Backup Solution for Freenas server as destination, Source = windows/ntfs.

[phonoflux]

Hi Guys

One of the most powerful tools I know of for backups is robocopy for windows. Mainly because if a file hasn't changed it wont bother backing it up. This turns HUGE backups of user data into well.. almost meaningless unless they're 'touching' every one of their files to mess with me.

My conundrum is that when using robocopy to a freenas share it can't detect whatever it needs to detect to know the file hasn't changed. In short, my 250gb backup will re-push every time I run it rather than detecting the files are the same and not to bother copying it.

This works windows to windows no problem, but when introducing linux/freenas the above problem emerges. If there's a work around i'd most appreciate that else any suggestions on what else to use to backup only modified files.

If there's a free solution/suggestion for backing up changed files, and every few weeks or each month doing a full backup (e.g. standard industry incremental stuffs) then i'm all ears. Generally i'm not too fussed about keeping versions, only a most recent backup in the event the PC i'm backing up decides its next life venture is a paperweight.

Host machine is running windows 7 and i'm wanting to back stuff up to Freenas 8+.

Cheers!

 

[joeschmuck]

One free tool I use to backup my photos, music, and videos to a second NAS through my main Windoze 7 computer is SyncToy 2.1 which is free from Microsoft.

In a nutshell you create a folder pair (Source/Destination), you may have many of these. You can choose the option to Syncronize (changes on either side, source or destination are changed on both sides), Echo (whatever changes you did on the source side is duplicated on the destination side), Contribute (changes on source side are made on the destination side except for deletions).

In your case I'd choose Echo. Once that is done you should run the sync. The last thing is, SyncToys does not have a way to schedule the task built in, you must use the Windoze Task Scheduler. Do a google search for SyncToys Task Scheduer or similar for instruction on how to set that up. They you can have it one periodically unattended.

It's free and it works very well.