NAS Backup Solution

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Sir_William707

Sir_William707

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Mar 7, 2017
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Right now I have a portable 1 TB Toshiba external hard drive connected to my router's USB 3.0 port, and I am able to essentially use it as an NAS for file sharing and backups on my home network. However, I have a lot of data across my several computers, and am thinking of purchasing the 4 TB Western Digital My Book drive to connect to my router through USB. I'd rather not spend the extra money on a dedicated NAS, like the WD My Cloud, if I can go without it. My questions is, will I be able to setup automatic backups with the My Book and have all of my computers get backed up at the same time? Or can only one computer send files to the hard drive at one time?

Additionally, I currently use IDrive for my online cloud backups. Can I simply set the NAS for my backup source so that I don't need to open IDrive on every single computer? Or is it not a wise idea to do a direct backup of a backup? Thanks!
 
Solution
photonboy
The WD MY CLOUD is fairly inexpensive. I have one and it's awesome.

It's also capable of using USB drives as backup.

*I can't speak for the USB solution but you would setup BACKUPS from each computer locally and just point to the WD MY CLOUD. The USB/router method may work the same.

I use Acronis True Image and just treat it like a local drive. (Network... have to login admin/admin to access)

You would NOT want to do every computer at the same time either. Spread it out. Again though, I'm not using Western Digital software aside from monitoring the WDMYCLOUD (I have to tell it to backup to my USB drive since it doesn't do it like it's supposed to be that's a minor issue. It's backup of a backup for my C-drive image in Acronis Ti but...
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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The WD MY CLOUD is fairly inexpensive. I have one and it's awesome.

It's also capable of using USB drives as backup.

*I can't speak for the USB solution but you would setup BACKUPS from each computer locally and just point to the WD MY CLOUD. The USB/router method may work the same.

I use Acronis True Image and just treat it like a local drive. (Network... have to login admin/admin to access)

You would NOT want to do every computer at the same time either. Spread it out. Again though, I'm not using Western Digital software aside from monitoring the WDMYCLOUD (I have to tell it to backup to my USB drive since it doesn't do it like it's supposed to be that's a minor issue. It's backup of a backup for my C-drive image in Acronis Ti but most of the 4TB is videos that I of course legally downloaded and do not want to lose.
 
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Solution
photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
21,567
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85,015
If you want to just backup FOLDERS there's a great tool called SyncbackSE Free that you can download.

I use that and setup a mirror. Not sure if it's mirror or just backup but I do NOT allow it to delete files on the DESTINATION drive as you can theoretically have a problem if the SOURCE drive dies so it's assumed there's no data and it gets deleted in the mirror.

So I have a SEPARATE solution in SyncbackSE that I just run manually so I can confirm any deletions are fine.

OTHER:
*Make sure you have a Gigbit connection between your solutions. I actually have my WDMYCLOUD attached to the Router through a Gigabit Switch so the Ethernet cable runs from the router to my room and my PC, WDMYCLOUD, and BluRay (Netflix) share this. My computer would go directly through the switch to talk to the WDMYCLOUD so I get up to 90MBps transfers (going through router could be slower).

Some routers may only connect at USB2 speeds (up to 32MBps) as well, and of course if you have wi-fi you'd be limited to that speed which is often no more than 7MBps.
 
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boosted1g

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Jun 12, 2013
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Most router's have a poor implementation of NAS function so even if your drive gets full speed at the router, it wont get full speed to the router anyway.
Also if you have a lower end router, the extra effort on the CPU can then make it hard for the router to also handle your internet traffic.

You dont want to have all your devices write to it at the same exact time anyways, a Hard disk drive is like a record player, it cant play two songs simultaneously because the needle can only be one place at any given time (same applies for a CD and the laser).
All your devices can connect to it, and accessing some small files simultaneously wont show much slow down but if 2 devices try to write large files at the same time, it will be a massive slowdown for all.

After having a relative with Buffalo equivalent to WD mybook being a complete and utter unreliable junk I am wary of anything similar.
Instead of that I would either take an old computer or mini-pc device like an odroid C2 that has USB 3.0 and make a NAS out of that.
This way you have a multi-purpose device that you can add much more functionality to as needs grow, as well as add storage drives to as well; vs a MyBook which is pretty much stuck with what you got.
 
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