2nd USB HDD, 2nd HB task

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2nd USB HDD, 2nd HB task

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DS916+
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Hi, i have a DS916+ and am currently using HyperBackup to perform a nightly backup of the NAS to an external USB3 drive. Been working fine that way for years. (I also have live backup of the NAS to OneDrive).

I am toying with the idea of adding a second USB3 drive and scheduling a fortnightly or monthly backup (mainly in case of ransomwear etc so I can get to the data in case I miss a day or two of finding out the data is compromised). I don’t backup Surveillance Station data, I don’t backup my ripped movies (although might backup the movies to the new HDD). I don’t really want to manually be shifting drives around, kind of set and forget if possible.

So
  1. Can I add a second USB3 drive?
  2. Can I schedule a seperate task to do a backup of x weeks?
  3. Anything else?
thanks
TB
 
If you have free USB ports there is no reason you can't use that usb as another target for your HB tasks. You can configure a weekly/monthly backup with rotations as well.
Thanks Rusty, I thought that would be the case but can’t test it without buying a new drive first. I’ve plugged my UPS into the front port now so have 1 x USB3 port spare on the rear.

thanks again
 
A point to note is that HB doesn't mount disks prior to performing the backup task: if you have unmounted the USB drive then you will have to manually remount it. I suspect it may be possible to script remounting an ejected disk and have it as a scheduled task, but I've never tried this.

But otherwise it's possible to have multiple HB tasks to different target destinations and schedule them as you wish.
 
A point to note is that HB doesn't mount disks prior to performing the backup task: if you have unmounted the USB drive then you will have to manually remount it. I suspect it may be possible to script remounting an ejected disk and have it as a scheduled task, but I've never tried this.

But otherwise it's possible to have multiple HB tasks to different target destinations and schedule them as you wish.
Thanks - I’m just going to leave both HDD connected and mounted.

I just looked through my existing HB backup task. Looks like the options are only Daily, Monthly, or longer. I was hoping for 2 weeks, but 1 week or 4 weeks will have to do by the looks of it.
 
I just looked through my existing HB backup task. Looks like the options are only Daily, Monthly, or longer. I was hoping for 2 weeks, but 1 week or 4 weeks will have to do by the looks of it.
When I clone my Mac I have two tasks. The first runs at 01:00 Monday each week except the first week of the month. The second task runs at 01:00 Monday on the first week of the month. I then have a clone that can be booted to between one and seven days ago and another that's between one and sixty days ago. But I will have at least two distinct clones that are at least seven days apart. I also run Time Machine, FWIW.

If you run two HB tasks with version history then what you achieve is resilience in case one gets corrupted. By using one for daily/weekly and the other for weekly/monthly [take your pick] then you get more older versions in the less frequent task. But HB smart versioning (or whatever they call it) aims to keep older versions as it thinks best.

If you are wanting to do a second backup to a different disk then maybe you can consider doing a less frequent schedule and physically disconnecting the drive until the next schedule. This way the data is not exposed to any risk of malware should the NAS get compromised. Alternatively you could get a second NAS/rsync server (doesn't have to be all bells and whistles) and use that as the HB target destination. You could even hang USB off that. This is what I do and this NAS (j-series) doesn't have Internet services.
 
Thanks for that fredbert, using a thumb drive as a test is also a good idea.

i also have a question regarding the encryption key, I have my original task encrypted and downloaded the key when I first set it up. Is a second HB backup task still secured by the same key, or is a different key required? I’m assuming only 1 key is needed across the system otherwise it could get very messy. I started reading the help file on encryption but it lost me a bit as to what is created, downloaded and required when during the backup/restore process.

This is the problem with some of these systems, it made sense two years ago when I was heavily “into it”, a forum regular etc but haven’t really needed to do any Admin since then, everything is just ticking along (as it should).
 
Last edited:
One key per backup task.
Thanks, I just plugged in a new HDD so in the process of setting up the new task and storing the keys separately so I can identify them.

Something strange I just found, on the NAS I have the default "admin" account disabled. I am logged in with my own new User_Admin account and the original backup task shows the owner of that task as the User_Admin (shown on the main HB summary screen) however when I create the new task, it shows the owner as "admin" which is a little concerning, and I cannot figure out why that is. Weirdly, if I look at the user "admin", it showed it's email address (which was previously blank) as the same name I called the HyperBackup task. Something very weird going on there.

The other thing I just found is that if I DO try and run a basic backup with the owner showing as "admin" I get an error that I have insufficient rights to access the folders (as well as being disabled, admin has no read/write access to anything)

Something else I just found, if I add a new task to the original USB1 then it is added as user_admin as the owner. If I add a new task to USB2 then it assigns "admin" as the owner, but all the permissions appear to be set correctly. If I create a "test" folder on the DS itself and create a HB task aimed at it, it creates it under the correct "user_admin" owner, so it's "something" to do with this USB drive.
 
Success!

Finally got it working after reformatting the new USB HDD. Strange, but, working now.
 
It does sound odd. But I don't have time to investigate what happens if I create new tasks and to same and different destinations.

The HB task has to be run at a privileged level which will be a member of the administrators group (or similar Linux group, or root). This enables access to otherwise blocked folders and files. When they are recovered the original permissions will be reassigned.

The deactivating of a user account is to stop login but it can still be assigned ownership of files and folders (e.g. chown).

BTW I've formatted my 'HB' USB drives the same as the filesystem of the NAS. Not sure if that makes a difference but it seemed sensible; while there was enough space I used to create a single-version backup (it's a clone folder/file structure) and having the same filesystem would probably avoid potential filename problems.
 
My main issue seems to be when I plugged the USB drive in it was assigned? ownership to the default admin user somehow in the background, which perhaps makes sense seeing as that’s the only true “system” based admin account. That’s the best way I can describe it anyway, although doesn’t really explain why it was ok after formatting the USB drive.

The fact that I saw the email address field of the admin user populated with the name of the newly created HyperBackup task was also strange, seems more like some corruption somewhere, but, all good now.

I ran both the new monthly task and the usual daily task overnight and both completed successfully (I also allowed read/write access to the admin account again as it was previously in case there were some other dependencies on that access elsewhere in the system. I had originally blocked it in an attempt to stop it from being assigned the ownership of the HB task)
 

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