D-Link Forums

The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-343 => Topic started by: msamp on January 20, 2012, 06:52:41 AM

Title: Basic Backup Question
Post by: msamp on January 20, 2012, 06:52:41 AM

Let me try to explain what I'm trying to do. It isn't complicated, but people seem to have trouble grasping it.

I back up my corporate network to an 8T 343. Incremental backups are done nightly so the files on the backup disk change nightly.

I have 2 additional 343s that I copy the backup to nightly, rotating them weekly. (I copy to one for one week, swap in the other and take the first off-site. Then repeat weekly.)

Right now I use robocopy to do the NAS -> NAS copy, as it can handle things getting out of sync. But it's slow.

I'm wondering if the built-in DLINK backup can do this as well. Note that when the redundant NASs are swapped out, any catalogs kept by the backup software will be one week out of date.

How does the DLINK backup keep track of what's been backed up in incrementals, and will this work wit hit?

Many thanks.

Title: Re: Basic Backup Question
Post by: JavaLawyer on January 20, 2012, 08:41:50 AM

The incremental backup in the DNS-343 does not provide the option to delete files that are in the destination but not the source, so the incremental copy will grow larger over time. A non-incremental backup (using the DNS-343 on-board software) will copy the entire contents of NAS1 > NAS2 even if there are no changes, which is not tenable for large volumes of data.  In short, using the DNS-343 exclusively for NAS to NAS backup is fraught with data syncing challenges.

Additionally, when files are copied, the creation/modified date is not preserved. The copied file creation date is set to the date/time the backup job was executed. I could be wrong, but AFAIK there is no log file created indicating what files were copied during a run.

Due to all of these factors (and although slower) I've opted to use a third party application to perform NAS to NAS backups.

Title: Re: Basic Backup Question
Post by: msamp on January 23, 2012, 07:39:39 AM

Thanks - what third party app do you use?

Title: Re: Basic Backup Question
Post by: JavaLawyer on January 23, 2012, 12:16:03 PM

Syncback. The free version of the application is fully functional for up to a limited number of PCs on your LAN.  Great application with unprecedented configuration and rules scripting.