Suggestions for Online Backup for NAS

[Woofmeister]

I just bought a WD My Book Live 2TB with the idea that I would move all of my media onto that drive for access network wide rather than from a single desktop.

However, it suddenly occurs to me that since the My Book Live is a single disk system, I'd lose all of my media if the drive fails. Does anybody know of a good online backup service that will work with a NAS? My understanding is that most popular online backup products will not backup a network folder.

 

[ch33zw1z]

My suggestion, buy another drive and use this: http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/ this setup does have a downside, it's not an offsite backup unless you move the drive offsite. In other words, your not safe from fire,water,theft,etc...

other than that....I've only spoken with people who use Carbonite. They like it, but they're not sure why other than "it works"

 

[Kenazo]

I use http://cloudberrylab.com/?page=cloudberry-backup to backup nightly to Amazon S3 storage.

It's overkill but my wife would shoot me if we'd ever lose the pics of our kids.

If you want more info or need a hand setting this up, let me know.

 

[Woofmeister]

I use http://cloudberrylab.com/?page=cloudberry-backup to backup nightly to Amazon S3 storage.

It's overkill but my wife would shoot me if we'd ever lose the pics of our kids.

If you want more info or need a hand setting this up, let me know.

Wow, that is one serious backup solution!

What are your S3 charges per month?

 

[Woofmeister]

My suggestion, buy another drive and use this: http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/ this setup does have a downside, it's not an offsite backup unless you move the drive offsite. In other words, your not safe from fire,water,theft,etc...

other than that....I've only spoken with people who use Carbonite. They like it, but they're not sure why other than "it works"

Nope. I want to make sure my backups are offsite so two drives won't do it. And Carbonite does not do NAS.

 

[Kenazo]

I'm backing up about 35 gigs, but most is static so my transfer costs are minimal, besides the initial upload. Pure storage cost is around $3-4/month. Well worth the $.

They do have reduced redundancy storage as well which is a bit cheaper, but who really cares if it's even 1/2 the price. $1.50-$2? whoopdee.

 

[Kenazo]

By the way, Cloudberry doesn't do block level back so you'll have to upload an entire file that changes vs. just the portion of the file that changes. Plus they go by the date modified date to determine if the file has changed, they don't physically compare anything.

Then again what do you expect from a $25 program.

I don't use it to backup a NAS, just locally attached storage, but I believe there would be no issue backing up from NAS. Might want to get the trial version and test. It's a fully functioning 15 day trial, IIRC. Amazon S3 has 6 gigs free storage for new accounts too, so you could test the entire set up for free.

 

[Strych9]

Check out crashplan.com. $50 a year for unlimited online storage from one machine. $120 for 2-10 machines. I backup all the machines in my house to my WHS and then back this up to crashplan. Works great.

 

[kevnich2]

Check out crashplan.com. $50 a year for unlimited online storage from one machine. $120 for 2-10 machines. I backup all the machines in my house to my WHS and then back this up to crashplan. Works great.

Crashplan also allows you to backup to multiple destinations, including friend's crashplans which gives a great offsite backup option for those not wanting to backup to the cloud. I personally utilize a 3 fold backup. I use crashplan to backup to a local usb drive, a friend's system who is also using crashplan (I backed up first to a usb drive, then took the usb drive to their house, plugged it in and attached it with crashplan) and also to crashplan's cloud. I'd say that combo pretty much protects me from any disaster that could happen.

If you don't want to pay the monthly amount, you can still use the program just not use the crashplan cloud backup

 

[skyking]

Instead of a NAS, I use a linux server and have others offsite. I back up to those servers.

 

[Woofmeister]

Check out crashplan.com. $50 a year for unlimited online storage from one machine. $120 for 2-10 machines. I backup all the machines in my house to my WHS and then back this up to crashplan. Works great.

Crashplan e-mailed me to say that they do not support backups from NAS under Windows:

[FONT="]Backing up files from a NAS on Mac OS is no problem at all! Currently, we do not support mapped drives on Windows. There is a full explanation and (somewhat technical and unsupported) workaround in the support wiki under HOW TOs. Here is the direct link:[/FONT]
[FONT="]http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/back_up_windows_mapped_drives[/FONT]
[FONT="]If you need assistance with the workaround, please visit our support forums:[/FONT]
[FONT="]https://crashplan.zendesk.com/forums[/FONT]
[FONT="]Please let us know if you have additional questions[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot].[/FONT]

 

[kevnich2]

Crashplan e-mailed me to say that they do not support backups from NAS under Windows:

[FONT=&quot].[/FONT]

It may not be supported, but it's very possible. I know because I'm doing it. There is some work you need to do but it took me a grand total of 5 minutes. The reason behind this is because crashplan uses the system account so it can work in the background. When you map a drive, you're mapping it with whatever username you're logging in with. There's actually an article on crashplan's forum from crashplan to get it to work with crashplan - it's just not officially supported.

What you basically need to do is create a task that runs a batch file as the system account. The batch file then maps the drives as whatever username you choose. Then when you open up crashplan, it'll be able to see the new mapped drive and the files with it.

 

[Woofmeister]

Found at least one service that claims to backup to the cloud from network storage. Elephant Drive Enterprise. The pricing looks pretty steep though--$200/year for 50 GB. http://www.elephantdrive.com/help/plans_pricing.aspx

 

[Kenazo]

Cloudberry & S3!

(I'm sticking to my recommendation)

 

[krunt]

I am in a similar situation as the OP. I have been using Spideroak, which is about half the price as S3 and has other advantages (syncing across computers for example, true zero-knowledge environment ). However, it is only half the price of S3 if you are at the 100gb marks. 25gb is cheaper with S3, so it depends on how much data you are backing up.

However I would like a solution to back up everything, including OS images of my computers. This would be 2-3 TB of information. Much too expensive to do it on S3 or Spideroak. My thought was a WHS box but that does not cover an offsite back up. I am curious about skyking's Linux boxes. I could always have another server at the office or a friend's/family's house.