It would let you do incremental backups of the PC files to the NAS - either manually or on a schedule. It can even wake up the PC to do the backup if you want.
Microsoft has a built-in utility called robocopy that you could also use. But it requires using the command line - so you'd either create a script for it if you go that route, or find a GUI that uses it.
There is cwRsync server which was discontinued and can still be found. Not sure How i can turn my PC into a Rsync server and back it up to Readynas.
What you'd want is the PC to be an rsync client (since the NAS is the destination).
Personally I use Acronis TrueImage to make image backups of my PCs weekly to the NAS. That allows me to completely recover the PC (data and OS) if needed. That's not free though.
I also have some robocopy scripts that I run on some PCs.
Re: How to backup desktop drive now that readycloud is gone?
While I also use Acronis, I no longer recommend it to new users. The reasons are two-fold: It is now only available as a (high-priced, IMHO) subscription and the newest file format (which can be overridden with some "background" manipulation, but not in a straightforward way) is clearly intended to steer people to Acronis' own (also overpriced, IMHO) network storage. Storage solutions that are not "aware" of Acronis' method of tacking on changes to an existing file instead of creating separate incremental files as it used to can waste a lot of time and space because they see the entire file as new. It's been a while since I looked for alternatives, but the free version of AOMEI Backupper seemed to be a pretty good alternative when I did. A lot depends on whether you are looking for image backup (to restore after a hard drive crash, or even to a new computer) or file backup. Like Acronis, AOMEI can do both.
It is now only available as a (high-priced, IMHO) subscription and the newest file format (which can be overridden with some "background" manipulation, but not in a straightforward way) is clearly intended to steer people to Acronis' own (also overpriced, IMHO) network storage.
FWIW, I am still using the old software. Likely I will look at switching on new PCs, though I'd like to stick with image backups.
I also would like to operate this within the readynas backup tab, instead of from the PC.
One challenge here is how to handle the case when the PC isn't running. PC backup tools can power up the pc on a schedule, and then back it up to the NAS.
The NAS does have an option to use wake-on-lan before the backup starts, but I don't think the ReadyNAS implementation of WoL will work for wifi-connected PCs. Though I haven't tried to test that.
I think one-way sync is better for backup. I don't update any files on my backups other than through the backup jobs, so there is no need to copy NAS->PC unless there is something I need to restore. Two-way sync can be a bit tricky, there can be conflicts that you need to resolve manually. Plus if something goes wrong with the NAS, I don't want the PC to sync to it.
Either way, I suggest setting up custom snapshots on the NAS shares that you use for this. That will give some retention/rollback capability. Most of my shares (including the ones on my backup NAS) are configured for 3 months retention, and only make snapshots when there are changes to the share. That keeps the disk overhead for the snapshots well controlled (you can tune the retention to balance reasonable roll-back with disk overhead).
