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Forum Discussion
Basic questions: backing up Windows PCs to ReadyNAS Duo
Having a home network of 4 or 5 PCs running Windows (mostly 7 Home Premium but one Vista Pro) I finally decided to bite the bullet and get a proper backup system.
Installed the ReadyNAS Duo with 2x2TB disks, RAIDed up.
All is fine from the outside, I can see the shares from all the PCs.
However, I am somewhat baffled about setting up the backup jobs to run from the Frontview backup.
The documentation seems sparse at best.
Using the Frontview "add backup job" ...
I assume I need to use one of the Remote:Windows sources, but which type is better? Timestamp or Archive bit?
How do I deduce the pathname to a particular user's files? Is it //myPC/c:/Users/Me ? That doesn't seem to work. What if the user name has a "space" in it (as some of them do)?
There's no browser to use to find the files and test the path.
Do I need to set up the filesystems as "dhared to everyone" in the PC they are stored on? Can I do it just via an "administrator" account on that PC?
Am I going about this the wrong way? The hardware looks really solid but I don't think much of the backup software that comes with it, to be honest.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Martin.
Installed the ReadyNAS Duo with 2x2TB disks, RAIDed up.
All is fine from the outside, I can see the shares from all the PCs.
However, I am somewhat baffled about setting up the backup jobs to run from the Frontview backup.
The documentation seems sparse at best.
Using the Frontview "add backup job" ...
I assume I need to use one of the Remote:Windows sources, but which type is better? Timestamp or Archive bit?
How do I deduce the pathname to a particular user's files? Is it //myPC/c:/Users/Me ? That doesn't seem to work. What if the user name has a "space" in it (as some of them do)?
There's no browser to use to find the files and test the path.
Do I need to set up the filesystems as "dhared to everyone" in the PC they are stored on? Can I do it just via an "administrator" account on that PC?
Am I going about this the wrong way? The hardware looks really solid but I don't think much of the backup software that comes with it, to be honest.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Martin.
2 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- It is more common that you run a backup application on your PCs that pushes the data to the NAS and then allows you to maintain multiple backups or versions, easy selection of data to include/exclude etc.
You can configure the NAS to 'pull' the data, but you must setup your PCs with appropriate access etc. and then you have only a basic backup facility which is more often used to backup data from the NAS to another device (eg a 2nd NAS, an attached USB device or perhaps are remote server)
There are many windows backup apps around to do this - freeware, shareware & full commercial. It may even be the case that the backup app supplied with Windows 7 would service your needs - Ah, OK. That sounds like a plan. Won't work with W7's builitin bkup, though, because I've "only" bought Home Premium and therefore, in the eyes of Microsoft, don't deserve to be allowed to backup across a network. The following is taken from the dialogue in the W7backup program: "You can only save your backups on a network location on Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 7 Enterprise. "
And they wonder why the world hates them.
I must admit I'm increasingly tempted to stick Ubuntu on all my systems, but I don't think I could stand the application compatibility issues.
Any recommendations for non-Microsoft backup utilities that can run under Windows7 and Vista? I will google some, of course, but if anyone has experience using some with a ReadyNAS share that would be helpful. If there's a way of defeating this limitation in W7's backup that would be helpful, too.
Cheers,
Martin.
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