Qnap one touch backup

Isn't there a setting in the user interface?
I'm afraid I can't check as I won't have access to my QNAP for quite a while.

Thanks: if there is, I can't find it!

Had exactly the same experience following firmware update to my 253 yesterday. I've tried to set the back-up independently through the control interface but this will only do a complete backup which I don't want. 

I think there's a QNAP user group so I'll see what they say. 

Not that this is going to help a great deal but I have always used the "Hybrid Backup Sync" on my 253, not the front button .. and it is still doing differentials since the upgrade.

Hungryhalibut posted:

I have a Qnap TS-253A nas, and ever since getting it last year I have used the one touch backup button on the front to backup to WD My Passport USB drives. Previously, pressing the button did a differential backup of new additions to the NAS, and took a matter of minutes, depending on how much music I'd added to the NAS.

Very recently I updated to the new Qnap firmware, and now pressing the button will only do a full backup, which takes four or five hours. I have checked the backup and it's all good. Thinking that it may be a one-off glitch, I tried it again, and it took the same four hours. I tried my second backup drive too, and the result was just the same.

Has anyone else tried this yet? Does anyone have any ideas? It's a bit of a pain if I need to do a full backup every time I add a couple of albums.

Many thanks.

Backup system are usually set to copy a source file to the destination if one of the following conditions is met: 1) no file with the same name of the source file exists in the destination, 2) a file with the same name of the source file exists in the destination but it has a different size from the source file, 3) a file with the same name and the same size of the source file exists in the destination but it has a previous time stamp. More thorough systems also compare the checksums of source and destination files but this takes much more time. You could check if the full backup is triggered by 3). It is conceivable that the backup works just as before but that some process is now updating the time stamps of your NAS files. This is just one of a few possibilities, of course. But it is one that can be readily checked: if the time stamps of your NAS files are not constant, that is most likely the reason for the full backups! Best, nbpf

Thanks for your replies. It certainly seems that something has changed in the new firmware. Jonn - if you do find anything out please could you post it on here. I investigated how to ask Qnap a question and it seems incredibly complex and you need to tell them all sorts of details I have no idea how to find. 

One touch button differential back-up now appears to be working on my 253. I don't know if this was the result of a background full backup  following the firmware upgrade or something else. Anyway  it's working now so I'll leave it as it is.

Thanks for letting me know. Before I press the button again, would you mind telling me whether you have the media library on the Qnap enabled? 

I disabled media library along with most of the other pre-installed apps. MInimserve is installed.

I tried it again yesterday after downloading an album, and unfortunately it did a full backup again. Ah well, I can live with it. The answer is clearly to buy less music.

Hungryhalibut posted:

I tried it again yesterday after downloading an album, and unfortunately it did a full backup again. Ah well, I can live with it. The answer is clearly to buy less music.

You should try it again without downloading any new data.There are then two possibilities:

1) The system still makes a full backup. In this case the system believes that the files in your source and in your target are different. Check if this is the case or not. Perhaps the files have different time stamps. This would explain the unexpected results.

2) The system makes no backup, as one would expect. At this point change the time stamp of a single file and push the button again. Only one file should be backed up. If, instead, the change triggers a full backup, then there is obviously an error in the backup software.

Good luck, nbpf

Should have kept your Unitiserve, and used its no-touch backup! 

Please could you tell me what a time stamp is and where to find it?

Hungryhalibut posted:

Please could you tell me what a time stamp is and where to find it?

The time stamp (modification date and time) of a file is a piece of information (just like the file's name, size, type, permissions, etc.) which is physically associated to that file.

When you list your files in a file browser (for instance in Windows Explorer) you usually see this information.

In UNIX systems, one chan change the time stamp of a file, say "a.flac" by just entering "touch a.flac" at the command line. This sets the time stamp of "a.flac" to the current time.

If for some reason you happen to have a "source/a.flac" file that has a time stamp which is more recent than the time stamp of a "target/a.flac" file, a backup systems will most likely copy  "source/a.flac" to "target/a.flac" when you make a backup of "source/" to "target/".

I'm starting to conclude that this latest release is not fit for purpose and am considering rolling back if I don't get it back working as it was by the end of today.

It seems to be quite a major release, despite the small increment in version numbers.  The GUI is much nicer but I have encountered some issues, the main one being related to DNS but only when the NAS is used as a domain controller so unlikely to affect many here, it's related to the new version of Samba.

On the update notes for the latest Qnap version it referred to an app you could download and run to check if all the apps on your NAS were compatible with this update as it referred to a 64 bit architecture. When run on my old 219 it says IDrive and perl are not compatible. As I use this to backup my NAS to the cloud I have not installed the update. Looks like I won't be installing any more updates from now on.

nbpf posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

Please could you tell me what a time stamp is and where to find it?

The time stamp (modification date and time) of a file is a piece of information (just like the file's name, size, type, permissions, etc.) which is physically associated to that file.

When you list your files in a file browser (for instance in Windows Explorer) you usually see this information.

In UNIX systems, one chan change the time stamp of a file, say "a.flac" by just entering "touch a.flac" at the command line. This sets the time stamp of "a.flac" to the current time.

If for some reason you happen to have a "source/a.flac" file that has a time stamp which is more recent than the time stamp of a "target/a.flac" file, a backup systems will most likely copy  "source/a.flac" to "target/a.flac" when you make a backup of "source/" to "target/".

Thank you. I'll have a look later. The thing that baffles me is that it worked before and now it doesn't. The only thing I've changed, other an the firmware of course, is to disable the media library. But Jonn did that and now his backup works. I tried the suggestion of backing up without any changes, and three hours later it's still chuntering away. It's not a big deal if I have to add files manually to the USB drive, but it would be disappointing as the one touch backup feature was one of the reasons I chose the nas in the first place. Grrrr. I checked earlier that the one touch backup was set to 'synchronise' which I presume is the correct setting. 

HungryHalibut

i have been considering buying a NAS instead of a Core,as many here suggest,and I am looking into these Qnap 253a's.Could you tell me the specific model that I should look into,on Amazon there are six different ones listed with this number,at various prices.Now I am also a little apprehensive about the whole thing,reading about the problem you are having.I am not much of a computer geek,so that was another reason I leaned towards the Core,it seems like it might be easier to use/set up...is this NAS still a good idea in your eyes?

Thanks

TS-453A is what I would recommend. Unitiserv SSD as a streamer pulling data from the NAS is still better than the minim server running on the NAS, but I would be very happy with the NAS alone too.

Hungryhalibut posted:

nbpf posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

Please could you tell me what a time stamp is and where to find it?

The time stamp ...

Thank you. I'll have a look later. The thing that baffles me is that it worked before and now it doesn't. The only thing I've changed, other an the firmware of course, is to disable the media library. But Jonn did that and now his backup works. I tried the suggestion of backing up without any changes, and three hours later it's still chuntering away. It's not a big deal if I have to add files manually to the USB drive, but it would be disappointing as the one touch backup feature was one of the reasons I chose the nas in the first place. Grrrr. I checked earlier that the one touch backup was set to 'synchronise' which I presume is the correct setting. 

Yes, 'synchronise' should be the right option if you want files that exist on the target but not on the source to be removed, otherwise just 'copy' (after a cursory look at the manual, I have no first hand experience with NAS devices). Perhaps you can temporarily disable the pair of folders that contain the music data and add to the backup scheme a folder pair that contains one single file. Then you can more easily check the files' sizes and time stamps on the source and on the target. You should probably also try to make a backup (again, of a single file, first) on another target drive, for instance, on a USB stick.

This seems to be a general problem. https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=132060

nbpf posted:

Yes, 'synchronise' should be the right option if you want files that exist on the target but not on the source to be removed,

That doesn't sound like a good option. If files are accidently deleted from source, pressing one touch backup will remove files from target.

HH. Do you rip/download to a PC or laptop.

fatcat posted:

nbpf posted:

Yes, 'synchronise' should be the right option if you want files that exist on the target but not on the source to be removed,

That doesn't sound like a good option. If files are accidently deleted from source, pressing one touch backup will remove files from target.

HH. Do you rip/download to a PC or laptop.

It really depends on what you want to do. I make all my backups via rsync scripts (which seems to be what Qnap devices use for backup) and have "add" script that do not delete files which are in the target but not in the source  and "mirror" scripts that delete target files that are not in the source. One needs both schemes and it is good that Qnap supports them.

Jonn posted:

This seems to be a general problem. https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=132060

Well spotted!

I only have a laptop.  It's a Sony Vaio, about five years old I think.

I tried a 'copy' backup, which does sound more appropriate than synchronise, but it still takes four hours.

I will try to raise an issue with Qnap, but it doesn't look a simple process.