Online backup that plays nicely with a Synology DS211J

[Chunkers]

I did post a similar question on the Synology forums but as others have stated they are deader that this parrot ..... (sorry about that reference right there)

I use a Synology DS211j currently and would like to use one of those online services to back up my data 'off-site'.

STRATO HiDrive have a package built into DSM (as does Amazon Glacier) for £9.95/month for 250Gb. Other services like Livedrive, Backblaze, Carbonite and Crashplan appear to offer unlimited storage for much less e.g. £40 / year - will they work with a Synology NAS? I like the look of Livedrive but for some reason they seem to charge extra £5/month for a NAS ? I guess I could run the backup software on one of my PC's and use it on a mapped drive from the DS211J but then you start wondering what the point of having an independant NAS is in the first place, sigh.

My ISP, Zen, also have an online backup service but the cost is terrifying (try £50/month for 100GB).

Summary of my needs :

• I am mainly interested in backing up about 100Gb of family photos and videos which I will keep in the storage for safe backup and will add approximately 20 Gb per year to this.
• My priority is secure storage, data privacy and reliability
• I want something that is hands-off and will take care of itself once set up
• Not worried about speed of access as I have a fairly poor internet connection in any case
• Price : obviously I want it to be cheap without compromising on security
• I would prefer somwehere in the UK but not compulsory
• Can I just use the standard backup software on my NAS to back-up to any storage service or are there any advantages of using the dedicated packages e.g HiDrive, Glacier

I have read that Amazon Glacier is good value secure long term storage and it has a dedicated Synology package which I haven't tried yet. It would work for me but it would be nice if the data was slightly more readily accessible if the cost is not significantly more.

I guess Hidrive looks like the front runner at the moment, although its expensive - is anyone using it?

Any other recommendations or advice?

Ta

Chunkers

 

[swalker68]

Chunkers,

With regard to your question, you appear to have sussed out the available options.

Personally I went with CrashPlan. Its not as straight forward to configure headless on a Synology, but it can be done.

Check out http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/ for details on how to set it up on the Synology, with the client installed on your PC or MAC to monitor progress.

The only minor issue is that every time Synology releases an update to DSM, you need to stop Java and CrashPlan, de-install them and then reinstall them. Upon restarting you sign back into the CrashPlan through the client and adopt your previous backup . It sounds like a lot of work, but actually takes no more than 5 mins. For the minor inconvenience, its not really a big deal.

Just make sure you read the installation instructions thoroughly a couple of times before you get started. You will also need to make sure you download the right version of Java for your Synology (you need to sign up for a free SUN account to download the file).

All in all, it took me a couple of hours one weekend to get it up and running. I am now backing up 1.2Tb to Crashplan.

I am also backing up 8Tb locally on top of CrashPlan, but I am just paranoid

I hope the above helps, if you have any more questions, post away.


Regards,



swalker68

 

[kanewolf]

Amazon Glacier is an option with Synology. I uploaded 150GB to glacier and it was painless. I have not set any automatic updates on the folder that I have set to backup to Glacier. I initiate the backup manually.

 

[Chunkers]

Great info, thanks. I will investigate both options.

The Crashplan option, on initial reading might not work that well as my NAS has only 128 Mb RAM.

Cheers

C

 

[stevech]

Crashplan - I tried to like it. But no, due to their restrictions.

OpenDrive - 2-3 years ago it was unreliable. I've been using it as a free account for several years and in the last 1+ years it's been very reliable. Their "custom" plan is cheaper by far than their personal family type plan.

Their free plan is uplink speed limited. But still pretty good versus my ISP with just 5Mbps up.

iDrive just upgraded their plans and promotions. It looks pretty good. I have their client running. It's OK. Not as sophisticated as OpenDrive. The main thing with iDrive is that you get one/year free bulk upload via a mailed-in USB disk or big thumb drive. Without doing this USB-drice mail-in bulk upload, on-line backup makes no sense - sending gigabytes at residential ISP speeds - and prices. More than once a year they charge $50 per mailed in drive.

Truly, I rely on my own NAS and USB3 drive (out of thieves' sight), plus a big SD card in the NAS for VIP data backup, plus the 2nd drive is an independent volume in the NAS with a time backup for the last x versions of files. (I don't backup the backup files like PC drive images stored on the NAS).

So for me, on-line backup and sync is more about an easy way to share files (phots, mostly) with relatives.

I would NOT put sensitive personal info, financials, password crib sheets, tax returns, or anything like that on an on-line server. I say it's OK if *I* encrypt a zip file or use SafeHouse software (which use daily) so I'm not vulerable to the on line house having a bad employee/contractor (which happens too often). In the US, those on-line houses re-encrypt on receipt and they have the key to decrypt no matter what they say... required to have this for court orders. that's why I would encrypt independently.

In the end, backing up even part of a mult-terabyte NAS as we have, via an Internet connection with just a few Mbps uplink, is not practical.