UFS (RW) drive for backups - Or another solution

[soapee01]

Hi all. I'm looking at getting the new iXsystems miniXL and 4 wd red pro 2tb drives (raidz10). None of that is an issue. Historically I'd add in a 5th drive set as UFS drive and rsync backups over to that. Now that UFS is gone, is there another viable option that does not require a second machine? I'd really like the hot swap drive to be readable/recoverable from another BSD or linux box. ZFS on the single drive doesn't seem like a viable option (or good idea).

The easiest solution I can think of may be to partition the drive in the command line (UFS) and add it to /etc/fstab. Then it's trivial to set up a cron job with rsync for a backup in case the ZFS array blows up. Is this possible? Will /etc/fstab get overwritten by some other process in FreeNAS?

I understand that a backup drive in the same machine isn't ideal, but it is better than nothing. A 2nd FreeNAS server, isn't an option in this case, and backing up to some old potentially virus laden windows 7 desktops is a bad idea. Anything with a monthly service fee will be a no-go in this use case.

Thanks,

James

 

[anodos]

Hi all. I'm looking at getting the new iXsystems miniXL and 4 wd red pro 2tb drives (raidz10). None of that is an issue. Historically I'd add in a 5th drive set as UFS drive and rsync backups over to that. Now that UFS is gone, is there another viable option that does not require a second machine? I'd really like the hot swap drive to be readable/recoverable from another BSD or linux box. ZFS on the single drive doesn't seem like a viable option (or good idea).

The easiest solution I can think of may be to partition the drive in the command line (UFS) and add it to /etc/fstab. Then it's trivial to set up a cron job with rsync for a backup in case the ZFS array blows up. Is this possible? Will /etc/fstab get overwritten by some other process in FreeNAS?

I understand that a backup drive in the same machine isn't ideal, but it is better than nothing. A 2nd FreeNAS server, isn't an option in this case, and backing up to some old potentially virus laden windows 7 desktops is a bad idea. Anything with a monthly service fee will be a no-go in this use case.

Thanks,

James

A 2-bay synology device isn't that expensive and can work as an rsync target.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

ZFS on the single drive doesn't seem like a viable option (or good idea).

Why not?

 

[Arwen]

I use a single disk ZFS pool for my backups. (2 disks rotated). It works fine and allows me to
perform scrubs so that I can test the integrity of the backups before the next backup.

In my case, I hot swap them in for the backups. But, there is no reason why you can't leave the
disk in. (As long as it's not USB attached, since USB is less reliable than SAS, SATA or eSATA).

 

[Stux]

And modern BSDs and Linux distro have fairly good ZFS support.