NAS to NAS backup

[David Morrow]

One thing that has been impressed upon me by Robbie and Eddie is that RAID is not a backup. With that in mind, I've relegated my QNAP to backup duties for my Synology. One thing that really baffles me is that on a home network with mostly Windows devices that easily communicate with each other, just how difficult it can be for two NAS's to communicate with each other. And backing up one to another is a major pain. NASCompares did videos on backing up a Synology to a QNAP and one on backing up a QNAP to a Synology. This process uses Rsync and one of the NAS's native apps. My limited experience in doing this was just awful. Awkward software, a bunch of files and folders at the destination that I didn't want or expect. And finding that I needed to enable my previously disabled Admin account to delete this junk. Scratch that.

Previously, because my Windows PC was usually running, I continued to use FreeFileSync (FFS) to do my backups. I use Windows Task Scheduler to run it once each week without any user intervention. There are reasons why I do it only once each week but won't go into that here. FFS is extremely flexible and easy to configure. And it's free.

Finally, I found SyncThing. I haven't tried it yet but it may just be better than FFS. And from the YouTube videos that I've watched, it too should be very flexible. But much more complicated than FFS.

Whatever my final choice is, it won't be Rsync.

I'd love to hear how other users back up their NAS's to another NAS.