Backing up my backup? eSATA?

[Gimpymoo]

Hello.

Right, I have my FreeNAS box up and running, everything is glorious.

Now, what is recommended for backing up my NAS?

Building another NAS is not an option at this point.

Does FreeNAS play nice with eSATA controllers? Are USB external drives "OK" for a backup every few days?

Many thanks for help.

 

[DrKK]

I personally use my Windows HTPC and a very high capacity single drive in an eSATA enclosure as my backup. I run "syncbackfree" on that windows box, and it's happy to pull the data from my FreeNAS over the LAN.

So, one solution would be to run a backup solution on a 24/7 LAN-connected Windows box. That works pretty well.

I don't think any of us recommend connected external drives to a FreeNAS. This has been nothing but chaos, blood, and tears, for people.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I personally use my Windows HTPC and a very high capacity single drive in an eSATA enclosure as my backup. I run "syncbackfree" on that windows box, and it's happy to pull the data from my FreeNAS over the LAN.

So, one solution would be to run a backup solution on a 24/7 LAN-connected Windows box. That works pretty well.

I don't think any of us recommend connected external drives to a FreeNAS. This has been nothing but chaos, blood, and tears, for people.

If running off a Windows PC, would an external USB HDD be OK for this purpose?

I know some question the reliability but if there are errors with transfer, I expect Windows would flag it anyway?

Many thanks for your prior reply.

 

[DrKK]

I've done this with an eSATA connected drive on Windows, as well as a USB external drive on Windows, with totally fine results.

Of course, that's a REAL eSATA drive and REAL USB drive, where I bought the enclosure myself, bought a hard drive myself, mounted it, etc. I can't speak for the reliability of some all-in-one external unit designed for Aunt Sally that is ready to go out of the box.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I can't speak for the reliability of some all-in-one external unit designed for Aunt Sally that is ready to go out of the box.

I fully understand where your coming from.

I do question the quality of the "ready to go" external USB drives for Aunt Sally and Uncle Derek as they are often cheaper than the lowest price point internal drive, go figure :D

Will stick a reputable HDD into a USB caddy and try that. If it fails, no harm done at this stage :D

Saying all of that, just for purposes of duplicating data from the NAS, I could just get another internal drive for the PC and backup to that. Yes, I know "What happens if PC/House explodes" but any problems like that would be more important than the family photos and meme gifs and and duplicate will be "one way" so PC problems will not contaminate NAS.

Thanks again for the reply.

 

[danb35]

I do question the quality of the "ready to go" external USB drives for Aunt Sally and Uncle Derek as they are often cheaper than the lowest price point internal drive, go figure

Well, when you get the same drive, plus a USB external enclosure, for $100 less than the bare drive. Takes a minute or less to remove the disk from the enclosure without breaking anything.

Now, what is recommended for backing up my NAS?

What I expect to start playing with come tomorrow is an Odroid HC2 as a replication target. It runs Linux, which supports ZFS, and I just shucked a WD 8 TB disk from one of their external models. It's a total of about $75 (Odroid, power supply, cover, uSD card) plus the disk. Play around with Zerotier a bit, and you can even easily put it somewhere else (e.g., a friend's house), as long as there's a network connection.

The first choice for backing up data from a FreeNAS box is always going to be ZFS replication if possible. But that doesn't require another FreeNAS box, just something else that supports ZFS.

Edit: I should credit @garm with the idea.