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QNAP file versioniong capability

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stevech

Part of the Furniture
For no good reason, though I'm happy with my NAS (Synology), but since it's 3 yrs old and just 1.6GHz single-core, I'm pondering a next -NAS. With drive capacity we have, I'll stay with a 2-bay, non-RAID. In 3 years, I've not filled 2TB. I don't do movie/video ripping. Just lots of software development related items, huge numbers of downloads, and 1GB of financials/investments/taxes (encrypted virtual disk from SafeHouse Software). And family photos. Backups for me are: USB3 2TB, SD card for VVIP files. On-line Adrive 100GB for selected things I need to share, and I don't rely on their encryption for personal info.

As I look at QNAP, I don't find an equivalent to Synology's DSM "Time Backup" utility. This is a file versioning backup. You config a backup of a list of existing folders, and say how many months of backups to retain. Older than that, they get deleted, when space is needed. My versioned archive is about 1.3TB for 6 months' back, and 3 years of accumulations. I don't backup backups like drive images from other PCs.

In QNAP, I found only one utility that does file versioning. But as I read it, the folders for files to be version-backed have to all be subdirectories of one directory. Unlike the above, with Synology's Time Backup. Having to subordinate such folders, rather than as Synology does with a list of folders, is impractical. So impractical that it must be that I didn't actually find QNAP's equivalent.

Anyone know?
 
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Good question - I wonder though, rather than the NAS vendor SW, how about other desktop clients that actually might do an even better job?
 
And, FWIW, on a QNAP x86 NAS, you could run DSM on a VM under Virtualization Station perhaps...

Here's instructions on how to run DSM on VirtualBox - seems like a small step to get things running on a QNAP

http://www.xpenology.nl/virtualbox/

The irony of it all...
 
I'm not aware of an analog to "Time Backup" on QNAP. I do use Network Recycle Bin, which has similar functionality but is not the same.

With NRB, when you overwrite or delete a file, a copy of the existing file (along with complete folder/path) is written to a Recycle Bin folder. Every time you overwrite a file, it saves an additional copy. They aren't "versioned" necessarily but they do have timestamps so you know which version of the file you're working with by when it was written to disk.
 
Generally I prefer to avoid vendor specific utilities for file archive. My logic is if X years down the road the vendor is not around or the hardware itself has failed / been replaced it would stink I'd my data was not easily accessible.

So, having said that, my preference would be ZFS snapshots as the ZFS filesystem can be read from many easily installed OS available for many systems.
 
Generally I prefer to avoid vendor specific utilities for file archive. My logic is if X years down the road the vendor is not around or the hardware itself has failed / been replaced it would stink I'd my data was not easily accessible.

We're not really talking about archiving. For the most part, the QNAP and Synology tools are just front ends for something like RSYNC or CP, meaning it's just copying files from one place to another. There's no proprietary file format or anything that would prevent recovery of data if the entire device died or the company went under.

So, having said that, my preference would be ZFS snapshots as the ZFS filesystem can be read from many easily installed OS available for many systems.

Both Synology and QNAP use EXT3/4 filesystems as default, which is even more universal than ZFS. Given that 90% of the known world is on Windows, neither of them are particular "user friendly" when it comes to recovering files in the typical home environment. I would argue that EXT3/4 is much easier than ZFS in that sense.
 
what I refer to is file versioning + backup, all in one, for only folders I choose.
I don't think QNAP has that. Right? (Synology does, so I'd QNAP would too)
 
So basically, it's like an incremental (not differential) backup where it copies the file the first time and every time it backs up, it copies a new version of the file and slaps a version number on it?

I would imagine QNAP Backup Station could do that but I'm not sure right now. I use one-way sync which only writes the file to backup if it is new or changed.
 
If you refer to versioning ... no, it's not like incremental backups or syncs.
Versioning backups as is Synolgy's Time backup, has the last n versions of files. The user interface is to browse by date, e.g., yesterday's version or jump back a month. Synology's implementation has a mini-database. Each day, for the watched files/folders, it creates a new folder with changes only, but unlike an incremental backup, the files are stored by age and the file/folder structure is preserved. So to retrieve an older version, it's "just there", no extraction from some backup set.

It's the browse by age that's different. The GUI for that is a nice sweeping older/newer display with page-turning, as if reading a magazine and each page is a day of changed files.

The folder containing the days' changes is named as such. The file names per se aren't changed... they are in a folder with the date tag.

I'm hoping to hear that QNAP has the same capability.
 
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I got a Qnap recently but at the moment it's just a mirror of my Synology so did not have time to start taking backups on that side. I used "Time Backup" on the Synology when it came out, but (can't remember why) did not really like it.

Still, it looked like pretty much like rsnapshot http://rsnapshot.org/ turned into a feature. The logic is:

First backup:
- Take a full backup

Next backups:
- Next backup clones the file structure, but each file and folder is just a link to the previous backup
- Then it does rsync against the links, if a file has changed that link is replaced with the modified file

The overhead for each backup is just the links which are very small. A file vanishes from backups when the file or any link pointing to it is gone... This is also pretty much the logic Apple uses with timemachine, only they actually fixed the biggest problem with rsnapshot (the UI when you need to actually restore a file or see all changes to it).

Based on a quick google it seems at least rsnapshot is available for Qnap x86 nas devices as a separate package, I can't comment on how usable it would actually be... Personally I version by rotating the external disks the backups are on (and keep part of them away from home).
 
The nice GUI is a big part of the Time Backup.
Many times, I've hosed up a C file or a document, and wanted to revert to last week's known-good. That's really simple with the GUI. Just flip pages with mouse, then get the file.

I'll look at rnapshot for QNAP. Hope it has a nice UI. And hope "avail for x86" doesn't preclude the low end 2 bay SOHO products.

And I hope it's not for a full volume backup, but rather, I can choose which folders go to the Time Backup.

I've not used Apple's Time Machine; sounds like it might be similar to Time Backup and its UI.
 
Apples timemachine allows you to restore your computer with very fine precision from a backup, or go to any directory on the file system and enter a pretty clear timeline view where you can see every point where any file in the directory was changed and scroll between those points, then choosing to restore the file. It really is an intuitive UI and also makes changing your hard disk / computer a breeze...
 
If you refer to versioning ... no, it's not like incremental backups or syncs.
Versioning backups as is Synolgy's Time backup, has the last n versions of files. The user interface is to browse by date, e.g., yesterday's version or jump back a month. Synology's implementation has a mini-database. Each day, for the watched files/folders, it creates a new folder with changes only, but unlike an incremental backup, the files are stored by age and the file/folder structure is preserved. So to retrieve an older version, it's "just there", no extraction from some backup set.

It's the browse by age that's different. The GUI for that is a nice sweeping older/newer display with page-turning, as if reading a magazine and each page is a day of changed files.

The folder containing the days' changes is named as such. The file names per se aren't changed... they are in a folder with the date tag.

I'm hoping to hear that QNAP has the same capability.

OK, that sounds like Apple's Time Machine.
 
I'll look at rnapshot for QNAP. Hope it has a nice UI. And hope "avail for x86" doesn't preclude the low end 2 bay SOHO products.

"Available for x86" likely means exactly that - it will only run on x86 processors.
 

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