[SOLVED] Synology backup to external drive

[HCHTech]

I just spent a frustrating 90 minutes trying to get this working. I have a money-is-no-object residential customer who needed some centralized storage. I sold him a nice DS415+ full of WD Red's last month. Went together easily and installed with no fuss at all - then came the time to setup a backup for it. Customer doesn't like "the cloud", so I showed up today with a 4TB USB3 external drive -- easy stuff, right?

Not so much. Synology's backup apps seem to be ever-changing and I don't think they are getting better. A few years ago, we used their "Backup & Replication" app (worked just ok), then went to their Time Backup (didn't like this one as much because a lot of the granularity was removed), and now the available app is called "Hyper Backup". It installed in about 15 seconds, setup is very easy (because there are so few options), it detected the external drive right away, but I cannot get a successful backup for the life of me. There are about 150 gigs on the Synology. The backup goes along for a couple of minutes, then stops with a "Backup Failed" status. No details to troubleshoot with, just failed. I've reformatted the external, uninstalled and reinstalled the app, rebooted the Synology, made sure I had the latest update to DSM -nothing seems to matter. The external mounts and works fine when connected directly to a computer with no errors in the system log. I have NOT run gsmartcontrol on the external, just FYI - not even sure I could without disassembling the enclosure.

If I look on the external after the failed backup, I see the folder structure there as if it setup the backup container just fine, but the job never finishes.

I've never been a fan of their support, so I haven't filed a ticket yet, but in the interim, has anyone had a similar problem? Are there other apps that would run directly on the Synology besides the slim pickings in their application manager?

 

[Markverhyden]

Funny you should mention this. I've just been messing about with this as well. Not exactly the most intuitive way to decipher setting up. But it seems to be working now. Had a problem where I thought the source shared folder was actually the destination shared folder. Once I sorted that out mine seems to be backing up ok. Have you reformated the drive within DiskStation. My external drive is FAT32 for compatibility reasons.

 

[TenYardFight]

These "not a fan of the cloud" customers annoy me (;

Is there a desktop in the residence? If so I hook the external up to it and use my preferred windows backup software to backup the mapped drive to the external.


Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[trevm999]

You could try just backing up a little at a time. That's what I did to do a offsite backup with rsync, but that wasn't because it would fail, it's because it otherwise would have been backing up for days, rather than backing up overnight.

Vendor support is probably one of the top reasons to go with a NAS OS, so you might as well be putting in a ticket. My next fileserver will be built by myself off of FreeBSD or Linux.

 

[HCHTech]

I don't want the external visible from the Windows machines to protect the backup from encryption malware. They are using the NAS as centralized storage, so this backup is critical and needs to be automated. I can't actually see how to format the external from within DMS, I must be missing that somewhere! Because it creates the folder set on the external, I have to believe the mechanical setup is correct - I'll have to dig around in the logs. I think I'll file a ticket. I did troll the Synology forums a bit - it's frustrating because there just isn't a lot of guidance, no manual, and all of the problems on the forums didn't really match mine.

 

[Markverhyden]

To format a drive in DSM, Control Panel>External Devices on the bottom left>select the drive in the right and there is a format button that should be available.

 

[trevm999]

I did troll the Synology forums a bit - it's frustrating because there just isn't a lot of guidance, no manual, and all of the problems on the forums didn't really match mine.

The lack of documentation is definitely a turn off. There are some things that you can only find out about through the forums.

 

[HCHTech]

To format a drive in DSM, Control Panel>External Devices on the bottom left>select the drive in the right and there is a format button that should be available.

Perfect - I'll do a remote session tomorrow and poke around. At the very least, I can tell support I did that and save one 24-hour back and forth email.

 

[Markverhyden]

Perfect - I'll do a remote session tomorrow and poke around. At the very least, I can tell support I did that and save one 24-hour back and forth email.

The test backup I did completed without any problems. Around 60gb, almost all being Time Machine backup. Best of luck.

 

[HCHTech]

Perfect, Mark. It looks like the format from within DSM did the trick. I chose EXT4, then set the "smart recycle" and 30 days rotation. We'll see how that all works out. The NAS is 6TB, currently a bit under 200GB used, and the backup drive is 5TB. I don't love the idea of needing a special software to read the backups, but I'll get over that, I'm sure. I note also that it doesn't seem like you can automate health checks on the external drive -I'll have to see what can be done there to put a bow on this whole thing.