Can a NAS double as USB External Drive?

[setite]

I want to move to a NAS between semesters to replace the backup of my media collection. But I would like to keep using CrashPlan for cloud backup, but as many of you know it won't backup network shares even if you mount them. So I need to know of a NAS that I can plug in via USB or E-Sata so that it's storage will appear as a local drive on a single computer that is using crashplan. I was looking at the Thecus n4800 for it's price and features, but when I e-mailed them abou it they told me I'd need Direct Attached Storage instead of Network Attached Storage. That's unacceptable because I need to a stable way to have networked storage.

Right now I have a dedicated PC for downloads, storage, networked sharing, transcoding(AirVideo Server) and everything else. PC serves one purpose but a recent upgrade is unstable at the moment and it's showed me that I need something separate for my archived shows and movies. Not to mention maintaining working file sharing across boxee's, htpcs, windows pcs, and apple pcs has become a nightmare. For the most part it's all finally working but it breaks sometimes so a NAS would be best. But I like off-site cloud storage as an extra bit of security. Thanks in advance.

 

[stevech]

I'm surprised that CrashPlan cannot backup, say, X: where that is a mapped drive letter to a folder share on the NAS. "Mapped", not mounted (SMB). In the Windows world.

Also, give this freebie a try:
http://www.easeus.com/

I don't think any NAS has a USB external drive mode.

 

[setite]

I'm surprised that CrashPlan cannot backup, say, X: where that is a mapped drive letter to a folder share on the NAS. "Mapped", not mounted (SMB). In the Windows world.

Also, give this freebie a try:
http://www.easeus.com/

I don't think any NAS has a USB external drive mode.

I've tried in the past and I double-checked this morning. I doubt it's that CrashPlan can't backup mapped (mapped/mounted/potaytoe/potahtoe) network shares, it's just that it refuses to. I assume it's an economy thing, so you can't skate around the 1 PC limitation on a single PC account. I do wish this limitation was lifted if you have a multi-PC account.

EDIT: NVM I guess. What I said is true, but in rechecking their FAQ they have an unsupported workaround along with an explanation for the behavior. I guess when I pick up a n4800 in a month or two I'll give it a try.

On a side note, does anyone know how the online raid migration works. Currently I have two 3TB drives and a 1TB. They are NTFS right now so what is the best way to get them into a NAS if I wanted to switch to something like Raid 5 (thats the raid with striping + parity right?). They aren't full, so would I be able to stuff all the files on one of the drives, then put the empty one in the NAS and format it. Then send the data over then add more drives and it will convert to raid? Online Raid Migration is like that proprietary thing Drobo has right, so you can hotswap drives to add capacity or replace failing drives?

I promise I searched but I haven't found a very good explanation of regular NAS migration, and I don't want a Drobo.

Below is the link and explanation for CrashPlan and mapped drives.

CrashPlan does not support backing up mapped drives on Windows.
CrashPlan runs as a Windows service and therefore cannot access drives mounted by a user. This is an OS level restriction built into Windows.
If you would like to back up a mapped drive on Windows, this article describes an unofficial method for doing so. It is not supported by CrashPlan so proceed at your own risk.

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/back_up_windows_mapped_drives

 

[andrewj]

I have the same question too. Once I move my stuff over to the NAS, I'm looking for the best way to back it up online, e.g. with Crash Plan or another service. I've read elsewhere that e.g. Synology can be backed up to Crash Plan with a few extra implementations and a work around, but I'm interested in something that is straightforward and easy.

 

[stevech]

Opinion: On-line backup of a NAS is not a good idea...
1. Your uplink (to Internet) data rate is probably so slow it would take weeks to backup a few GB.
2. If you have ANY (any at all) private info (financial, names/addresses) in that data, it's foolish to send it into the cloud - unless YOU encrypt it by your own means, totally independent of the cloud backup services' means. They have to be able to decrypt what you upload - for court order legal reasons. Thus, a disgruntled employee there can get at the keys and do an act of revenge. It's happened several times.

So I vote for backup to a USB3 or eSATA drive - fast. And store that off-site or at least, in your car's trunk out of sight.

Most all the NASes have USB3e or eSATA. My backup goes to an NTFS formatted drive so I can always get the data back using a windows PC. The FAT backup format doesn't work when you have files larger than 2GB.

If you MUST, I'd recommend using Amazon's S3 (low cost, free for a few GB). Some or most NASes (like my DS212) have an Amazon S3 interface built into the standard backup. But even so, beware the risk as noted above.