Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Jan 29, 2017

Solved

What happens when my readynas backup drive gets full?

I have a 4tb hd hooked up to one of the Nas's USB port. I've seen a few atricles that talk about rsync but I can't seem to find that as an option anywhere on my menus. Maybe that's just for x86 ...

ReadyNAS Backup

StephenB
Feb 02, 2017
adiamond2 wrote:

Or is that from this "readycloud"? https://readycloud.netgear.com/client/en/welcome.html

Nothing to do with readycloud.

adiamond2 wrote:

I simply don't understand your answer. In particar the rsync stuff. Am I supposed to go to the backup settings of the job I currently have and then go to the "source" tab and then set the host to 127.0.0.1 localhost or what? Is there a procedure written out for this?

There's a general guide here: http://kb.netgear.com/29741/How-do-I-back-up-data-between-two-ReadyNAS-OS-6-systems-using-the-backup-manager?cid=wmt_netgear_organic

You'd make the source remote (the destination is remote in the guide), and you'd use 127.0.0.1 as the remote host address.

For the destination, you can pick the USB drive.

If your NAS isn't OS 6, let me know that it is - there are some other guides out there for older NAS.

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Jan 29, 2017

adiamond2 wrote:

I have a 4tb hd hooked up to one of the Nas's USB port.

I've seen a few atricles that talk about rsync but I can't seem to find that as an option anywhere on my menus. Maybe that's just for x86 Readynas systems(?)

What you need to do is pretend the source is remote - using IP address 127.0.0.1. Then you can use rsync.

adiamond2 wrote:
The backup options I have set for it to do a full backup just the first time. So, apparently it's been doing incrementals for a while. However, I can see the backup disk is getting full, hence the question with the obvious follow up of,"If it doesn't handle it automatically, what should I do?".

Since you aren't using rsync, the incremental backups won't remove any files that have been deleted on the main NAS from the backup disk. As you delete/add files on the main NAS, then over time the backup drive will fill up. The NAS backup jobs won't take care of this automatically.

Note that changed files will just overwrite the old version on the backup disk.

You can switch to rsync (using the hint above), which will allow you to track the deletions.

FWIW, you still might want to periodically wipe the USB disk and start fresh. If the USB disk starts developing bad sectors, you can silently lose old files on the backup drive and not realize it.

adiamond2
Aspirant
Feb 01, 2017
I simply don't understand your answer. In particar the rsync stuff. Am I supposed to go to the backup settings of the job I currently have and then go to the "source" tab and then set the host to 127.0.0.1 localhost or what? Is there a procedure written out for this?

Or is that from this "readycloud"? https://readycloud.netgear.com/client/en/welcome.html

Thanks
- StephenB
  Guru - Experienced User
  Feb 02, 2017
  adiamond2 wrote:
  
  Or is that from this "readycloud"? https://readycloud.netgear.com/client/en/welcome.html
  
  Nothing to do with readycloud.
  
  adiamond2 wrote:
  
  I simply don't understand your answer. In particar the rsync stuff. Am I supposed to go to the backup settings of the job I currently have and then go to the "source" tab and then set the host to 127.0.0.1 localhost or what? Is there a procedure written out for this?
  
  There's a general guide here: http://kb.netgear.com/29741/How-do-I-back-up-data-between-two-ReadyNAS-OS-6-systems-using-the-backup-manager?cid=wmt_netgear_organic
  
  You'd make the source remote (the destination is remote in the guide), and you'd use 127.0.0.1 as the remote host address.
  
  For the destination, you can pick the USB drive.
  
  If your NAS isn't OS 6, let me know that it is - there are some other guides out there for older NAS.
  - adiamond2
    Aspirant
    Feb 03, 2017
    So, the rsync backup, conforming to what you wrote, was started at 4:15 (yesterday). There's about 2TB on the specified source directory (tree) to be backed up (via USB 3). The backup, according to the Backup page, is "In Progress" though I'm not sure I believe it because according to the Shares page, the target USB drive lists only 221GB as "consumed". Note, I have not received an error message.* A good chunck of that 221GB was probably already on the USB drive. The point being that apparently it's taken 20 hours to backup betwee 100 and 200 GB. At this rate, assuming it really is doing somethng, it would take something like 2 weeks to complete. Note, as I recall, when I did by full backup without rsync, it took less than a day for about the same amount of data. I hear rsync takes longer but 1 TB/week?!
    
    * I did get a NAS error email of "Backup job fred is already in progress. Consider adjusting backup schedule." but I'm pretty sure that was because I manually started it at 4:15 but it's scheduled to do backup every night so I'm sure the tried to start and found it was already backing up. i.e. it stepped on itself but not fatally I imagine considering the backup status is still listed as "In progress"