Ext. drive to Nas backup

[Chuckl]

I just read that Synology boxes are not able to this.

Are there any other brands that can?

I want to acquire a NAS box that will allow me to connect external drives and image them directly to the NAS. Compression would be mandatory.

This is for our companies data retention polices.

Any suggestions?

 

[stevech]

I just read that Synology boxes are not able to this.

Are there any other brands that can?

I want to acquire a NAS box that will allow me to connect external drives and image them directly to the NAS. Compression would be mandatory.

This is for our companies data retention polices.

Any suggestions?

Imaging.... meaning a sector by sector copy to USB3 or eSATA... no. I don't think QNAP does that either. You can use rsync or, as I do, the Synology Backup and Replicate utility to copy some or all files to a USB2 or USB3 drive. I backup from NAS volume 1 to volume 2 every day. And to external USB3 2.5 inch, for VIP folders. And to a 64GB SD card for VVIP folders.

I also have a $50 2 bay drive box with some older smaller drives in it, as JBOD since its for backup. I use that with my DS212's 2 drives as independent volumes. Note that I use the OS called DSM v5.x. There is a new backup tool called Hyperback in DSM v6 has different strategies. I also use Synology's Time Backup utility to keep months of versions of files on the second volume in the DS212. In general, I don't see small NASes doing disk images like Acronis or some such does for PC bootable drives. The operating system on the NAS is kept in a separate partition. It's not co-mingled with the file system as it is in, say, MS windows.

You can look at QNAP too, but it is 99% the same as Synology. I don't have any other recommendations for small NAS - maybe ASUStor as it matures. Not a fan of Netgear NAS, nor consumeristic NASes like Seagate, Western Digital or Buffalo sell. But that's just an opinion.

 

[Chuckl]

Imaging.... meaning a sector by sector copy to USB3 or eSATA... no. I don't think QNAP does that either. You can use rsync or, as I do, the Synology Backup and Replicate utility to copy some or all files to a USB2 or USB3 drive. I backup from NAS volume 1 to volume 2 every day. And to external USB3 2.5 inch, for VIP folders. And to a 64GB SD card for VVIP folders.

I also have a $50 2 bay drive box with some older smaller drives in it, as JBOD since its for backup. I use that with my DS212's 2 drives as independent volumes. Note that I use the OS called DSM v5.x. There is a new backup tool called Hyperback in DSM v6 has different strategies. I also use Synology's Time Backup utility to keep months of versions of files on the second volume in the DS212. In general, I don't see small NASes doing disk images like Acronis or some such does for PC bootable drives. The operating system on the NAS is kept in a separate partition. It's not co-mingled with the file system as it is in, say, MS windows.

You can look at QNAP too, but it is 99% the same as Synology. I don't have any other recommendations for small NAS - maybe ASUStor as it matures. Not a fan of Netgear NAS, nor consumeristic NASes like Seagate, Western Digital or Buffalo sell. But that's just an opinion.

I want to do the opposite of what your are describing. Backup a external drive on to the NAS box, not vice-versa. Sorry if my original post was unclear.

 

[stevech]

Oh, I get it.
You have a few options...
Simplest, if the drive is formatted for windows (NTFS or FAT), just plug it in. Wait a minute. Then choose some or all files/folders to copy to a (newly created?) folder on the NAS.
Same, if drive is Linux/ext4 formatted.

Essentially, same as plugging USB drive into a Windows or Linux PC and electing to copy from USB drive to file system.
There's no "image" per se. Just copy all files and folders. An Image copy would try to copy the boot block and partition table and that's not needed for backing up to a NAS.

I do an image copy to the NAS from PCs - using Acronis True Image, and target the output to be a folder on the NAS. That is a literal image which you can write to a different disk drive, etc. I do this for the internal drive of the PC to make a literal backup in case the PC's drive fails or gets malware. But you can image any disk this way. A data-only non-boot disk need not be imaged, just copy-all.

You can also plug that USB drive into a PC / Mac and copy it to the NAS via the LAN, if the NAS has a shared folder the PC can access, or one dedicated to USB drive backup (same as above). This might be slower due to the LAN.