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Guide

Apr 09, 2017

Request for review of basic backup plan RN10200 OS 6.6.1 (Newbie)

I really would appreciate some assistance by anyone who is familiar with backing up a NAS 102. What I need is a review of what I have done and any corrections necessary. My goal is to have an indepen...

Guide

Apr 10, 2017

Stephen,

I have some questions already. I really like the idea of:

" you can use a Mac utility to copy the full data volume from the NAS to the USB drive instead of using the NAS backup jobs. For instance, FreeFileSync."

The question then becomes, if ReadyCould goes down and I lose access to the NAS, I assume my backup will be useless to restore the NAS as it is in OSX format.

" unfortunately the NAS doesn't support the native OSX filesystems. One option is to get the paragon NTFS software for OSX, and format the USB drive to use ntfs. Then you can read (and write) to the USB drive from both OSX and Windows systems."

So, it would appear that my best and simplest bet is to get the Pafagon NTFS software for OSX, share my USB drive via my MAC and do my backups that way. Yes/No? Also would I use the NAS web ui to back up to the USB drive?

Finally,

You do need to eject the drive before you remove it. There are two methods

You can set up the backup job to eject when done
You can manually eject (system->volumes, then click on the settings wheel next to the USB volume)

My USB volume does not show up under system>volumes

Thanks so much!

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Apr 10, 2017

BadBob wrote:

The question then becomes, if ReadyCloud goes down and I lose access to the NAS, I assume my backup will be useless to restore the NAS as it is in OSX format.

You'd recover the NAS files over the network as well - access the full data volume on the OSX (which is done using the NAS admin account), and reverse source and destination folders.

One caveat is that it can be tricky to restore the home folder(s). The file ownership isn't automatically restored, so you need to access each home folder using that user's logon, and then upload the files for that user.

FWIW, you'd run into this same caveat when you restore the backup made directly from the ReadyNAS.

BadBob wrote:

So, it would appear that my best and simplest bet is to get the Pafagon NTFS software for OSX, share my USB drive via my MAC and do my backups that way. Yes/No? Also would I use the NAS web ui to back up to the USB drive?

NTFS formatting gives you the most recovery options - you can access the files via the NAS usb port, via a windows system, or on the MAC. Though you can build a good backup plan without that. Paragon NTFS is inexpensive though, and there are MAC users here that use it. Note I use Windows myself, so I can't offer much practical advice on the MAC side of things.

You can use the web ui to back up over the network to the MAC-connected USB drive. It can be a bit tricky if you want to schedule the backups, since the MAC needs to be running, and the USB drive needs to be shared when when the backup is scheduled to run. You also need to set up the file sharing on the MAC.

Something like freefilesync might be a bit easier to set up. But either way can work.

BadBob wrote:

My USB volume does not show up under system>volumes

Sorry, found the eject under System>overview.

Looks like I misled you on the location.

But the drive should show up as a volume on the volumes tab. How is it formatted?

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Apr 10, 2017
We can attempt to recover data lost during the recent outage, but If writes have been made to the data volume that does reduce the chances of success.