Age old USB backup question

[synthetiq]

After looking for previous posts, it seems like this is not an easy answer.

I have an ESXi host doing PCI-Passthru for x4 3TB disks to my FreeNAS 11.3 VM. Within FreeNAS, I have four CIFS shares for my workstations, and one NFS share for a Datastore volume for the ESXi host where some VM's live.

Right now my priority is just backing up the user data on the CIFS shares. The NFS/Datastore would be nice, but I can always re-do my VM's.

It sounds like attaching my 10TB USB directly to the host and linking to FreeNAS isn't as easy as I hoped. I'm looking for simple. I always have a "Misc" Windows VM running that I can connect the 10TB USB to and mount the CIFS shares. Is this recommended?

If so, can anyone recommend their favorite Windows backup software? Preferably free (or cheap). Really basic one-a-week backups.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[rvassar]

Any chance you have a modern Raspberry Pi (model 3 or 4?) laying around? Install ZFS for Linux on the RPi, attach the USB drive to that and format it for ZFS, and do a ZFS send/receive targeting the Rpi's USB device... When it's done, you unplug it and toss it on a shelf in the safe. It's poor man's tape, but works surprisingly well...