Backup your music files

[GOS]

I was able to look at the external drive, and it has 1.6T on it so far....so not even half done copying.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

For my first "backup", I chose Mirroring as I knew I wanted a complete backup that was identical to what's on my NAS. Still, I don't understand the difference between Mirroring and Incremental. Seems they are the same, only worded slightly different....

• Mirroring: Each time the task runs, all changes made in the source folder will be copied to the destination, making the destination folder a complete mirror copy of the source.
• Incremental: Each time the task runs, newly added and modified source files will be copied to the destination.

Ill explain it with an example.

Lets say you already have a backup made of your 4TB drive. You go to do backup again in, say, two weeks. You have added only one new album in those two weeks.

If you do mirror, a backup will be made that copies all the contents of the 4TB drive again, overwriting all the files, and it will take as long as it did the first time. Probably hours.

If you do incremental, the software sees all the info on the backup and the source and compares them. It then only backs up the stuff that has changed. In the example that is one albums worth of data.. It would take only a few minutes.

So do as Homer says. Mirror first, and incremental after that.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

OK, it's 6:20 AM Central time...and it's still chugging along. It doesn't give me a percentage completed, just says copying and some file names flash here and there. Oh boy....so that's 9 straight hours.

That is slow. It took me about 3.5 hrs to copy a 3TB drive last time I did it. That was using a portable USB drive plugged in directly to my NAS. All connections were the faster USB 3.0

 

[GOS]

That is slow. It took me about 3.5 hrs to copy a 3TB drive last time I did it. That was using a portable USB drive plugged in directly to my NAS. All connections were the faster USB 3.0

Well, the external is USB3.0, guess I don't know about my NAS. And, in my original post, I called it DS416 or something....I actually have the DS216j I suspect it's the culprit. It certainly was WAY faster copying files using my laptop as the means...only I kept getting those damn errors.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Also, I don't know what backup program you are using. I use a free Microsoft product called SyncToy.

 

[DuncanS]

OK, I finally got this all working. Since I'm a worry-wart, now I'm wondering how long this will take to mirror 4TB of music onto the 8TB external drive? The Synology gives no sort of indication....it just flashes which "file" it's copying.

On my Zyxel 1TB to the USB HDD took around 3 hours, it runs at the file extraction and transfer speed of the host processor on the NAS so not the max. USB or HDD speed, so takes a long time, but its in the background and hopefully without error messages.

 

[GOS]

Also, I don't know what backup program you are using. I use a free Microsoft product called SyncToy.

I'm just using what came with the Synology. It's called USB Copy.

 

[GOS]

My write speeds of the DS216j are slow. 97mbs.....I probably should have bought this one as it's specs are much better. And, 4 bay.

 

[GOS]

And, I just noticed this. My external drive is formatted in exFAT. It says that's OK, but may have "some" limitations. Does the format type impact speed of transfers?? Oddly, when I opened the window below, it suggests EXT4...though again, mine is formatted as exFAT.

 

[DuncanS]

And, I just noticed this. My external drive is formatted in exFAT. It says that's OK, but may have "some" limitations. Does the format type impact speed of transfers?? Oddly, when I opened the window below, it suggests EXT4...though again, mine is formatted as exFAT.

View attachment 43134

EXFAT should have no effect on speed, I got a WD Ext HDD and it came pre-formatted with FAT32, don't do EXT4. BTW I have a 1G bit Ethernet network throughout the house and get around 100Mb/s write speeds to the Zyxel. I need to get my other NAS (a 4TB DS218Display & 20GB DS418Display) onto the network, and transfer the 1TB HDD drives from the Zyxel to a DS216j (they will need to be reformatted to do that). Its finding the time to do it all!

 

[GOS]

Gahhh! What does this mean? I'm not even using Disk 2 (yet)

 

[DuncanS]

Gahhh! What does this mean? I'm not even using Disk 2 (yet)

View attachment 43135

I'm assuming disc-2 is on the NAS but with SHR I would expect that you are using both discs (so both are at 98% full), so that doesn't look good

 

[GOS]

Back from a 2 day work trip. The backup (mirror) was finished. So, I compared what is on the NAS (source) to the newly mirrored External drive. Here are the results...

External drive - 25,699 Files, 2,625 Folders, 2.67 TB
Synology NAS - 26,077 Files, 2,624 Folders, 2.65 TB

Eh......missing dozens of files, and 1 more folder ended up on the drive. Nearly identical TB values. Soooooooooooo, what am I to make out of that?

 

[DuncanS]

Back from a 2 day work trip. The backup (mirror) was finished. So, I compared what is on the NAS (source) to the newly mirrored External drive. Here are the results...

External drive - 25,699 Files, 2,625 Folders, 2.67 TB
Synology NAS - 26,077 Files, 2,624 Folders, 2.65 TB

Eh......missing dozens of files, and 1 more folder ended up on the drive. Nearly identical TB values. Soooooooooooo, what am I to make out of that?

That looks like it has worked. I would suspect that the missing files will be/should be the 'hidden' ones used by the operating system running on the NAS, the additional folder will be/should be a 'system' file probably allied to the formatting for Windows use.

 

[bluelightning]

Gahhh! What does this mean? I'm not even using Disk 2 (yet)

View attachment 43135

That does NOT look good. I would start by checking SMART drive statistics. If the drive is plugged in , it could be starting to fail (bad sectors). I would keep an eye on the reallocated sectors count and if it starts growing replace the drive.

 

[bluelightning]

Back from a 2 day work trip. The backup (mirror) was finished. So, I compared what is on the NAS (source) to the newly mirrored External drive. Here are the results...

External drive - 25,699 Files, 2,625 Folders, 2.67 TB
Synology NAS - 26,077 Files, 2,624 Folders, 2.65 TB

Eh......missing dozens of files, and 1 more folder ended up on the drive. Nearly identical TB values. Soooooooooooo, what am I to make out of that?

Most likely a difference due to system/unrelated files. I would start by doing a comparison by selecting the music directories on both these instead of the root drives.

 

[GOS]

Still have my doubts about how my NAS is set up. Here is a photo (from info section) My NOOB self says I only have files on 1 of the 2 drives......
If that is correct, how do I start placing files on drive 2 (volume 2)?

 

[Ninecats]

Is there a way to look up what RAID you’re using? Some RAID settings mirror the content, meaning you can have two 4 tb discs but effectively only using 4 tb for content where the second disc is ready to jump in if something would happen to the first disc (believe that is RAID 1).

The option your’re looking for using all the content on both discs is typically called JBOD

(Haven’t read the entire thread)

 

[DuncanS]

Still have my doubts about how my NAS is set up. Here is a photo (from info section) My NOOB self says I only have files on 1 of the 2 drives......
If that is correct, how do I start placing files on drive 2 (volume 2)?

View attachment 43387

You are using both discs as your NAS is set up for SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) hence why it says SHR under Volume 1 and also gives Storage Pool 1 for both drives. So you need bigger NAS HDDs!

 

[GOS]

I have to make the plunge and buy a new NAS and drives. Mine is full........
So, if I get a 4-bay (which I will)....what is recommendation for TB per drive?? I mean, I'm not made of money, so that has to be part of the equation unfortunately. If I get four 4TB drives, that will cost about $400... Or, should I get two 8TB drives for now? Do I have to have all 4 filled? Talk to me peeps...what makes sense? Nearly all my music library is ripped...so all I'm doing now is adding a title here and there as I buy them.