Best strategy for full NAS backup under 4TB?

It will be fastest to back up the data over a gigabit network to a drive connected to a PC. USB speeds on most ReadyNAS including the Pro line are not great.

You can back up the entire data volume through frontview. RSYNC is a good protocol for that (run once with NFS, then edit it to use RSYNC). It does require the right software on the PC though.

If you want to run the backup job from the PC, you can access the full data volume over CIFS/SMB using admin credentials. You can use robocopy to copy it.

What add-ons are you running?

StephenB wrote:
It will be fastest to back up the data over a gigabit network to a drive connected to a PC. USB speeds on most ReadyNAS including the Pro line are not great.

Makes sense. Gigabit ethernet speeds are much faster than USB2.

StephenB wrote:
You can back up the entire data volume through frontview. RSYNC is a good protocol for that (run once with NFS, then edit it to use RSYNC). It does require the right software on the PC though.

I'm Mac-based (which is why I need the Time Machine sparsebundles). Looks like there are some Mac OS RSYNC clients. Just to clarify, do I run Frontview NFS backup targeting Mac attached target drive first, then switch to RSYNC? How would I set the drive connected to my Mac as the backup target in Frontview? I've only used Frontview to backup to drives attached directly to the NAS.

dhl wrote:
If you want to run the backup job from the PC, you can access the full data volume over CIFS/SMB using admin credentials. You can use robocopy to copy it.

I can see the root volume when I login as admin over CIFS. I assume I would then backup all the subdirectories. Correct?

If I backup the C directory, will that back up the invisible .timemachine directory inside?

Re: Add-ons - ReadyNAS Remote, DynDNS, Subsonic, and Transmission

Thanks for your help!

dhl wrote:
Just to clarify, do I run Frontview NFS backup targeting Mac attached target drive first, then switch to RSYNC?

Yes.

dhl wrote:
How would I set the drive connected to my Mac as the backup target in Frontview? I've only used Frontview to backup to drives attached directly to the NAS.

For NFS, you'd need to share the drive over the network, and specify the Mac as the remote device. With Rsync, you just connect to the remote rsync server. I'm not a Mac user; hopefully someone who is can fill in the details.

StephenB wrote:
You can use robocopy to copy it.

oops, Robocopy is windows, so that won't work. Drag and drop will, and there are probably Mac utilities. Ideally you'd find one that verifies.

dhl wrote:
I can see the root volume when I login as admin over CIFS. I assume I would then backup all the subdirectories. Correct?

Yes

dhl wrote:
If I backup the C directory, will that back up the invisible .timemachine directory inside?

In Windows you'd configure the folder properties to make hidden and system files visible. I'm not sure how you do that on a Mac.

dhl wrote:
Re: Add-ons - ReadyNAS Remote, DynDNS, Subsonic, and Transmission

Generally you save the configuration files via Frontview. I believe subsonic has a database, which might not be copied. It's possible you'll need SSH access to copy it. Alternatively, rebuild the database from the media.

Thanks, just a couple more questions then I'll try this out --

I'll be using a USB3 drive attached to my Mac for the backup. Does the format of the backup drive matter as long as it's properly shared over NSF? (My preference would be to keep it HFS+ unless there's a performance penalty)

Is there any speed advantage in starting with NFS rather than just doing a full backup with RSYNC?

Alternatively, there are Mac-based copy utilities that work with network volumes. Carbon Copy Cloner is a good one:

http://www.bombich.com/index.html

When I launch CC Cloner while logged into the ReadyNAS as admin under CIFS, I can see all root directories. It gives me the option of backing up the C volume and makes all invisible files including the .timemachine directory visible and available for backup.

Can I simply set up one of my Macs to backup C over the network to get everything I need for a full backup? (It looks like everything is in C).

-HFS+ should work, as long as you can share with NFS.

-Generally NFS is quite a bit faster than rsync for Nas->Nas backups.

-I'm not familiar with cc cloner, but it looks like that will also work. It makes sense to manually check some of the folders (and if it has a verify mode you probably want to use it).

-C is just the data volume. You also want to save the NAS configuration from Frontview separately.

After the reset, (a) reinstall the add-ons, (b) restore the config, (c) restore the C volume. The order matters, you can't restore the config first.

Excellent, will set-up and run this tonight.

Thank you @StephenB for your help!

Update:

Fully backed-up to an HFS+ USB3 drive using Carbon Copy Cloner on a Mac. I connected via .afp using the tip in this article:

http://readynas.sphardy.com/2010/10/ena ... _4626.html

The overhead of CIFS drops my transfer rates down to ~66MB/s. (I get ~110MB/s over .afp) so this trick cut my backup time roughly in half. Even so, ~4TB took about 20 hours due to CC Cloner's checksum verification overhead. So I guess that's as fast as I can go. Good thing most backups are incremental.

BTW, high recommendation for Carbon Copy Cloner to all Mac users. It has no problem cloning network volumes and the support from developer Mike Bombich is outstanding.

Now time to get some new disks! :D

@dhl - thanks for this - very useful information. I need to backup all my shares on my Ultra4 so I can install replacement Seagate disks. The catch, described here http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=63698&start=135#p413009 is that the replacement disk are slightly smaller than the old ones - so I can't just add them to the Xraid array.

I've been looking for a backup solution of my 3.5 Tb - and though I have enough old disks to back up the shares (almost !) - the data is distributed across a number of areas, so the Max size disk I need is 2TB, I was assuming I'd have to do this with a USB enclosure, or buy another NAS (A readynas 102 would be OK, using the disks in single disk mode - so swopping them in and out as required).

But I do have a couple of Seagate GoFlex adapters that connect to my MacbookPro using FW-800 and USB3 (via a Caldigit Dock.) It's possible to mount bare data drives on the Goflex adapter. So I could just buy CCC and route the copies through the MBP to the Goflex mounted drives.

So two choices - and not that much difference in price - £92 for the NAS vs £29 for the software. I'm assuming that the ReadNSAS solution would be faster, and certainly more convenient in the future. However, CCC has a thirty day trial - so using that I may even be able to get everything backed up, get the new disks in the ReadyNas and restore it all.