Help on QNAP back-up

Are you running Windows and if so which version ? You may be able to use Disk Administrator to make a single logical drive from the two physical drives. You may have to format them (or use diskpart) first

I’m running Windows 10 in my PC.

Not sure how i’d even start to tackle this problem in Disk Administator and how this would link up with my QNAP?

AndyP19 posted:

I'm running a QNAP 251+ and just replaced a WD 4Tb Red with a WD 8Tb Red - all went well and NAS running OK.

Then I plugged in a second USB 4Tb WD Book to the existing USB 4Tb WD Book to match the 8Tb.

So now I have one 8Tb internal drive and two 4Tb USB back-up drives.

But I can't see anyway to pair up the two USB drives or create a shared backup folder.

Any ideas?

You would need to have 2 WD 4TB or 2 WB 8TB, USB Drives are treated differently by the QNAP, they are considered to be 'external' drives.

Another question - are your disks plugged into the QNAP or PC USB ports ?

One internal disk in QNAP of 8Tb and two USB 4Tb drives plugged into QNAP to back-up

From what I have determined (so far) it seems that QNAP cannot back up to this arrangement of spanned USB drives and possibly as Banzai might be saying either I need

i) One QNAP Internal 8Tb = back-up = One 8Tb USD Drive

or

ii) Two QNAP Internal two 4Tb = back-up = Two 4Tb Drives

You'd be better off fitting a second 8TB HD in the NAS and running as RAID1 for example as this will give you resilience straight off the bat

Then swap the 2 x 4TB HDs for an 8TB external HD for manual periodic backups (be sure to store it away from your home in case of catastrophe)

+1 For ROBGR suggestion i would get the QNAP doing backups by default, then if you wanted backup of backup then just map one of the QNAP Drives and use filesyncing software to backup to the WD USB Drives you will have to plug them in to your windows machine.

Great advice and a few options - many thanks to all.

It's probably over complicated, but if you can attach both USB disks to your PC you should be able to span a volume from one onto the other (I say should, there's several factors that may make it a non starter - at least the "second" disk will need formatting (and perhaps repartitioning) This is done in Disk Administrator). You'd then need to mount the NAS music share as a drive in WIndows and copy the entire contents to the newly created volume on the USB drives. You would need to "fix" the USB disks to always be recognised as the same drive letters on the PC to use ROBOCOPY, which is probably the best way to copy the music from the NAS to the USB disks.

I do something similar. I mount my NAS share as P: and have my USB backup disk as E:. I use a batch file to connect P, switch to it, then switch to E: and hence to the backup directory and use ROBOCOPY P: E: *.* /S /E which copies everything from P to E\backup. The good thing about robocopy is that it knows if the file has changed on the source since it last copied it, so on the second, and subsequent, runs it only copies the new and changed files so it's very quick. It also has multiple retires so is very reliable. And as it's part of Windows, it's free

I would follow RobGR and add an 8tb to provide raid1 redundancy.

Also funds permitting is buy a second Qnap single disk version with 8tb disk and do a Qnap to Qnap backup and with a  schedule, once the initial sync is complete the the backup qnap can be stored at a relatives home and backup changed files over the internet. 

I use a Qnap to Qnap backup but mine goes over a WiFi bridge to my brother's home he lives about 350mtrs away.

My approach would be to forget USB drives as a primary backup, and get a second NAS with a large enough single drive. Nothing fancy, just a basic QNAP, Synology or Netgear with another 8TB WD Red drive. Put a UPnP server on this, and if your main NAS dies, the backup is ready and waiting to take over music playing duties immediately. No need to wait for a repaired NAS to be restored, which might take some time. Maybe keep the USB drives as a secondary off site backup. 

Thanks just going to pick up a new NAS this afternoon. Pretty much arrived at the same conclusion but the Upnp server add on is interesting.

Having put around 12,000 CDs and over 2,000 downloads, I’m getting the jitters that I need to have a sold back-up strategy in place. Given that I have exceeded my USB external storage.

AndyP19 posted:

Thanks just going to pick up a new NAS this afternoon. Pretty much arrived at the same conclusion but the Upnp server add on is interesting.

Having put around 12,000 CDs and over 2,000 downloads, I’m getting the jitters that I need to have a sold back-up strategy in place. Given that I have exceeded my USB external storage.

The best approach a second Qnap i have used this setup for years and just works.

My setup Raid5 main Qnap with a scheduled backup to another Qnap at my brothers.

If you get another Qnap it comes with a very decent media server built in.