Best way to Backup Files and Folder structures

FloRolf · April 25, 2020

Hello my friends,

Here's my current situation and what i want to do:

I have a freeNAS system which houses all of my files. It's a RaidZ2 so it's quite redundant however obviously not a backup.

Since i want to be save even when it comes to a housefire or whatever, i regularly (like once a month)

copy most of my NAS content onto an external HDD and bring that to my parents house (it's always the same drive not a new one each month lol).

This way was fine for me until now because i really only add a couple pictures every time, however, once i'm at my parents

i pick up another external drive that belongs to my dad, then take that home and copy all of his stuff onto my NAS. He adds waaay more things

so i'd have a hard time selecting everything that has changed and copy it manually.

What is a fast way to sync my NAS with his HDD and while i'm at it, sync my HDD with my NAS?

i've seen Robocopy as that's integrated to Windows and doesn't seem to be too terrible to use, however is it also secure or could it once in a million times

just delete everything on my NAS?

Ideally ofc i'd just like a simple "Press this button to backup" and be done but that probably won't happen

Thanks for your input!

Windows7ge · April 25, 2020

If you can do it between two servers FreeNAS supports Snapshots & Replication tasks. This enables you to replicate the pool to either another local pool or another server either local or remote automatically on whatever schedule works for you.

Alternatively there is RSYNC which you could utilize via WSL. Once it's setup it's pretty much set it and forget it but to utilize it on Windows is a bit tedious: