I have previously backed up my TrueNAS system by running rsync backups to ext4-formatted USB drives attached to a Linux box on the local network. I decided to try using "proper" methods, but I can't seem to get it to work.
I added a USB drive to the TrueNAS box (I know this isn't ideal for ZFS; I read this and other threads about it), and added it as a new pool having a one-disk stripe. I then tried to set up a replication task following the docs, with my main pool as the "source location", and the new USB drive pool as the "destination location". But the snapshot created isn't real (that is, it shows "0.10 bytes" for the "Used" value), and when the replication task ran at the scheduled time, it didn't copy anything to the new disk. So right now, Tasks -> Replication Tasks lists this as "Finished", but Storage -> Pools shows that the new disk is only using 844 KiB.
How is this meant to work? And, if I'm getting it wrong, what is the "best" way of doing this? I wanted to use a local drive since it would be faster than copying a lot of data over the network. I see that the rsync task is meant for copying to different systems, so it doesn't seem the right thing to copy to a different pool on the same system. My ultimate goal is the simple one of having a single drive I can take somewhere else easily, and also to have a backup to, for example, rebuild the main pool if I want to change the storage geometry.
I should also mention that these backup USB drives tend to get extremely full, which I also know is not ideal for ZFS, but the point here is to have the cheapest backup storage. If this renders the plan completely impractical, I'd like to know that too.
I added a USB drive to the TrueNAS box (I know this isn't ideal for ZFS; I read this and other threads about it), and added it as a new pool having a one-disk stripe. I then tried to set up a replication task following the docs, with my main pool as the "source location", and the new USB drive pool as the "destination location". But the snapshot created isn't real (that is, it shows "0.10 bytes" for the "Used" value), and when the replication task ran at the scheduled time, it didn't copy anything to the new disk. So right now, Tasks -> Replication Tasks lists this as "Finished", but Storage -> Pools shows that the new disk is only using 844 KiB.
How is this meant to work? And, if I'm getting it wrong, what is the "best" way of doing this? I wanted to use a local drive since it would be faster than copying a lot of data over the network. I see that the rsync task is meant for copying to different systems, so it doesn't seem the right thing to copy to a different pool on the same system. My ultimate goal is the simple one of having a single drive I can take somewhere else easily, and also to have a backup to, for example, rebuild the main pool if I want to change the storage geometry.
I should also mention that these backup USB drives tend to get extremely full, which I also know is not ideal for ZFS, but the point here is to have the cheapest backup storage. If this renders the plan completely impractical, I'd like to know that too.
