Is there an easy way to backup a pool to an external USB 3.0 drive? I'd like to keep a backup of my media that syncs daily or every few days if possible. The drives are strictly for backing up my data so can be reformatted if needed. Completely new to FreeNas so sorry if this is a newb question.
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Backup a pool to a USB drive?
- Thread starter JCITECH
- Start date
Chris Moore
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This is a question that comes up from time to time and there are a number of solutions that have been proposed. You can probably find some of those if you go looking. USB is not a reliable means of connecting a drive to FreeNAS, so it would not be a good way to go.
Can you give some information on what hardware you have as that would give us some idea what you have to work with before we start with the suggestions. Here is a guide for the kind of thing that is useful:
Updated Forum Rules 12/5/18
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-12-5-18.45124/
Can you give some information on what hardware you have as that would give us some idea what you have to work with before we start with the suggestions. Here is a guide for the kind of thing that is useful:
Updated Forum Rules 12/5/18
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-12-5-18.45124/
This is the system I'm working with:
OS Version:
FreeNAS-11.2-RELEASE-U1
(Build Date: Dec 20, 2018 22:41)
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 cores)
Memory:
12 GiB
Storage:
4x3TB WD Red Drives in a single pool Single Drive ZFS
3x 5GB Seagate USB 3.0 External drives
I do have several Windows PCs as well so could also do backups using one of those if that's the best suggestion?
OS Version:
FreeNAS-11.2-RELEASE-U1
(Build Date: Dec 20, 2018 22:41)
Processor:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 cores)
Memory:
12 GiB
Storage:
4x3TB WD Red Drives in a single pool Single Drive ZFS
3x 5GB Seagate USB 3.0 External drives
I do have several Windows PCs as well so could also do backups using one of those if that's the best suggestion?
- Joined
- May 17, 2014
- Messages
- 3,611
I wrote a resource on how to backup to locally attached disk(s). See top section for this forum's Resources. (Note that my backups are an example only, not intended to be implemented as is. Backups are very site / person specific.)
In general, permanantly attached USB drives are problematic. USB physical connectors are not as mechanicaly stable as they could be. Thus, we don't recommend permanantly attached USB drives. Even for backups. Next, in general we can't get SMART data from a USB attached hard drive. So, can't tell when drive is starting to fail. That said, temporarily attached USB drives for backups can work, as long as you verify the backup log.
You may want to read up on FreeNAS and ZFS. Your coment about;
does not describe the disk layout.
For example, my layout is;
In general, permanantly attached USB drives are problematic. USB physical connectors are not as mechanicaly stable as they could be. Thus, we don't recommend permanantly attached USB drives. Even for backups. Next, in general we can't get SMART data from a USB attached hard drive. So, can't tell when drive is starting to fail. That said, temporarily attached USB drives for backups can work, as long as you verify the backup log.
You may want to read up on FreeNAS and ZFS. Your coment about;
4x3TB WD Red Drives in a single pool Single Drive ZFSdoes not describe the disk layout.
For example, my layout is;
4 x 4TB WD Red Drives in a single vDev, using RAID-Z2
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