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I am using my NAS (Raid 1, 2 - 4 TB drives) attached to a R7000 Netgear router as a hard drive for my Microsoft Surface Book 2. As you know, there is not much onboard memory(128 or 256 GB) on solid state lap tops. Before completely switching over from my desk top to my laptop, I need to get my back up going. I am aware that a RAID 1 is not a back up solution. My question is....When I attach my 4tb external hard drive(back up drive only), is it acceptable to make the connection to the NAS usb 3.0 port or should I use the usb 3.0 on my R7000 router? Also this is a home back up most important being pictures and videos. These take up quite a bit of storage. Right now I'm still around 1TB of data. Would it be better to just run the NAS as a RAID 0 (providing 8 TB of hard drive storage) with an 8 TB external hard drive as back up drive? This would almost certainly prevent the need of ever buying more capacity. Thanks very much for your advice
So it looks like I have a plan now. I will add an additional 8tb external hard drive as a redundant back up and reformat my current external hard drive to NTFS. Also will be looking into a UPS for my system.
That should work out well. On the UPS: you want one that has a USB output for monitoring. You connect that to the ReadyNAS, so it will cleanly shut down when the UPS battery drains. I happen to use Cyberpower myself, though many folks like APC.
Perhaps also switch to jbod (2 volumes) in the future when you need to recreate the volume anyway. You'd simply put some of the network shares on each volume (keeping reasonable free space on each). It looks the same from the PC, since it normally sees the shares, and not the full volume.
That mostly depends on what protocol you want to use for the backup. AFAIK (I don't own one), the R7000 does not run RSync, which is probably your best bet for backup. So unless the speed of the Router is far superior to the NAS, I'd go with mounting it to the NAS. Speed usually isn't a big driver on backups, anyway; except maybe the first one.
I recommend you also format the drive using NTFS rather than the native EXT (whihc it likely already is). While the R7000 can read an EXT drive, your computer can't. And you probably want your backup to be readable on your computer if something goes wrong with the NAS (the whole poiutn of the backup).
That mostly depends on what protocol you want to use for the backup. AFAIK (I don't own one), the R7000 does not run RSync, which is probably your best bet for backup.
I do own one, but haven't used it for a few years now. It doesn't support rsync. If I remember correctly, the performance was decent but not as fast as a direct USB connection in the NAS.
Your best option is to connect the USB drive to the NAS.
My second choice would be to connect the USB drive to your laptop and do the backup over wired ethernet. Unfortunately that can't use rsync, but you could use PC tools like FreeFileSync.
Your best option is to connect the USB drive to the laptop.
My second choice would be to connect the USB drive to your laptop and do the backup over wired ethernet. Unfortunately that can't use rsync, but you could use PC tools like FreeFileSync.
I think maybe you meant the NAS in the first sentance? As for the second, that makes the laptop a lot less portable, which is why I didn't suggest it. If you really use it more like a desktop, then that's certainly an option.
@Sandshark wrote: maybe you meant the NAS in the first sentence?
yes, thx - I've fixed that.
@Sandshark wrote: As for the second, that makes the laptop a lot less portable, which is why I didn't suggest it. If you really use it more like a desktop, then that's certainly an option.
It certainly will lock down the laptop location while you are running the backup. I think it would be workable for a weekly backup schedule though.
Thanks for all the replies. I ended up setting up my NAS 212 with 2 internal 4tb drives as a RAID 0. This is on a daily back up(using Netgear backup) to 8tb external hard drive connected to the usb 3.0 on the NAS. The NAS is used like a local hard drive on my Surface Book. My Surface book only uses onboard memory for apps etc...No local storage on the device. This is working very well so far.
With RAID-0 if any disk the volume uses fails, all the data on the volume is lost. If you need maximum space a separate data volume for each disk is best.
A spanned RAID-0 volume only makes sense when performance is king and if your NAS unit and use case would give you signifcantly better performance using RAID-0 i.e. in very, very few use cases.
I'm ok with that as I have a daily back up to external hard drive which could be used to recover data in case of drive failure in the NAS.
This was essentially the same set up I had with my desktop. All the data was stored locally on the desk top and backed up daily to an external hard drive. Is my logic incorrect?
Keep in mind that this is a home laptop which may go days without being used. The NAS will have mostly pictures and videos uploaded to it a couple days a week. Also a daily back up to the external hard drive. The vast majority of the time the NAS will sit idle waiting for someone to access it. It is actually overkill for what I am using it for. I just happen to be a bit of a tech junkie. I never had redundancy before. Only purchasing the NAS, gave me the option of having redundancy plus back up. Does this change your concern for my use? I do not want to lose my wifes pictures.
Two jbod volumes on the NAS, using the same backup strategy.
RAID-0 on the NAS, using the same backup strategy
The panic-mode scenario here is that the primary copy on the NAS would fail, followed by a discovery that the USB backup was unreadable when you tried to restore it. Using two USB drives (swapping every other week) reduces that risk.
Also, it makes sense to do a full backup to the USB drive every now and then (perhaps once a quarter) - that tends to expose failing drives more quickly than just using incremental backup.
We've been suggesting the middle mode (which isn't redundant, but is less fragile than RAID-0).
I was not aware that JBOD was an option on the NAS212. You have sufficiently made me nervous. I'm going to be doing some more reading.
Your main concern is that if either of my NAS disks fails, the entire NAS data is lost. Secondly the backup would be found to be compromised in some way making recovery impossible. Correct? What if I added a second 8tb external hard drive giving me 2 separate back ups? That would give me redundant back ups while maintaining operating speed and full capacity of my NAS drives.
Secondary question.... I formatted the external hard drive ext which was recommended by Netgear. My understanding is format is unreadable by my lap top via direct usb connection without downloading additional software from Netgear. I am able to read the external hard drive via the lap top using Windows file explorer which confuses me a bit. NTFS was also an option. Would you recommend NTFS or the Netgear recommended formatting.
Your main concern is that if either of my NAS disks fails, the entire NAS data is lost. Secondly the backup would be found to be compromised in some way making recovery impossible. Correct? What if I added a second 8tb external hard drive giving me 2 separate back ups? That would give me redundant back ups while maintaining operating speed and full capacity of my NAS drives.
Two USB drives certainly are a good idea. My own policy is to keep three copies of everything I care about, including the original. A second backup drive fits that policy. You can rotate them (alternating between Drive A and Drive B).
That mitigates most of the risk. If (or when) the internal volume does fail, you will have a longer recovery time (because you have to restore everything on it), but with your usage that isn't that critical.
Another suggestion is to get a UPS for your NAS. That will ensure a clean shutdown when the power fails - which also eliminates some of the risk outlined above.
Thank you for your suggestions. Like you said...my usage is not dependant on being up and running quickly. That's what led me to the RAID 0 set up.
So it looks like I have a plan now. I will add an additional 8tb external hard drive as a redundant back up and reformat my current external hard drive to NTFS. Also will be looking into a UPS for my system. Thanks again
So it looks like I have a plan now. I will add an additional 8tb external hard drive as a redundant back up and reformat my current external hard drive to NTFS. Also will be looking into a UPS for my system.
That should work out well. On the UPS: you want one that has a USB output for monitoring. You connect that to the ReadyNAS, so it will cleanly shut down when the UPS battery drains. I happen to use Cyberpower myself, though many folks like APC.
Perhaps also switch to jbod (2 volumes) in the future when you need to recreate the volume anyway. You'd simply put some of the network shares on each volume (keeping reasonable free space on each). It looks the same from the PC, since it normally sees the shares, and not the full volume.
