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Backing up NAS to cloud?


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I spun this off of another similar thread, but was hoping for some advice. I have a WD MyCloud EX NAS (in RAID 1). As many have repeated here, this is insufficient for true backup keeping so I wanted to put the data in the cloud.

 

I have over a terabyte to back up, which makes Google Drive and DropBox basically moot because $$$. Amazon Cloud is a perfect choice (unlimited storage for $60/yr). However, getting stuff up to the cloud is proving to be a pain. Since my WD only talks directly to Amazon S3 (not Cloud Drive), I can't use any of it's built-in backup. That means mounting via SMB to my laptop and dragging files manually into either Amazon's app or the website. I tried ExpanDrive for a couple days, but using that means copying everything locally to my internal drive for staging to upload (as a side effect of copying to the ExpanDrive-mounted folder), and that requires a lot of extra space which I don't have on my laptop's SSD.

 

Either way, the file copies saturate my network, since i'm doubling the copy (copy from NAS to laptop, then from laptop to Amazon at a snail's pace). What I really want is to cut out the laptop entirely, but it doesn't seem like there is any way given WD's poor support for remote services.

 

What do other people do? I'm on Mac, so Win/Linux-only solutions aren't helpful. Thanks!

-mike

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I have a Synology NAS that I connect a portable USB drive to for backup. Once a week, the Synology backup program automatically backs up to the USB drive.

 

I actually have two USB drives with one always connected to the Synology and the other stored off-site to guard against fire, theft etc.

 

About once a month, I swap out the USB drives so that the off-site version is no more than a month out of date.

 

I have about 1 TB of data so all of my drives are 2 TB.

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At a Terabyte, you are hitting that point where "in the cloud" means "too much out of the bank!"

 

It is old fashioned and very simple, but you could just simply invest in a few 2TB drives or better, and rotate a copy of your NAS onto them, always keeping the most current backup offsite. JIC!

 

Or you can look into services that use data compression and de-duplication, which will greatly reduce the size of the transmissions to your online in the cloud backup, though the first backup will still be something like 50% or better of your information. From that point, backups will probably be tiny, consisting of just the data that has changed. That can only be a few bytes in a file.

 

The simplest and most practical way is probably just to buy a couple drives and back away. :)

 

-Paul

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC.

Robert A. Heinlein

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Apart from the NAS you should have another local backup, preferably on an external HDD.

 

Simply plug that to a PC/laptop and backup to Amazon.

 

PS: I run RAID on my Synology and backups to Amazon, but if that crashed and despite the RAID if all data was lost, it'd takes weeks to get back the data from Amazon Cloud. Local backups are a must IMHO.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world - Martin Luther

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I have two NASs, in different places of the house. Every Saturday at noon the second NAS boots, gets a copy of the first NAS (rsync), and goes to sleep again.

 

Every few months I make a backup on a portable drive and store that at the office.

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Well if you don't mind giving all your music to "The Man" so it can be scanned, analyzed and tagged to help him build a behavioral file on you then sure.. Put it in the cloud. I hear it's the Hip thing to do now a days :)

 

Might as well upload all your passwords, credit card info, SS#, banking details and any Selfies you have as well just to get it all over with in one shot :)

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Well if you don't mind giving all your music to "The Man" so it can be scanned, analyzed and tagged to help him build a behavioral file on you then sure.. Put it in the cloud. I hear it's the Hip thing to do now a days :)

 

You've obviously never had a crash and lost all your data and then had to painstakingly re-rip and tag 100s of CDs.

 

Might as well upload all your passwords, credit card info, SS#, banking details and any Selfies you have as well just to get it all over with in one shot :)

 

Already done that... but encryption is a thing you know and more importantly 2FA, which I advocate everybody use on anything even remotely sensitive and important.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world - Martin Luther

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This is how I backup my NAS to Cloud ...

 

An application called "Arq 5", cost $50 for the software.

https://www.arqbackup.com

 

It is a program that runs on my Macbook, and directly backup my NAS (Apple Time Capsule) to Amazon S3 (and Glacier).

In Finder, I need to keep a tab open to my NAS drive, if I do that, it is reliable.

If I restart my Macbook, then I need to open a Finder tab to NAS, else it is set and forget.

I have it scheduled daily to run @ 5am.

 

Data is encrypted by Arq5 before leaving my macbook or NAS, locally within network, prior to going to internet. I also use secure VPN. So encrypted data is being tunnelled via an encrypted VPN connection.

 

I do not need to manually copy anything to my Macbook (for NAS to get backed up to the Cloud).

 

It also now does backup to Amazon Cloud Drive , though I have not tried that yet.

 

 

I did 2 other things to improve the reliability of my data on my LAN.

1) Opened up my Apple Time Capsule and replaced the HDD with a Samsung 840 Pro SSD, as I find SSD more reliable, less failures.

2) Backup my NAS. Attached another SSD to the USB port of the Apple Time Capsule. Use a program on my Macbook called "Carbon Copy Cloner" which has an agent to copy the NAS to the backup SSD drive attached to the USB port. Run it about 2am, so this program and Arq5 do not clash. Direct copy of NAS to backup drive (nothing needs to get copied to my Macbook).

 

No double copying ... though still need Macbook to run both the Arq5 program (to Cloud) and the Carbon Copy Cloner (backing up NAS locally).

 

LAN is not saturated as I schedule the programs to run while I am asleep.

 

For your use, I think Arq5 maybe worth investigating, though I have not tested it with Amazon Cloud Drive, have found it reliable for years with Amazon S3 (and Glacier). Hope this helps.

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