Question Good free way to backup data onto a nas.

[NightHawkRMX]

Hello, I just got my NAS complete and hopefully will run for more than a day before going offline like last time.

Specs:
Intel Pentium N3530 Quad Core
8gb DDR3
HP S700 120GB SATA III SSD set as Windows Storage share because I couldn't figure out how to make it a cache drive for the HDD.
Seagate Barracuda 2tb SATAIII 7200RPM HDD set a backup share in Windows.
FreeNAS-11.1-U7 installed onto an ancient PNY 8gb SataII USB stick.

The 2TB drive is powered externally and plugged into the laptop's optical drive slimline connector using a modified SATA data cable, but it works. Kind of funny the bios says [ODD: Seagate 2TB]

Finally, as many times as I have heard USAFRet drill it into peoples heads, I want a solution to backup all of the files on the PCs in my house automatically.

As most of the PCs in my house have 1 or 2 small SSDs, the 2TB should be enough in theory. I'm not ready to buy another drive either.
What is a free and easy to use program that can do this?

 

[USAFRet]

Use what I use...Macrium Reflect.
The free version is just fine.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

Automated, on whatever schedule you desire.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

BTW, why is that thread closed? I figured Id comment there but can't.

Any good tutorials on how to set it up? I bet I could figure it out on my own, but I don't want to make a careless mistake and lose data.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Is just creating an image sufficient?

 

[USAFRet]

Read through the user manual:

Macrium Reflect KnowledgeBase - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

That thread was closed because it was starting to attract irrelevant necro posts.

 

[USAFRet]

Full and Incremental or Differential images.

A single Image is a single snapshot in time.
You want to keep things current.

My main system does an Incremental every night. I could recreate the system (or any individual drive) from any day in the last month or so.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I swear i hate this more and more. I went to connect to the nas the next morning and it wouldnt...

Went into the web interface and it said a hdd error with my 2tb drive. I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in. Rebooted the nas via the web interface and now nothing.

Cant ping the NAS nor connect to it via the web interface.

This happened 3 times before without the disk error where it just goes offline randomly.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

It just didnt reboot right. I figured it out and its working properly.

The nas shows up in windows fine. Unfortunately, it doesnt show up in macrium to backup my data onto. Why?

 

[USAFRet]

Have you given that NAS volume a mapped drive letter in WIndows?
If not, then you have to access it via the UNC path.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Drive is mapped in windows. I can read and write files from the drive.
https://ibb.co/w4wwTj7

 

[USAFRet]

Macrium cannot see a Y drive?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Neither. Not even when macrium is ran as admin

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Used the UNC path. worked fine.
Thanks.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

So you leave your devices on in order to backup overnight?

Also, macrium free cant do incremental?

Edit:
Set Macrium to auto do a full backup monthly and differential backups daily.
Takes forever to backup tho. Like 6 hours.

 

[USAFRet]

The first Full backup takes a while.
The subsequent Incremental or Differentials don't.

I have the paid version on my main system. That gives the functionality of Forever Incremental.
A first Full image, then incrementals for as long as you set it.

The only issue with Incrementals is that you need ALL of them in the middle.
A differential, you just need the most recent Diff and the original Full.

But, Incrementals go much much faster and are each much smaller. It is only the changes since the last Inc.
A Diff is all the changes since the last Full.

Each of my drives is on its own schedule.
Midnight, 0100, 0200, etc...

Other systems in the house are on their own schedule.
My wifes system does a Full every night, keep for 1 week, deleting the oldest.
My HTPC does a Full once a week.


And then of course, the entirety of the NAS is backed up to a whole other enclosure once in a while.
It is doing that right now, 9% complete.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Well i cant do the last bit.

So after the full backup and differential backups complete there will never be more than 2 files?

 

[USAFRet]

So after the full backup and differential backups complete there will never be more than 2 files?

No, it depends on how many Differentials you tell it to keep.

You could set it to do a Diff nightly, and keep a weeks worth. Or a month.
For recovery, you select the specific Diff you want, and it recovers using that and the previous Full.

Say your system got a major infection on Thursday, but you didn't notice until Saturday.
You'd select the Diff from the day before the BadThing happened, Wednesday or earlier, and recover with that.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

OK.
Given your experience, how long should i set it to keep differentials?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

UUUG. 9 hours later and the backup still isnt done.
It's almost there. I'm not sure if my NAS is really slow or what. It's only like 400gb being transferred.

 

[USAFRet]

9 hours, 400GB?
That is way too slow.

I started a full backup of my NAS to a USB connected enclosure.
Started at 0945, now 12 hours later, 2.2TB transferred. 28% of the total data space.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

on the positive, its 95% done.

its def slow sonce most of that data was coming off of an ssd.
how to i run a speed check of my server?

 

[USAFRet]

OK.
Given your experience, how long should i set it to keep differentials?

Depends on your available space and tolerance for backups.

Differentials grow day by day. Each one is all the changes since the last Full image.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

ill set it to a week.

 

[USAFRet]

on the positive, its 95% done.

its def slow sonce most of that data was coming off of an ssd.
how to i run a speed check of my server?

Speed depends on the slowest device in the chain.

Sure you're not connected to a USB 2.0 connection?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

wifi cars is plugged into usb3

both drives in nas are installed using a sata cable but are limited to sata2 by
motherboard.

nas is using ethernet directly into router.