RN104 How to use backup/restore solution

Question

Hi All,&nbsp;After 7 years I had some issues last week starting with a disk failure. This disk was replaced and the array was rebuild successfully, sadly after two days the same bay failed again. And this time the rebuild failed (disk 1 died). After this the NAS was shutdown after 30 minutes.&nbsp;I do have a USB disk containing a backup of all critical shares, I can browse this disk and access all data. Can I copy all files of this disk to a second location or do I have to use a Restore function?&nbsp;The replacement drives are on their way and I'm figuring out the best way to get everything up and running again :)&nbsp;Thanks!

StephenB · Answer

You'll need to rebuild the NAS with the new disks (recreating the shares, any user accounts, and reinstalling any apps).&nbsp; If you use the private "home" folders you will also need to log into the NAS using the account credentials from a PC, in order to re-create those folders.
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After that, you'll need to copy the data from the backup drive to the shares.&nbsp; You can create backup job(s) on the NAS to do that.&nbsp;
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If the backup drive is formatted as NTFS you could also connect the backup drive to a PC and copy the files over a wired network connection.&nbsp; If you do this, I suggest using a copy utility (for instance Teracopy or FreeFileSync) instead of using drag-and-drop.

Paul_dH · Answer

Hi StephenB,&nbsp;On the USB disk there are a lot of folders that were deleted a month ago, so thats why I wondered if I needed to use the restore tool in the WebUI. It looks like a browsable archive backup on the USB disk.&nbsp;Does the WebUI manages a file list every backup cycle? So that when you want to do a restore it selects a batch of files (from a specific date) and performs the restore.

StephenB · Answer

The backup jobs don't do versioned backups. Normally they just copy files from the shares to the USB folders - they don't delete files that were deleted on the source. So you'll need to manually delete unwanted files.
&nbsp;
There is a way to get the backups to track the source, we can go through that after you are up and running again. If you do that, you'd be depending on snapshots on the data volume to retrieve accidentally deleted files.

Paul_dH · Answer

Ok cool, but the volume is dead and I suspect that I have 2 (out of 4) failed drives. Do the snapshots still work then? I hope that the replacements are deleverd before friday. Shal I replace drive 1 and 4 and powerup the unit?

StephenB · Answer

Paul_dH&nbsp;wrote:
Ok cool, but the volume is dead and I suspect that I have 2 (out of 4) failed drives. Do the snapshots still work then?&nbsp;

No.&nbsp; If you use snapshots to recover deleted files, and a backup that doesn't include deleted files, you end up with

the ability to restore recent files that were accidentally deleted in the normal course of operation (via the snapshots).
the ability to restore the current files if the volume fails (via the backup).

But if the volume fails, you'd lose the ability to restore accidently deleted files.
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FWIW, in my own setup, I am backing up to other OS-6 ReadyNAS that also have snapshots enabled.&nbsp; So I do have some ability to recover deleted files, even if my main NAS fails.
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Paul_dH&nbsp;wrote:
Shall I replace drive 1 and 4 and powerup the unit?

Yes, but you will either need to destroy the current volume and create a new one, or do a factory default (web ui settings page or the boot menu).&nbsp; Either way, you'll need to reinstall your apps, recreate your shares, and restore the files from your backup.&nbsp; And of course, you'll need to manually delete the stuff that you no longer want.

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RN104 How to use backup/restore solution

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