idrive also, which I actually consider my primary backup location because its raided and managed in the cloud by them much better then I do mine hahah. The local backup is just a convenience to avoid download times from idrive...though I have 1gbit and last night I downloaded 1.2TB overnight, not a big deal. and I will also start doing a lot of my Mac and pc backups to a backup server also, with snapshots there.
Dewdman42 - if you are using the local-to-local backup, then it would be better to switch to rsync, and use 127.0.0.1 as the destination. Now you are using cp.
Yep copy that. cp might have some benefits I'm not sure probably a bit faster then rsync in any case, but I'm not sure its incremental? might be permissions more precise I don't know. I guess that would be some built in hidden functionality of fvbackup to handle differential backups if at all, so... whereas with rsync I can be more precise about the options I want to use, including verification. And whatever I setup will transition to a remote backup server when I have one ready.
Personally I think using the old Ultra 2 for backup is better than using a USB drive.
for sure. Maybe I'll see if I can find that 2gb memory for the Ultra2Plus. After all its not much bigger then a typical USB external enclosure.
But like I said, I am just holding myself back every day looking into 2025 NAS and have my eyes on maybe a high end one, the Minisforum N5Pro, which besides having 5 bays, ECC, ryzen9!, m.2 slots, etc, etc, etc..it can run just about any OS, which means I can just put FreeBSD on there, my preference, or Truenas if I have to. ZFS probably. well a machine like that would serve other home server duties for me as well, easily able to handle hypervisor windows VM's and it even has support for AI stuff, which I don't even know if I need, has a decent GPU for plex transcoding and on and on. Built out with RAM it's gonna be getting close to $1500 without storage though...so I am just kind of putting it off and maybe stretch out Readynas another year or two because truthfully I don't need that much performance, but I do want ECC.
The NAS landscape is changing very fast and getting kind of exciting now that there are numerous solutions that can be operated without any proprietary software if desired. Personally I think synology's days are numbered if they don't reset and reposition. Truthfully I'd rather move to a more simple NAS that just handles NAS duties and then use a mini pc for a home server if I want that. But these days an awful lot of the lower and mid level NAS don't support ECC memory! Synology do, but you're locked into their stuff. power consumption and heat is also a consideration. So I'd prefer more of a mid level CPU, but with ECC, in 4 bays, 5 would be a bonus. Don't need 6. I'm rambling, but the point is this is why I'm kind of putting it off waiting for just exactly the right unit to resonate with me and using my 524x until such time, after which it will become my backup server. But my next NAS I definitely want to be absolutely sure it's not locked into any proprietary stuff of any kind. Fully able to boot up windows, linux, freebsd, unraid, truenas or whatever like a good PC and then I will use it for many years to come in some capacity or another.
but in the end I would need to find at the very least another Linux system to plug it into
Normally I recommend NTFS formatting when using USB backup, since that can be read on both PCs and Macs. I realize that is not the direction you are headed of course. But you will have to take your formatting into account when restoring data to a new platform when the NAS eventually fails.
There are three drawbacks I see with USB drives-
- The drives are low cost, since people buy largely on price. As a result, they are not as reliable - and often SMR, so they often have slow sustained write performance. So I think it's better to use a NAS-purposed or enterprise drive in an enclosure.
- Since the drive is electrically connected directly to the NAS, a power surge can fry both the internal and external drives. That said, a nearby lightning strike can also fry all your electronics, even if you use UPS. The best way to deal with physical threats (fire, flood, lightning, theft) is to maintain an offsite backup.
- Any malware compromising the NAS OS would infect any connected external drives at the same time it infects the internal volume.
I don't use USB backup myself - my backup plan is a combination of NAS->NAS and cloud. The backup NAS are on power schedules, so only powered up when the backups were running or when a maintenance task is underway. Logs are uploaded to the main NAS, so I can review them easily. (Getting all this to work required some mods to ReadyNAS scripts).
I suggested above that switching to the Ultra for backup was IMO a better option than USB for you. If you do that, I suggest disabling AFP, FTP, NFS, and SMB protocols on the Ultra to slow the spread of any malware attack to the backup volume.
All great points.
So I pulled out my old ultra2plus. Turns out I had already upgraded its ram and is OS somewhere along the line. It has 6.10.5, do you know if I can still get 6.10.9 firmware in order to bring it up to date with my 524x? Also are there any known hdd size limitations with this hardware?
Totally hear you about the HDD quality. For a NAS backup drive I will probably get a recertified enterprise drive. As big as I can go, non-raid. ServerPartDeals has Exos and WDUltraStar drives up in the 26TB size range for 250-350 bucks.
https://serverpartdeals.com/collections/manufacturer-recertified-drives
If I were gonna get an external USB drive, I confess I would probably have gotten one of Seagate's external drives which are probably about the same price as these recertified drives, but people say they have Barracudas inside generally, there is no garauntee, Seagate doesn't even publish what's in it. No idea if they are SMR or CMR at this point, but generally I like all the points made about preferring a nas over a USB enclosure...and my ultra2plus is actually a nice tidy little box that is barely bigger then a USB enclosure. The fan is a little noisy but I can schedule it on and off power as you suggested.
I also like the idea of turning off all fire sharing on it, though I was going to also use it to backup Macs and pcs, not with timemachine, but I was gonna use SMB for that. Maybe I can get rsync working with them I'll look into that. Mostly I am Macs, and would rather use CCC to back them up, and in this case not even their entire backup, just some key data directories being backed up nightly. Well anyway, it's still a good point about turning off SMB to keep out any potential ransomware attack. As I understand it, if I use snapshots that can also be generally a good protection from that kind of ransomware attack as well perhaps.
I wanted to ask you something else also, you have mentioned using custom snapshot scheduling and I did that, but front view seems only include a 24 hour hourly grid to indicate when to create snapshots....but nothing to specify a retention policy. So I'm wondering if it's possible for me to use ssh to somehow tweak stuff under the covers to get a rentention policy that is similar as "SMART" but without forever monthly snapshots??? I'd also be generally interested in hearing more about any rsync backup customization scripts you have done, what might be involved or things you have thought about over the years to make your NAS 2 NAS backups solid.
I wanted to ask you something else also, you have mentioned using custom snapshot scheduling and I did that, but front view seems only include a 24 hour hourly grid to indicate when to create snapshots....but nothing to specify a retention policy.
I'd also be generally interested in hearing more about any rsync backup customization scripts you have done,
There is a description in this thread, though it might be hard to follow:
None of these are specific to rsync.
I've
- modified autopoweroff to suspend shutdown when a maintenance task is running
- manually adjusted the maintenance schedule in crontab
- added a script to create the log zip file once a day and upload it to the main NAS with rsync
(1) was needed because Netgear ignored my feedback. The NAS will shut down at the scheduled time even if a maintenance task is still running w/o my mod.
(2): The goal (not obvious) is to ensure that at least one of the three backup NAS is always turned off (essentially air-gapped). That gives me a chance to disconnect it from my network if malware were to strike. The approach is to dedicate a specific day+week of the month tor each NAS to run maintenance tasks (for instance, NAS 1 will run on the first Monday of the first week of the month, NAS 2 will run on the first Tuesday of the second week of the month). This change isn't relevant to what you are setting up.
(3) is a convenience, as it lets me review the logs w/o powering up the backup NAS. It also lets me review older logs - useful when a log gets truncated due to a flood of errors.
yea that is obviously there... What I meant is that the SMART mode has a more intelligent retention schedule where it keeps daily snapshots for only a certain retention period, then weekly, then monthly...all with different retentions, but the Monthly unfortunately is retained forward...I would like to make a retention policy that is just like SMART but doesn't keep monthly forever. I don't mind if I have to edit some config files or scripts somewhere under the covers.... is this even possible or am I stuck with only using one single retention that applies equally to daily, weekly, monthly?
I'll check out that other thread you did about all your customizations, definitely sounds interesting...
Never mind about the firmware question, I found 6.10.8 and 6.10.9 (mostly security update) and have updated the Ultra2Plus to 6.10.9 seems to be functioning normally. Ran a quick rsync test, will work fine, just need to smooth out some of the details now, perhaps some scripting, and get a bigger HDD for it. Should work very well in this capacity.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
