Remote backup to my NAS from my family

egovego wrote:

Hi Stephen, thanks for your comments. Your suggestion sounds reasonable, I can definitely go with separate shares for different users. I can make a yet separate share where I send them files, in 95% of the cases it's photos which I want to share with all of them (and the rest is never private stuff), so that makes sense as well. EDIT: this could maybe be a mapped network drive where they only have read-access, so I don't actually send them the files Good question. I figure the NAS is meant to function as a backup, not a server. The real data stays on their computers, I primarily want to make backups of it. So I guess they should have some sort of (3rd party) software which takes care of the backup work to the NAS. I presume this also means that they shouldn't put files on a mapped network drive, but rather on the internal drive, from where it is copied to the network drive? (If it should even be done this way, maybe an FTP solution or something else is the right way, this is why I'm asking :) ) Again, thanks for your input!

You can make the NAS the main repository if you want. Then you could use Frontview Backup to make your own backup of the family shares (to a USB drive or your home PC). One disadvantage of this approach is that access to their folders will be limited by your uplink speed.

Technically, they can access their folders using HTTP or FTP. Most people would probably find HTTP to be simpler. They could also use ReadyNAS remote (which would allow drive mapping), though I have found that to be slow. You can access their folders the same way, though if you are home you can also access them directly through Windows explorer.

If their files are all photos, then you should also look at the Photos II application (which will cost extra).

The other option is to use the NAS to back up their data. Probably the best way to do that is to have their PCs initiate the backups. You'd need to research a third party backup tool; FTP is probably the best protocol. There are some freeware backup programs that use FTP, though I haven't tried them.

FTP over TLS works with the ultra, and provides a secure / encrypted connection - so it would be nice if your backup program supported that. Would you have a lot of data to push back to them? That might not work so well with this approach.