Finding the right tool to perform autonomous backups was actually harder than I thought. Synology is often touted as having fantastic software to go along with their sleek hardware, but I could not put up with using Data Replicator 3, which comes with the unit. I have somewhat over 1TB of crap (I'm a digital packrat...) that I wouldn't mind hanging on to, and absolutely need incremental backup capability. Data Replicator 3 would perform a complete data replication (ha ha) and then go and delete the older backups, depending on your settings. A single backup would take many hours of dominating network bandwidth. If there was an incremental backup option hidden somewhere, I could not find it before becoming fed up, and started looking at other options.
There are lots of supposed good (and free!) options out there, but I settled on Windows Backup. Here's my experience:
- It is already included in Windows 7, and readily available without initial setup.
- Any version of Windows 7 can back up to a local disk, but Windows 7 Professional can back up to a network location.
- Can run autonomously on a schedule.
- Folders can be "cherry-picked" as needed.
This post assumes that Synology DSM has already been set up, along with proper users/groups/folder permissions. Setting up the Windows side of the coin was easy enough. Note that since we are about to set up a way to automatically back up our stuff, we need to make sure that Windows Backup is actually running properly - check this post out if Windows Backup is behaving oddly or not starting. Otherwise, hit up the
Start Menu -> Backup and Restore, then select "Set up backup" to get started..jpg)
Browse to your NAS location. Do note, that to be able to backup to a network location, you need a genuine and activated copy of Windows 7. If for some reason you haven't yet activated your copy, the setup will keep failing at this step, even if your NAS is visible on the network and has correct credentials entered.
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You'll see a warning saying that other people on your network might access your backup, but that's why having good user settings and permissions on your Synology's end is a good idea.
Once your network location is shown, hit next, wait for validation, then pick what you want to back up. I'm anal retentive, so I want to pick what gets stored:
From here, go nuts with your goods. You can even include a system image if you want some way to quickly restore your computer in case of nubbery. After that, review your settings, and you're done! All that remains is the actual backup. The first backup will take the longest, but the subsequent backups are indeed incremental, and should go much faster.
Windows backup seems to store files in a compressed state in a weird folder/zipfile hierarchy that I haven't dug into too much. It does save a tiny bit of space if that's your thing, but with a 3TB drive, it really wasn't a concern for me.
All in all, Windows backup seemed to work the most intuitively, and was seamless with my Synology unit.
Indeed I tried windows and to my horror, it does backup into zip files. This is fine for a complete "restore" but I found that the numbered zip files make it impossible to find any one single file that you want. The programme I used to use was Memeo - this maintains your file and folder structure and a single file can be found easily and simply copied back - there is no need for the backup programme unless you want to "restore" things in full.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
DeleteIn the time since I wrote this post, I've had more time to digest how Windows Backup works, and now also better understand how to use it to its full potential. The zips were confusing, but are truly just intended to compress the data. I don't think the intention was ever to track down the correct zip file, then unzip it, then find the file to restore. It would be tedious and cumbersome.
Instead, I've learned to treat it like a database. I don't manually access the backup location directly. Windows backup has a built-in way to restore specific files and folders, which doesn't require directly interacting with the zip files. It is accessed via the "Restore my files" button in the Backup and Restore Control Panel, which then allows you to restore only specific files, or entire folders (either of which can be browsed from a sane file structure).
From my brief look at Memeo, it appears at a glance that they are a paid cloud-backup service. I like free and local, so Windows backup is good enough for now, but perhaps a weekly rsync to an AWS server would be a secure and cheap cloud-based backup solution, just for that added bit of off-site safety.