Backup plan

That is what many of us do. I believe it is the best solution for onsite backups ( nas to nas).
For offsite backups there are various strategies, one you have explored. Offsite nas is not always possible - it is not really an option for me, but simple USB backup disks held offsite are. I rotate 2 disks with my most important and hard to recreate data to an offsite location every week or 2. I use PC software to create the backup.

I think you must have some offsite backup plan, for the most important data at least. Remember that, although cloud backup can be costly, buying and maintaining another nas is in some cases going to be equally or more expensive.

Thanks for your input.

Yes, NAS are expensive and they don't last forever. But It's £84 per year with Dropbox and it's just 1 TB. I can buy a 4 bays second hand NAS and have the same space for not much but I could fit 2 or 4 TB drives (expandable) and it would be a much more flexible setup.

I agree that maintaining is the key, that's why I'd love to have someone else to do that for me. But it seems very expensive. Let's put it this way: if I could have unlimited space for £7 a month from Dropbox, then I would do that. But just 1 TB I feel it's too expensive.

Thanks for the USB drive idea, it's definitely very simple and worth doing it.

Take a look at CrashPlan - that has an unlimited backup within your price range. https://www.code42.com/crashplan/

Also see this thread - viewtopic.php?t=61152

Thank you, it seems great. It's like BackBlaze but it does support NAS (with a trick under Windows) and I understand the agent could stay on the NAS itself!

I'll go through that, it seems cool. I could not consider BackBlaze because they do not back up NAS's - understandable. Thank you!

Hi,

CrashPlan is running fine on my ReadyNas. I have only backed up my Thunderbird backup, 6.9GB. It was reasonably fast - Virgin Media have some traffic management so I had to set the upload to 1.7Mbit max to not trigger that. When I then open Thunderbird and updated the email, CP re-synced everything in a few seconds, without re-sending the whole inbox file.

My RN (Pro6 with upgraded CPU and RAM) did not show more than 20% CPU usage but it was mainly below 10%.

CP is as cheap as BlackBlaze but it does support a NAS - in fact it runs on it which is just great for back up sync - and it is very configurable, I did not like the 'set and forget' behaviour of BB.

I will keep using CP for a month before purchasing a plan but it seems exactly what I need. Thank you itsjasper for that!

I have been thinking for some time about updating my overall Backup Plan (Getting a ReadyNAS was a part of it).
Seeing CrashPlan's facilities, I am very tempted, but having previously looked at

itsjasper wrote:
Also see this thread - viewtopic.php?t=61152

it frightens the hell out of me. I have used Linux (RedHat and Ubuntu), but there appear to be many problems with the installation of CrashPLan (225 cumulative posts today on the above post).

Seeing

tony359 wrote:
CrashPlan is running fine on my ReadyNas.

and you did this recently, could you comment on how easy this was and do I have to wade through all the comments in the post above to find the definitive 'menu' of how to do it?

I did it quite a while ago now on my pro-6 (OS4) - it wasn't as difficult as the posts made it look. It's been running well for a couple years now.

Creating a clean guide in a new thread would be useful. This blog outlines the steps, and could be useful to you (though some steps are ARM specific): http://blog.andrewkoebbe.com/posts/2014 ... dynas-102/

I don't recommend putting the default archive location on the OS partition, so I'd change that particular answer to a data partition folder. Also it is possible to move the cache onto the data partition after the install, which is worth doing as well.

BTW, there is another approach you can take that completely avoids the need to install on the NAS.
http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Lat ... For_Backup
http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Lat ... work_Drive

Note the mounting commands described in these links are ordinary. The key thing is that the drives are mounted by SYSTEM not the normal user. Although code42 won't support these methods (the links are clear on that), they are allowed by the license terms (otherwise they won't have posted them on their support site).

Hi Stephen,

I didn't realise that, my CP is already working, can I move the default archive now or is it too late? And how do I move the cache as well?

John,
I understand your concern. I am not a massive guru when it comes to Linux but I begun playing with computers when MS-DOS was around so a terminal screen does not scare me. Also, when it comes to Linux I like to quote something I once found on a page where the author said that the procedure would be easy:

Easy meaning: "easier than tearing your hair out and screaming about how much Linux sucks while running around the room". Not actually easy.

The installation worked well for me till I couldn't start the service because CP was using a custom Java install which did not work. I had to browse to find how to amend it. I posted the solution but, again, it's another piece of the puzzled on a long thread.

I like the idea of CP running on my NAS and not on my computer. This way I can leave my NAS permanently on and I know that everything I save on my NAS is being backed up in the background. Also, I can set up the NAS so it can be remoted into.

I agree that we should make a definite guide with all the bits and pieces stranded on those 15 pages of thread. I may be able to help, to say 'thank you' but I will need everybody's help to make sure I am not missing anything. I'll see if I can post something on the other thread.

I have posted a tentative, let me know what you think!

tony359 wrote:
I didn't realise that, my CP is already working, can I move the default archive now or is it too late? And how do I move the cache as well?

Instructions for the cache are here: http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Lat ... _Directory You do need to preserve the linux EOL convention (either edit on the NAS, or use something like notepad++). The cache can become quite large.


Instructions for the archive directory are here: http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Lat ... _Is_Stored Note this only matters of you are saving backups for other machines on the NAS (e.g., using the crashplan "friend backup" feature).

Thanks.

Do I need to do anything to preserve/delete the existing cache? I don't believe I'll back up using the friend feature, so happy days.

I'll add those two links to the list.