How can I backup my Windows machines?

[Sawtaytoes]

I've going through many backup solutions over time and still haven't settled on a good one for Windows machines. I'd like it to be turn-key:

1. Install app.
2. Configure shares.
3. Forget it exists.
4. Check it if something's broken.

Preferences:

1. TrueNAS chooses when and what to backup.
2. Two-way sync capabilities, but I don't need it for every file.

Server Hosted Backups
I'd prefer to have TrueNAS be the host that chooses what to backup and when. That way, if I reformat or add another machine, there's a single place to go for backups, data storage, cloud backups, etc.

Another benefit is that TrueNAS emails me about issues. My Robocopy script doesn't do that. It's simpler to let TrueNAS tell me "hey, this backup failed; you should check it now!".

Two-Way Sync
A big reason I want two-way sync is for family photos and videos. If my wife or I take some pictures on our phones, it'd be great if we could copy those to the NAS automatically and delete them from our phones after we've moved them from the NAS's sync folder to the FamilyPictures/ folder.

Right now, I manually take her phone, copy the files to my desktop, and give her phone back. This usually happens after there are hundreds of gigs of photos and videos. If something happens to her device in that timeframe, they're all gone.

It's not just phones though. Two-way sync would be valuable for my desktop machines as well. I take video and screenshots all the time. I'd like to have those synced such that when I move them out of the sync folder to a permanent NAS location, they're removed from that machine's C: drive.

Other Technologies I've Used

BackupPC
In the past, I used BackupPC. Don't remember much about it, but I was on Gentoo or Ubuntu-Server at the time. It was quite a while ago. I have ZFS snapshots now, so I don't need something like BackupPC which was both slow and difficult to manage when I needed access to my files.

DeltaCopy Server
I later used DeltaCopy Server and would copy in newer EXEs and DLLs from the Cygwin portable ZIP. A benefit of DeltaCopy Server is it registers a Windows service for you and even provides a Windows 95 GUI for configuring shares with passwords.

This was a pain to keep up and the install didn't scale:

1. I had to manually update EXEs and DLLs on every machine I installed because the default EXEs and DLLs are all from 2008.
2. I had to manually add the port to the Windows firewall each time I put it on a machine; the app didn't do it for me.
3. I'm not certain about rsyncd security.

One thing I noticed is that cwRsync installs with Chocolatey and their zip comes with updated EXEs and DLLs I could copy-in provided DeltaCopy Server is compatible.

If I copied cwRsync's updated EXEs and DLLs into DeltaCopy, I could use the server and have TrueNAS maintain the backups with its native Rsync integration. This is a possible option, but it's still high-maintenance.

Robocopy
For the last 5-6 years, I've been using Robocopy. It's already part of Windows and is super fast even over SMB. I can't even explain how amazing it is to use and how similar it feels to rsync.

Issues:

1. This is client-to-server rather than server-requesting-client. Each Windows machine needs to be configured manually on that machine.
2. I have to write a CMD script on each machine that gets backed up and keep that up-to-date from the machine itself.
3. If something goes wrong, there's no notification. My backups could stop tomorrow, and I'd never know.
4. I have to manually configure the Windows Task Scheduler. It used to pop up a command line window but thankfully didn't the last time I set this up.
5. All of my backed-up files from each system have to be setup as Windows shares on TrueNAS.

One benefit of the Windows Task Scheduler is it doesn't run the script again if it's already running. That's a super nifty feature because I used to run into situations where a backup took too long, so 2 of them started at the same time.

After reinstalling TrueNAS, I decided I wanted something better than Robocopy.

Nextcloud
I set this up before reinstalling and upgrading TrueNAS to test it out. It's way too big. I just want file backups, not calendar, email, etc.

Nextcloud might be a great pice of software, but it's super complex for my needs. If this is a good solution for me, why?

Syncthing & Resilio-Sync
I tried both Syncthing and Resilio-Sync. While Resilio-Sync was much easier to setup in Windows, both of them sucked for various reasons:

1. Both of them used a tremendous amount of system resources in Windows.
2. They both locked when backing up large numbers of files.
3. Large syncs (quantity of files) were ridiculously slow. So slow that it'd kill the App or Jail in TrueNAS even if I was doing a one-way sync (read-only backup in Resilio-Sync).
4. They'd add hidden sync folders in every directory. I know why they do this, but I don't like it.
5. No way to exclude files and folders from syncs, so I couldn't backup `C:\Users` with Resilio-Sync because it included Resilio-Sync data. I don't want to manage which files can and cannot be backed up from `C:\Users`.

One huge benefit of these services is they allow two-way syncing. I actually do want syncing of some files so I can delete them from my NAS while my PC is off, and they'll be gone when I turn it on.

TrueNAS Cloud Backup
I'd use TrueNAS's Cloud Backup, but the rclone version in TrueNAS isn't new enough to have SMB. If it did, then I could simply have it SYNC, COPY, or MOVE from TrueNAS. If I could upgrade rclone in TrueNAS, this would be a pretty slick, but weird, solution.

 

[artlessknave]

I don't. I store everything I care about directly on the NAS. the windows/android installs are completely expendable. I have looked into this a bit, for my mothers storage, and windows, as usual, sucks

the easiest way would be to use something like google drive/onedrive on the remote device, and pull it from truenas with a cloud task, otherwise the options you have mentioned are basically it.

 

[oncdoc]

Im coming to the conclusion that Macrium as the app to make backs ups of all pcs in the house onto the NAS(s) is the best solution. In a pinch you can simply browse files from the images as well to get what you need. Highly reliable over home network to store on the NAS and restore as needed. Did I mention very fast as well. Love it.

Perhaps I will send a copy of the pc macrium backups to Onedrive as well.

 

[artlessknave]

Macrium

appears to be 113$ per protected system.

 

[oncdoc]

appears to be 113$ per protected system.

no i am using macrium reflect 8 and is 69.95 dollars

 

[anodos]

Veeam has a free product for Windows that can back up to a NAS. They're fairly reputable.

 

[oncdoc]

Veeam has a free product for Windows that can back up to a NAS. They're fairly reputable.

Your right, Ive heard good things about them. Im just used to Macrium and buy on Cyber Monday deal time etc.

 

[Sawtaytoes]

Thanks for your responses. I changed the post title to better match my question. Sorry about it being too open-ended.

I don't. I store everything I care about directly on the NAS. the windows/android installs are completely expendable. I have looked into this a bit, for my mothers storage, and windows, as usual, sucks

the easiest way would be to use something like google drive/onedrive on the remote device, and pull it from truenas with a cloud task, otherwise the options you have mentioned are basically it.

This won't work for me. I have tons of things in Windows that need to be on that machine. And I don't have enough money or time to pay for OneDrive or Google Drive (slow) to backup terabytes from my LAN to WAN back to LAN again. Seems like I'd be going about it the wrong way since my NAS is already on my LAN.

Veeam has a free product for Windows that can back up to a NAS. They're fairly reputable.

I looked at Veeam. It's a pretty closed system. I signed up for a trial, but I absolutely can't figure out how I'm expected to use it.

Can you send some screenshots? Pretty sure I installed this on my tablet for testing but didn't get anywhere with it.

Another thing about Veeam is they're supposed to manage your files and iterations etc. It's not meant to go to a filesystem with snapshots built in right? That's my impression at least.

Also, Veeam is a Windows -> NAS solution. That's not a huge issue, but it's far easier to manage everything from TrueNAS and install brainless services on Windows. As far as I've seen, there's no "Veeam backup" for TrueNAS.

 

[Sawtaytoes]

Im coming to the conclusion that Macrium as the app to make backs ups of all pcs in the house onto the NAS(s) is the best solution. In a pinch you can simply browse files from the images as well to get what you need. Highly reliable over home network to store on the NAS and restore as needed. Did I mention very fast as well. Love it.

I wonder how they do bare-metal copies. Is it Volume Shadow Copy?

From what it seems like, you get the whole image, but where does it backup to? SMB share? SSH to Linux?

 

[anodos]

I looked at Veeam. It's a pretty closed system. I signed up for a trial, but I absolutely can't figure out how I'm expected to use it.

The last time I used it (has been a while) there was a free Windows agent that could back up to a NAS target.

Another thing about Veeam is they're supposed to manage your files and iterations etc. It's not meant to go to a filesystem with snapshots built in right? That's my impression at least.

IIRC some variations of Veeam can use FSRVP to manage snapshots. I wrote an SMB configuration option a while back to allow for this (FSRVP client issue RPCs to take do this on an SMB share). So potentially some well-designed applications can do this against us.

Another thing about Veeam is they're supposed to manage your files and iterations etc. It's not meant to go to a filesystem with snapshots built in right? That's my impression at least.

Well, any backup application needs some brains to avoid sending everything over the network repeatedly.

 

[oncdoc]

I wonder how they do bare-metal copies. Is it Volume Shadow Copy?

From what it seems like, you get the whole image, but where does it backup to? SMB share? SSH to Linux?

simple copy onto smb share

 

[Sawtaytoes]

I gave up on Windows hosting rsync servers and TrueNAS connecting to them. If that Windows box is turned off, TrueNAS errors. Pretty annoying. Also, TrueNAS doesn't have an easy way for you to pass auth information when connecting to a remote using the Module mode. Not sure why, but that's another breaker.

As much as I'd like TrueNAS to update my stuff itself, it makes the most sense to run some software in Windows to back it up to TrueNAS :/.

The real question is which software is good at that?

---

I looked at Veeam again and why I didn't use it. This is why:

I'm not installing all this crap just for a backup service. Makes no sense.

---

At this point, I'm going back to Robocopy + Task Scheduler for now. I'll still have to figure out a good solution for two-way syncs.

 

[blanchet]

You should really try Veeam, because Veeam Agent for Windows is actually the best software to backup windows computers (desktop or physical servers) on the market.
The free edition is enough for home users and small businesses.
There is also a free edition for Linux (Veeam Agent For Linux)

For MacOS, the best backup software is TimeMachine.

 

[Sawtaytoes]

Why is it the best? What's so good about it?

 

[anodos]

I'm not installing all this crap just for a backup service. Makes no sense.

Often backup software wants to do things like generate reports, keep track of backup state, etc. At least it has the decency to use standard libraries rather than trying to sneak things in :)

 

[Sawtaytoes]

I see. That would make sense if I had a corporate enterprise where I'd wanna keep track of stuff like that. It'd be neat if I could host a service like Veeam on TrueNAS itself, so my clients could be hands-off.

The bulk of it makes me not want to install it on my machines. Maybe because I've used Windows since 3.1. In my experience, installing tons of software has the tendency to break drivers and other apps and cause weird issues. It also slows down system performance even if I stop them from happening at startup.

Not to mention, if it's really gathering all that telemetry, that's gonna be stressing my systems right? I should've probably noted I also play games on these machines, and some of them only play games. Veeam seems really heavy for that use case of "backup game saves". It also seems heavy for my phone where battery life is important.

I could see it for use on my main desktop, but then, how's Veeam different from something like CloudBerry Backup? I own a copy of it from way back when, that's why I'm asking.