Don't understand ReadyNAS Backup info

"local" means the NAS on which you are creating the backup job. "remote" means the other system.

"source" means the system you are backing up (which could be either remote or local). "destination" is the system you are backing up to (again it could be either remote or local).

So in your case the Mac is the (remote) source, and the NAS is the (local) destination.

Thanks StephenB for replying so quickly.

I think I need a bit of rewiring to understand 'Local' and 'Remote'. Your info helped a lot and I realise I should be trying to do my Backup test from the Mac I'm on (remote) to my ReadyNAS (local), but I'm still stuck. I have the IP address of my Mac but don't know what Protocol I should choose for a Mac (Windows is referred to by default), and I need to work out what my 'Login' and 'Password' should be. I'm guessing it's what I use to login to my Mac but that didn't work when I tried it.

Anyway I"ll try calling Netgear tomorrow and see if they can help some more.

Thanks again.

The easier path is to enable Time Machine on the NAS and use that on the Mac.

Thanks again StephenB.

Yes, I saw and actually understood (I think) the Time Machine instructions, but it's not practical for me to go that route. I've already got dedicated external Time Machine drives for my Macs and can't afford the chunk of storage it would take up on my ReadyNAS. I only have 6GB available after X-Raid and need all of that for various data backups. But I'm a complete newbie to all this NAS stuff so who knows what I'll end up doing in the end.

That should have read 6 TB not 6 GB! Sorry!

Maybe it would be helpful if you sketch out the bigger picture (what you are using the NAS for overall, and what you want to back up there).

Hello StephenB.

I'm afraid I'm so clueless about my NAS that I'm just beginning to formulate a strategy.

I have my main iMac and a couple of older Macs, including a Mac Pro that have just accumulated a lot of data over the years. As I said, I'm using Time Machine to back up some of the data, but can't manage to back up everything on my current storage, since some of my video projects are very large. I hope to rationalise all my stuff , dump all my 'belt and braces' duplicates, and decide which files are critical. When it's all done I hope to fit most of it into my 6TB NAS. Anything else I'll try to figure out using my existing Time Machine stuff. I'm still in the process of going through my existing files and was just playing around with ReadyNAS to see how I might setup 'Backup Jobs'.

In the end I may have to consider upgrading the storage on my ReadyNAS but at the moment I can't stretch my budget that far.

Thanks again for being so helpful.

Having multiple copies of your data is a good idea - RAID isn't bulletproof, so you shouldn't trust your data to a single device. I've sometimes had disk failures and then discovered the backup wasn't readable - so I maintain three copies of all data. Though of course you might not have enough space to do that right now.

I think I'd be aiming towards
(a) consolidating data you want to keep onto the NAS
(b) creating a backup strategy for that NAS data (external USB drives will work for that, though another NAS is what I use).
(c) deleting it from the various Macs (after you have the data consolidated and backed up).

Probably you'll want your currently active project(s) to be on the Mac, as video editing and processing will be faster if you aren't accessing the files over your network.

It sounds to me like you are already moving down this path.

Thanks StephenB.

I'm aiming towards three backups too, and have a lot of my important stuff on Backblaze at the moment. But, as you say, space is the issue still.

Thanks very much too for your a,b,c advice. It's very useful, and at the moment I can probably cobble together enough USB drives to hold most of my eventual NAS stuff. Your (c) suggestion makes great sense too, but my hoarding nature makes it hard to dump stuff off my Macs. Also, although I have a wired gigabit network (or at least it should be gigabit) I'm still finding my way around read/write speeds and don't know what the implications would be for HD or greater video editing if I access from the NAS. I'm sure you're right about leaving current projects on my internal or USB 3.0/eSATA Mac Pro drives.

Regards,