backup to readyNAS

Hmm. I've not done this, but I've been backing up laptops forever to an external harddrive, and then copying the contents of that drive to the ReadyNAS. I have harddrive backups going back to my 1992 40Mb IBM Thinkpad. I have to maintain an old Windows XP to run the software to restore. I've also just this week setup one ReadyNAS to backup another ReadyNAS via RSYNC.

So, here are my thoughts. If you want to automate the backup of PC(Windows?) Systems, making the NAS the client which initiates the backup and retrieves the data from another machine, I'd look at an RSYNC server for the PC. The ReadyNAS can wake-up the PC, then remote login, and collect the data from a directory or filesystem on MON/WED/FRI.  The first backup would be a full backup if you use RSYNC on the ReadyNAS, after that it would be delta or incremental. There are no versioning facilities on the ReadyNAS and so if you replace a file on the PC it would get backed up on the next backup.

I've no idea how FreeNAS and shadow protect desktop work, so can't advise.

The alternative to the above scenario of using RSYNC would be to set-up a backup, filecopy of the PC that would mount the ReadyNAS file system and use XCOPY or similar to copy the RAW files to the ReadyNAS. This could easily be a scheduled batch job and would run on the PC. A 2nd alternative would be to use a program like ACRONIS which has been my backup tool for the past 6-years. It will backup a whole hard drive, or a user chosen subset, say RAW files. It will create a .tib file as the backup, you can either create that direct on the READYNAS or a local drive and then  copy/move the .tib file to the ReadyNAS.

It's the Acronis solution to a local drive I use. I do a monthly full backup and incremental backups inbetween. The backup set also notes what has been deleted, and when I do a restore, I get back only what I had at the time of the last incremental backup, not everything including the files I deleted, since the full backup.