Recommendation for using FreeNAS: Backup or as a win document folder

[samerelsheikh]

Hello Community
As you may tell I am brand new to the world of NAS in general. I had a WD my live book, and hated it immensly. So I decided to switch to FreeNAS.

I bought basic hardware, installed and setup my FreeNAS with no problems.
I set up SMB-shares, with credentials for different family members. The shared drives are appearing to the correct users. The drives are mapped as network drives.
I plan to
Now I have 2 options:

1. have a my documents folder on my windows machine, and use windows backup, to do an hourly backup, vs.
2. move my documents folder to by directly located on my NAS.

Either way I will be settin up an hourly snapshot of the most important folders.

Thank you for your help. If there is a starters guide somewhere, that covers such topics, I would be grateful for a tip.

 

[Kris Moore]

First of all, welcome!

Either way is feasible. Typically if you have a decent network between your clients and the NAS its often best to just host the files directly on the NAS / SMB shares itself, that way you don't have to worry about and monitor if the windows backups are taking place properly.