Backing up network shares (not mapped) to local USB HDD?

[Mr Whippy]

I used to use a free copy of Retrospect that I had with a USB HDD many years ago. It'd just mirror a HDD by deleting and copying files where appropriate.

I'm wondering what the best Win10 software would be for scanning an SMB share (not mapped to a drive letter) and syncing to a local mounted USB HDD?
I'd have two disks, one local sync'd weekly, another off site sync'd a few times a year.

Also I need encryption.


I've been considering using veracrypt to encrypt a full 8TB HDD partition, but not sure if that will be a good idea or not (risks higher than other encryption methods of data loss?)



Does anyone know of any good software to basically manage this over SMB shares to local HDD with encryption thrown in (or not)?


I have a feature called Hyper Backup on the Synology NAS but it seems a bit half-finished. Ie, single file backup has no encryption. Multi file backup not easily recovered unless it's back to a Synology NAS.


Cheers

[xeny]

Does your edition of Window support BitLocker?

If not, I had very good experiences with TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt's predecessor.

With regard to copying - do you need anything you can't achieve with a suitable robocopy command?

[Mr Whippy]

Yes Win10 pro retail and BitLocker.

Will read about robocopy. Is that a win10 PowerShell thing?

[xeny]

Robocopy has been MS's standard CLI file copying tool since the days of XP.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents...

gives a good variety of sample command lines to adapt.

[Mr Whippy]

Ah cool.

Doing a bit more reading I see I can map a drive from Synology to Windows.

So USB drive @ windows, bitlocker opened, and target a ‘single file’ Hyper backup to it... so get it into NTFS as raw files in the bitlocker wrapper.

Or robocopy it from Windows accessing the NAS share... which seems the best way for full control.

I’ll prob do a NAS hyper backup version control backup to one 8tb hdd.
And then a straight mirror file copy to another 8tb hdd using bitlocker.

With extra options the risk of not getting all data back is low.



Might try bung some folders on cloud in veracrypt wrappers too.

[xeny]

Throwing a third option into the mix, can the Synology encrypt drives that are directly connected to it with USB?

[Alex Z]

Sync toy has a nice gui for this type of thing.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.a...

[Mr Whippy]

xeny said:

Throwing a third option into the mix, can the Synology encrypt drives that are directly connected to it with USB?

It’d be nice if it did, but there is no simple wrapper type encryption.

The only backup encryption is part of hyper backup, which kinda ties you into recovering back through hyper backup on a Synology nas.

Sadly their documentation up sells encryption like a well integrated feature set but for me it feels a bit risky to use wrt a robust recovery for a layman to just come and use (ie, wife etc)



Given my short experience, for my needs at least, win10pro on a diy nas (fractal design node304 case etc) would do for 99% of the things I want to do.
Encryption, smb shares, and DLNA stuff, all within the well trodden UI expectations and ‘just works as you’d expect’ way.


Might still try that to be fair but first I need a pair of platform agnostic backups before I start swizzling stuff around.

Edited by Mr Whippy on Monday 5th October 09:45

[xeny]

Mr Whippy said:

Given my short experience, for my needs at least, win10pro on a diy nas (fractal design node304 case etc) would do for 99% of the things I want to do.
Encryption, smb shares, and DLNA stuff, all within the well trodden UI expectations and ‘just works as you’d expect’ way.

A lot depends on the use case. I run a Synology NAS at home as it is nicely low power, and less cost and than the parts for a DIY NAS, but a DIY NAS has more capability/flexibility.

[Mr Whippy]

Gah this Synology NAS is doing my head in.

Eject usb after boot not working with encryption keys on it.
So need to login to eject it so it doesn’t corrupt a if you just unplug it.

So contact support, want logs. Logs are full of personal info.

Can’t clear logs and grab just for latest boot cycle/session except via SSH and Linux commands.

Got ‘Clean’ logs off.

Now Syncthing is showing errors for no permission on folders to check for changes... but seems to be working ok. Maybe needs access to a log folder it created but is no longer there?
Probably gonna have to reinstall and rescan/link folders.

What a fsking un-user friendly experience.
Can’t send just recent logs. No backup of logs. No delete logs button.

Wife complaining about noise in night.

Can’t run iTunes or any proper s/w for streaming to an appleTV.

Every single thing you try do has faults or caveats or is a partial feature set, or needs SSH to do tasks.


Most annoying is I bought it to save time but it’s just as much faff as a diy build, but with less freedom.


It’ll do for now but gonna start a build in my old tower case.
Yes a bit mega but it’s heavily sound insulated, so quiet. It’s a proper mobo so can run tv capture.
It can run Windows, so spaces and duplication and bitlocker and backups and network shares, syncthing, and an iTunes server to apple tv, but with my folder structure.


Yeah more expensive, but time, and headaches and limitations cost far more haha!