FreeNas SMB Windows Share Recycle bin

[ces160]

Hi All, 

 

I need some help, I just created a FreeNas home server and I have no Idea what I'm doing. 

 

I have followed a guide online and have set up a Volume and data set, created a SMB share in Windows so now I can put files on the NAS. 

However, I know that my wife is going to delete something one day so I need to set it up so that if something is deleted out of the SMB shared folder on my windows PC the files go to a recycle bin on the FreeNas machine.

This way I can restore it if I need to. 

When setting up the share I checked the box "Export Recycle Bin" and the description says "deleted files are moved to a hidden .recycle in the root folder of the share; the .recycle directory can be deleted to reclaim space and is automatically recreated when a file is deleted".

This is exactley what I need. But i don't know how to access this .recycle folder to see what is in it and restore the contents if I need to, and what is the "root" folder of the share? Is this folder accessed via the FreeNas web UI or can is access it on the Windows machine?

 

Any help would be much appreciated, I have no clue what I'm doing. 

 

Thanks!

[Matt_98]

9 minutes ago, ces160 said:

Hi All, 

 

I need some help, I just created a FreeNas home server and I have no Idea what I'm doing. 

 

I have followed a guide online and have set up a Volume and data set, created a SMB share in Windows so now I can put files on the NAS. 

However, I know that my wife is going to delete something one day so I need to set it up so that if something is deleted out of the SMB shared folder on my windows PC the files go to a recycle bin on the FreeNas machine.

This way I can restore it if I need to. 

When setting up the share I checked the box "Export Recycle Bin" and the description says "deleted files are moved to a hidden .recycle in the root folder of the share; the .recycle directory can be deleted to reclaim space and is automatically recreated when a file is deleted".

This is exactley what I need. But i don't know how to access this .recycle folder to see what is in it and restore the contents if I need to, and what is the "root" folder of the share? Is this folder accessed via the FreeNas web UI or can is access it on the Windows machine?

 

Any help would be much appreciated, I have no clue what I'm doing. 

 

Thanks!

 

I don't think so in windows if you delete something off a network share it just kind of vanishes

[Matt_98]

10 minutes ago, ces160 said:

Hi All, 

 

I need some help, I just created a FreeNas home server and I have no Idea what I'm doing. 

 

I have followed a guide online and have set up a Volume and data set, created a SMB share in Windows so now I can put files on the NAS. 

However, I know that my wife is going to delete something one day so I need to set it up so that if something is deleted out of the SMB shared folder on my windows PC the files go to a recycle bin on the FreeNas machine.

This way I can restore it if I need to. 

When setting up the share I checked the box "Export Recycle Bin" and the description says "deleted files are moved to a hidden .recycle in the root folder of the share; the .recycle directory can be deleted to reclaim space and is automatically recreated when a file is deleted".

This is exactley what I need. But i don't know how to access this .recycle folder to see what is in it and restore the contents if I need to, and what is the "root" folder of the share? Is this folder accessed via the FreeNas web UI or can is access it on the Windows machine?

 

Any help would be much appreciated, I have no clue what I'm doing. 

 

Thanks!

 

you could try windows file history, see if that will backup network shares

[SaladFingers]

12 minutes ago, ces160 said:

Hi All, 

 

I need some help, I just created a FreeNas home server and I have no Idea what I'm doing. 

 

I have followed a guide online and have set up a Volume and data set, created a SMB share in Windows so now I can put files on the NAS. 

However, I know that my wife is going to delete something one day so I need to set it up so that if something is deleted out of the SMB shared folder on my windows PC the files go to a recycle bin on the FreeNas machine.

This way I can restore it if I need to. 

When setting up the share I checked the box "Export Recycle Bin" and the description says "deleted files are moved to a hidden .recycle in the root folder of the share; the .recycle directory can be deleted to reclaim space and is automatically recreated when a file is deleted".

This is exactley what I need. But i don't know how to access this .recycle folder to see what is in it and restore the contents if I need to, and what is the "root" folder of the share? Is this folder accessed via the FreeNas web UI or can is access it on the Windows machine?

 

Any help would be much appreciated, I have no clue what I'm doing. 

 

Thanks!

The path for the reycycle bin is \$Recycle.Bin\%SID% which is a hidden directory. Normally, you should be able to access it from the UI.

 

But from what I understand, your NAS machine is running FreeNas and not Windows, right? I'm not sure how the setting on your Windows terminal is dealt by your NAS.

[SCHISCHKA]

Do you have a backup drive? You should be able to install bacula. Its an automated backup tool

[Eniqmatic]

Why don't you just turn on snapshotting? Then you can just restore any file deleted.

[SaladFingers]

3 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Why don't you just turn on snapshotting? Then you can just restore any file deleted.

Yeah, or to be honest I'd simply establish an incremental daily/nightly (even hourly, for folders that get a lot of editing/modifications, like documents etc) backup system and be done with it.

[Eniqmatic]

1 minute ago, SaladFingers said:

Yeah, or to be honest I'd simply establish an incremental daily/nightly (even hourly, for folders that get a lot of editing/modifications, like documents etc) backup system and be done with it.

I don't know how familiar you are with FreeNAS/ZFS (I don't want to come across as condescending ) but if you turn on ZFS snapshotting, it is decent protection against accidental file deletions, overwrites, corruptions etc. You can choose how often you snapshot and for how long you keep those snapshots for. You can then mount them to the CIFS/SMB share, and using the "Previous version" tab within the folder properties, you can go into any of the snapshots and restore any of the files to how they were at that particular time. Means you can literally restore a file in like 20 seconds.

[SaladFingers]

3 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

I don't know how familiar you are with FreeNAS/ZFS (I don't want to come across as condescending ) but if you turn on ZFS snapshotting, it is decent protection against accidental file deletions, overwrites, corruptions etc. You can choose how often you snapshot and for how long you keep those snapshots for. You can then mount them to the CIFS/SMB share, and using the "Previous version" tab within the folder properties, you can go into any of the snapshots and restore any of the files to how they were at that particular time. Means you can literally restore a file in like 20 seconds.

Not very familiar Sounds like a great design.

[desertcomputer]

Turn on snapshot and you should able to access folder/file history which allow you row back. I never really use recycle bin as SMB is messing i usually use it as backup. 

[ces160]

Thanks for all of the replies!

 

So if I wanted to turn on the snapshot feature, and keep say 15 days of a snapshots how would I set that up?

And do snapshots use the same amount of space as what is stored in the share? I have 10Tb of free space and have used 2tb already, will each snapshot be 2tb?

Thanks

[Eniqmatic]

7 minutes ago, ces160 said:

Thanks for all of the replies!

 

So if I wanted to turn on the snapshot feature, and keep say 15 days of a snapshots how would I set that up?

And do snapshots use the same amount of space as what is stored in the share? I have 10Tb of free space and have used 2tb already, will each snapshot be 2tb?

Thanks

Go to Storage > Periodic Snapshot Tasks and add a new snapshot. It is pretty self explanatory when you look at the options but post here if you are unsure of anything, or check the documentation.

 

Snapshots only use up the changed space, which is one of the things that makes them so damn brilliant. So you have a 2tb volume, and between snapshots, only 1 word document changes. The snapshot size will only be a few KB in space, because that is all that has changed. Make sense? So if you have a volume you are snapshotting and nothing changes what so ever, snapshot size will be zero.

 

Edit: Updated correct location

Edited January 24, 2017 by Eniqmatic
Editing location

[Eniqmatic]

5 minutes ago, ces160 said:

Thanks for all of the replies!

 

So if I wanted to turn on the snapshot feature, and keep say 15 days of a snapshots how would I set that up?

And do snapshots use the same amount of space as what is stored in the share? I have 10Tb of free space and have used 2tb already, will each snapshot be 2tb?

Thanks

Oh just to add, you can be smarter about the retention policies etc if you need to be. You can have multiple snapshots that happen at different frequencies and have different retentions.

[Mikensan]

Just to give you an example, I have multiple snapshot syncs setup. 

From 9am-6pm on Monday-Friday, frequency 1 day, keep for 1 month

       This gives me a Daily snapshot that I can roll back to up to a month ago. This runs while I'm at work - snapshots usually don't have any overhead but this was my thinking when I set this up.

From 6pm to 6am on Monday-Friday, frequency 1 hour, keep for 1 week.

       These are the times I'm home after work and I am actively using my network, so I want the frequency higher so that I can recover files / changes from as recent as an hour. I feel like an hour's worth of work isn't too terrible. I didn't really want to keep 24 daily snapshots for a month.

 

I have a duplicate of the second one for Sat/Sun but it's all day long, since I off sat/sun.

 

To add some info, I have two arrays - a primary and a backup. 

So I have a replication task to replicate specific datasets from Primary to Backup. It's a backup of the data and snapshots, so if I delete something then it'll be deleted off the backup array, but I can recover files that've been deleted via snapshots. Now this doesn't protect me from a house fire, but it does if my primary array dies from 2 disks failing.

 

 

My largest automatic snapshot is 1.6MiB. This is likely my oldest daily snapshot (month).

 

 

Edit*: Oh yea Windows Previous Versions will detect these snapshots, so once you set this up you can right click any file or folder and click Previous Versions tab, and recover your data (assuming you're on at least Windows 7).