I am a photographer with currently 5.5TB of data stored across 4x2 TB drives on a READYNAS 314 which is accessed via both PCs and Macs.
It is imperative that I keep multiple off-site back-ups however I am hampered by the incredibly slow internet line speeds I get where I live.
My first backup is split using a 3tb and 4tb external drive and I'm in the process of buying a 6TB drive.
So far I have been doing ad-hoc copying exercises to external hard drives but this is time consuming and fraught with risk. I had been using the BackUp function on the console with the drives attached via USB3 but I'm not sure it differentiates between the different drives when backing up.
What I want is a simple synchronisation routine set up for each of the drives - so the 6tb is a full synchronisation, with the 3tb and 4tb only synchronising portions of the NAS. These drives are purely slaves - i.e. synchronisation only happens one way. I use Acronis 2014 (PC) and GoodSync (Mac) to sync between my computers and the NAS, and want to do something similar between the NAS and hard drives without having to run the data through either the PC or MAC.
I noted that the latest OS release 6.2 has sync features but I think this is between a PC and MAC?
I don't think the folder backups in readycloud will help you. One reason is that they don't allow you to select any folder on the PC.
Other posters here have found that the OS6 backups don't handle multiple USB drives very well. I don't use that approach myself, so I don't have any suggestions on it. Perhaps others will chime in.
Part of my NAS backup involves copying NAS shares to PC-connected drives. I've built this into the Acronis backups (using an older version than you are using). You can specify a post-backup (or pre-backup) script that Acronis will run as part of its backup job. I've written one that uses robocopy to do incremental backups to a PC drive. I do this on two different PCs, which are running different scripts. I'm using internal drives, but there is no reason you can't do the same thing using USB drives.
It does require some ability to create a windows command script though.
To be honest I shared my concerns about the OS6 backup mechanism. It's interesting that you back-up from NAS shares to USB drives via a PC - it's a shame there isn't a more elegant approach (hopefully someone else here may be able to suggest one) - another reason to upgrade from N to AC wireless.
It's interesting that you back-up from NAS shares to USB drives via a PC
Well, not quite.
My backup policy is to have 3 local copies of everything (primary + two backups). My initial strategy was to put one copy on two older ReadyNAS (an NV+ v1 and a duo v1) - neither big enough to hold it all. The second copy is on internal disk drives split across two PCs. I actually don't back up at all to USB drives - I used to do that (pre-NAS) but didn't find them to be that reliable.
As my two v1 backup NAS are aging, I am planning to transition to doing complete backups to two newer entry-level NAS (using 6 TB jbod volumes). That is still in the works. I'll continue to back up to the older NAS and the PCs as long as they are functional, but as disks and hardware fail, I will retire them. So my going-forward backup approach will be exclusively NAS->NAS.
I also use crashplan for disaster recovery. I view that as inexpensive insurance if something catastrophic happens - not sure at this point if I'd trust it as my only backup. Though it has been reliable over the past two years, I am still concerned about business shakeouts in the cloud business overall.
rmurgz wrote:
... another reason to upgrade from N to AC wireless.
I honestly don't see the connection here. I've been using 802.11ac for a couple of years now. When you are close to the access point, there is a speed advantage, but that drops off quickly as you get further away.
In practice it never actually gets to gigabit speeds, and like all wifi it suffers from packet loss. I happened to test my transfer speeds with the NAS this morning. Over 802.11ac, about 30 feet away from the AP I was getting around 8 MB/s. There are some obstacles (the chimney being one), and the best path might require going through 2 exterior (but wood) walls.
Stephen Thanks for sharing the ideas for your backup scheme. I have a 3 pronged approach as well. I am a bit more of a cheapskate and invest in hardware over cloud options. 1.) First any PC I own is setup to do an mirror robocopy on a schedule based on windows task scheduler. Not perfect but there is a backup folder on the ReadyNas that all machines are mapped with.
3.) I have a (2)USB 3.0 WD hard drives. They get swapped weekly with my bank safety deposit box at my bank when I take my paycheck in. (yea I'm old school 😄 )
Does anyone else have ideas for simplifying backups from multiple PC's --> ReadyNas--> Network Machine?
I love hearing more and more about what others are doing!
Crashplan costs me $5 per month to backup the entire NAS (8.5 TB at the moment). My local backups actually cost more (amortizing the costs of the disks).
My local backups actually cost more (amortizing the costs of the disks).
That's a good point! But it may be a good idea to also factor in the "service delivery" and "service time" in your amortized costs. Local hardware will beat internet speeds any day and it's not dependent on an delivery infrastructure. My greatest limitation is internet speed, due to location. From a personal preference I would also rather have physical access to the hardware that maintains my data; hence a bank box (this too requires a monthly service fee of course.) It's never a good idea to keep everything under 1 roof.
Cloud offerings greatest positive can also be it's greatest negative so I haven't pursued too heavily an integration yet. Positive: WIth cloud you have a large company maintaining hardware 24/7,supporting the fastest internet speeds, feature riddled, scalable, and rides on a vast network to support future IOTs integrations and "low" cost (this is true of Crash plan!). Negative: You are tied and limited that company's ability and infrastructure's ability to provide all of that. There are an astronomic number of variables, individuals and systems at play that can help or hurt.
With that said I was not aware of Crash plan and I think I'll have to add it for it's Features/Cost. I also read on this forum a guide to "install" crash plan onto the ReadyNas. This would be great if NetGear would add more/better cloud based backup companies to auto integrate with their GUI.
My local backups actually cost more (amortizing the costs of the disks).
That's a good point! But it may be a good idea to also factor in the "service delivery" and "service time" in your amortized costs. Local hardware will beat internet speeds any day and it's not dependent on an delivery infrastructure. My greatest limitation is internet speed, due to location. From a personal preference I would also rather have physical access to the hardware that maintains my data; hence a bank box (this too requires a monthly service fee of course.) It's never a good idea to keep everything under 1 roof.
Cloud offerings greatest positive can also be it's greatest negative so I haven't pursued too heavily an integration yet. Positive: WIth cloud you have a large company maintaining hardware 24/7,supporting the fastest internet speeds, feature riddled, scalable, and rides on a vast network to support future IOTs integrations and "low" cost (this is true of Crash plan!). Negative: You are tied and limited that company's ability and infrastructure's ability to provide all of that. There are an astronomic number of variables, individuals and systems at play that can help or hurt.
With that said I was not aware of Crash plan and I think I'll have to add it for it's Features/Cost. I also read on this forum a guide to "install" crash plan onto the ReadyNas. This would be great if NetGear would add more/better cloud based backup companies to auto integrate with their GUI.
I totally agree with all points. I use crashplan for disaster recovery only (it saves me the trouble of shuffling disks to a safety deposit box), and if I needed that recovery I'd almost certainly have more immediate concerns than recovering my NAS data instantly. It is installed on my pro-6, but if you are copying to a PC you can just as easily back up the PC drives (and avoid the linux install).
BTW it took about 10 weeks to complete the initial upload (6-7 TB I think) . At the time my internet speed was 35 mbps upload (it is faster now). Per the log, actual speeds today were ~14 mbps (136 small files - ~60 MB total) and ~50 mbps (17 large files - ~3GB total). It deduplicates and compresses so it is not always network bound - and of course it depends on internet congestion and their server loading. But it keeps up quite easily.
I haven't tried restoring enough data to have a handle on restore speed.
Thanks to the two of you for your responses. I very much wish Crashplan was an option for me.
For now I've followed Stephen's advice re the lack of benefit on AC and am going to perform ad-hoc overnight synchronisations (i.e. after every big photographic job or large file operation I do) from my NAS to external drives using GoodSync on my macbook pro. I think the Gigabit ethernet should give it the speed it needs. I'll let you know how I get on.
