Nightly backup to 2TB NTFS USB drive issue

[windbag]

I've been running into some problems implementing nightly backups to a external NTFS drive connected to my TS-412 via USB.

My objective is to provide a safety net against mistaken casual user deletion of the central NAS data, plus protection against NAS hardware failure, plus fire & theft by placing one backup in another building and rotating on a weekly basis. The drives to be NTFS format to enable easy reading on any Windows PC (if mine got stolen or fried in any perceive incident too).
Speed/performance not an issue as scheduling backup mirror from NAS to USB drive each night.

The TS-412 has 2x2TB drives in it and are set as RAID1 (ext4). Only 600GB of data built up so far, so single 2TB discs can back all data up for the near future.

I was going to use 2x2TB bare drives swapped via a USB cradle, but then saw a deal on 2TB Seagate GoFlex "proper" external drives, so I got a pair of those to rotate around on my weekly basis. It was working fine, but something about the combo meant the external drives were never going "idle" like I'd set them up to do.
Having a "night backup use only disc" spinning 24/7 was not sensible from a number of standpoints, so as it seems to be the Go-Flex's issue rather than the QNAPs, I've just tried to implement the original idea.

But the QNAP is fighting me.

I formatted the 2TB USB cradle disc as NTFS when attached to the QNAP and set up two backup tasks to copy my files (approx 250 GB data, 300 GB multimedia).

2nd task failed. Pulling out the disc & looking at it via a PC, it reported a 232 GB partition with 1630 GB unallocated. No wonder task 2 failed!

So reformatted via PC. Single partition full size 2TB drive (actually 1.81 TB). Set up the two directories to copy data to.
Put into QNAP. It won't see it as it is :
"UNMOUNTED".
If I re-format in the QNAP, It puts it back to 232GB partition with 1630 GB unallocated.

Why is QNAP only formatting the NTFS drive partition to 232GB?
Is there a way to "Mount" the PC-formatted 2TB drive with a single partition?

Any other way to use 2TB NTFS PC-formatted drives for the objective above?

Thanks for reading, hope you know a way forward....

 

[windbag]

For home, not workplace.

As I got a spam reply to my post (for a Quantum 45TB professional server: talk about desperation!) I thought I'd make it clear that this is my home setup.

Currently only 600GB data total (though will increase when I've got the QNAP & backup regime robustly sorted).

 

[stevech]

I do manual backups to an NTFS USB3 drive from my (non-QNAP) NAS. No issues.
I do this backup to protect from theft of the NAS. The NAS itself has protection from both drive failure and from file system corruption (I use two volumes, not RAID). I also use a Time Backup on one volume, to get retrieve a prior file version.

 

[windbag]

I do manual backups to an NTFS USB3 drive from my (non-QNAP) NAS. No issues.
I do this backup to protect from theft of the NAS. The NAS itself has protection from both drive failure and from file system corruption (I use two volumes, not RAID). I also use a Time Backup on one volume, to get retrieve a prior file version.

And this takes my issue forward... ?

 

[windbag]

QNAP TS-412 NOT suitable for NTFS USB backups

I'm being castigated on the QNAP forum for even thinking of believing the QNAP software manual when it says:

8.4 External Drive
4. Select the backup locations.
a. Select an external disk volume* from the drop-down menu.
The NAS supports EXT3, EXT4, FAT, NTFS, and HFS+ file systems.

I'm raising the issue with QNAP support - we'll see if they respond.

 

[stevech]

On my synology, I used to use NTFS formatted USB3 drives. Reasoning was to ensure I can read it on my Win PC.
But since I found reliable Windows 7 64 bit freeware that reads ext4 format, I now use that format on the USB3 drive to greatly improve the speed.

The USB3 drive is just the extra backup, and it's kept out of sight of thieves.

I'd think this applies to both vendors since the Linux drivers for NTFS are probably the same.

 

[clintb]

But since I found reliable Windows 7 64 bit freeware that reads ext4 format, I now use that format on the USB3 drive to greatly improve the speed.

Would you mind sharing the freeware ext reader you've found?

 

[stevech]

it's http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/
scroll to bottom of page to find Freeware- Linux Reader.