Backing up Qnap

Good question, same here (but a QNAP TS 251 instead) 

I've spend a lot of time to get all the tagging correct, so I'm eager to have a proper backup.

If they are mirrored you have one backup already. Still its better to have another one and keep it somewhere else (in case of theft/etc)

I would just buy a 2TB hard drive that you can connect to the network - eg Western Digital myCloud - via Ethernet. Then use Synctoy 2.0 to synchronize with the QNAP. I use Chronosync as I have a Mac. Does the same. 

Hope this helps. 

J

For backing up to a separate, independent, HDD I heartily recommend:  StarTech SuperSpeed USB 3.0 eSATA Hard Drive Docking Station with Cooling Fan.

You can view the HDD's contents, etc. via the Windows Computer Management screen (File explorer / This PC - right click / Manage - Computer Management / Storage - Disk Management).  It's very easy to format a HDD this way so be very careful you don't delete the wrong drive!!! 

It's inexpensive, very easy to use, and you can perform backups via Windows (via your PC) or directly connect it to the NAS (I don't understand the technicalities but this is much quicker albeit the data is not in a format you can see on the PC) and control the backup from the NAS user interface.  Whilst the cooling fan isn't essential I always have this switched on for my backups as, these days, they take >> 12hrs!

Mitch

My Qnap 253a has a sync button on the front. I plug in a WD passport, press the button and hey presto, it does a differential backup. 

Even simpler if you have a PC / laptop:

* Get a USB 2TB drive (e.g. WD), plug it to your computer

* Go to a file manager and simply drag the content od your NAS to your usb drive.

The lenght of the process will depend on your library's size. My last manual backup took 9 hours, with 1.2TB of music.

Thanks for these replies. Adam, my laptop is USB 2, but not 3. I think your suggestion of drag and drop would require several days, perhaps weeks, to complete? Would the laptop have to be alive throughout this process? I am also very wary of dragging/dropping so much data (2500 CDs) , in case I might delete them by mistake!

Jonatan, where do I install synctoy, on laptop? I presume that if I connect the WD to the same switch as the Qnap, the backup will work away (maybe for weeks?) but once the process starts,  I could power down/up laptop as normal, without interrupting the process?

HH, I don't know whether I have such a handy button. Will check over the coming weekend.

Thanks to all so far.

David

Ok - with a USB 2.0 on a laptop copying that much data it's out of the question. 

Your NAS should have a USB 3.0 port at it's back. Just plug your external drive into that, and copy files using the admin panel for your QNAP.

A gloss on Adam's suggestion is to replace the drag and drop part with a small utility called RichCopy (originally developed by Microsoft I think).  This is free and allows you to set up a job that will copy all your files to the external hard drive attached to your PC.  It is robust and can pick up where it left off if something goes wrong.  You can easily set it to copy only files not already on the external drive so that it creates what is effectively an incremental back up.

Qnap to Qnap is what I use, within tthe Qnap settings you can schedule a backup job to sync with another Qnap. My primary Qnap is a TS-412, stores movies, music etc and I use a cheaper  single disk Qnap TS-119 to that stores the backup music files. 

A word of caution...  Mirror is NOT backup.

The best solution is to do an incremental backup to an external drive that's not accessible from your main computer (i.e. only accessible to the system and backup accounts on the NAS itself).

Why all these suggestions to use third-party backup software, when the qnap has pre-installed backup software to let the user back it up to a connected usb drive?

Just use the qnap backup utility.

Hungryhalibut posted:

My Qnap 253a has a sync button on the front. I plug in a WD passport, press the button and hey presto, it does a differential backup. 

That should be the most convenient way for me, thanks! I'll look into that!

I bought a 2TB USB 3.0 drive and I've now backed up the Qnap directory where I keep my Unitiserve backup. That took just over 17 hours. Pretty straightforward, using the qnap built-in software. It's now backing up the Qnap directory where I keep my HD downloads, a further 6 hour job. 

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

Glad to see the back up is working David. Time-wise it seems about right for the volume of music you have.