DSM 7.1 Best practice/app to take file backups from Windows to NAS?

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DSM 7.1 Best practice/app to take file backups from Windows to NAS?

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Hi!

New member to the forum!!

I have a Synology DiskStation DS220+. I have installed the Active Backup for Business inside DSM and the Agent inside a Windows 10 PC. I have created a task and I scheduled an Entire machine backup every week - I have tested it - everything works fine.

My questions is:

Inside the Windows 10 PC, I have a folder called DATA inside C: drive (path C:\DATA) which is also a shared folder. I want to make backups of this folder inside Synology twice a day. My thought is to take somehow an entire backup of this folder at the first time and then an incremental/differential backup twice a day.

What is the best Synology app to use in this case?

How can I do this (a video or an article it will also help).

Thank you!
 
Thank you for your answer @Coop777 !

Questions!

1) Isn't there any option to do these backups with Active Backup for Business? Apart from the Entire Machine backup task which is already in use, couldn't I make a different task to take these backups twice a day?

2) If I use Synology Drive, can I have incremental/differential backups of the folder twice a day and to keep these backups for let's say the last 30 days? For example, to keep all the 60 backups of the folder for a month and if I want, to restore any of these backups (for example a backup before 15 days)? Of course, backup files/versions older than 30 days it will been automatically deleted (is there such retention policy)?

3) Lastly, due to security reasons, I do not want to have a mapped drive of my NAS shared folder in Windows, in any case! I want only to put the Synology User's credentials into the App that will take the backups and the app to communicate with Synology...
 
Many people, and virtually all business users, would store the data not on the W10 pc, but on the nas (central storage).
This by using drive mappings to NAS folders. Your "DATA" folder is then eg M:\
Backups are then taken from the nas to external devices on a schedule with eg hyper backup.

There is no need to make the full image anymore, as data is separated from the OS. A mirror can be made a few time a year maximum.
 
Many people, and virtually all business users, would store the data not on the W10 pc, but on the nas (central storage).
This by using drive mappings to NAS folders. Your "DATA" folder is then eg M:\
Backups are then taken from the nas to external devices on a schedule with eg hyper backup.

There is no need to make the full image anymore, as data is separated from the OS. A mirror can be made a few time a year maximum.

@EAZ1964 , this PC works as a "Server" in the Office. This PC has some licensing services running and some programs which cannot run directly from the NAS, it needs to be in Windows 10.

I know that it is better to keep all files inside NAS, that's why I have created different shared folders inside NAS for different users of the office. All their private files and all shared/common files of the office are inside NAS.

This is a specific situation which this folder cannot be in NAS! There is a programm running from inside this folder among with its files...
 
A fair point on shifting focus of data to be stored and accessed from the NAS. There are different scenarios for different people, for me migrating from USB drives off the Mac to using the NAS did take some time, and a failing USB drive :)

As for using ABB, well there is the File Server type which uses SMB or rsync initiated at the NAS. I've not used it but maybe worth a look?
 
As for using ABB, well there is the File Server type which uses SMB or rsync initiated at the NAS. I've not used it but maybe worth a look?
Was about to suggest this. The File Server ABB feature is what you want in this case. It is a "pull backup" method (not push), so the way it works is that it will connect to your C drive and pull the data from the target location(s) to your NAS.

This can be served as a separate task from the "entier" PC backup that you already have.

Usually, a local Administrator account of the PC will be used to make this connection and see all the C drive folder structures, or an account that clearly has enough permissions.


Here is one initial article from 2019 when ABB was introduced. First case expained in there talks about this particual function. You will have options for incremental, multi-version, or mirror backups of your data.
 
One other thing that you might want to do on the Windows side is to enable volume shadow copy on the folder(s) you are working with, which gives you that "versioning" option.
 
Wow! First of all, to be honest, I didn't expect so many answers!! Thank you very much for your help, you have a remarkable forum with remarkable people and I am very glad that posted my question on you!

To continue to our topic, I think my order of preference is as follows, in terms of solution:

1) Active Backup for Business - File Server (SMB)
2) Synology Drive
3) External backup software (like Veeam)

Therefore, I will read the pros and cons of each solution, I will try to make some tests also and I will be back.

In the meantime, if you find any article/video that you find useful, feel free to post it!

:)
 
Just to add my 2c, I use AOMEI Backupper for some incremental backups of specific folders to my NAS, as well as some mirroring tasks. It works well.
 
Just to add my 2c, I use AOMEI Backupper for some incremental backups of specific folders to my NAS, as well as some mirroring tasks. It works well.
I got asked today to promote them on my site :D. They are having a 70% off for some of the AOMEI products. Never used them tbh, but glad to hear that it does work well for you.
 
I got asked today to promote them on my site :D. They are having a 70% off for some of the AOMEI products. Never used them tbh, but glad to hear that it does work well for you.
70& discount is a big deal! I would get it to buy a couple of more products from them!
I use their Backupper and Partition Assistant products at the moment. I once got their free Standard versions and soon I was convinced about them and bought the Pro versions.
AOMEI Backupper works well with my Synology. I added my DS device to the Storage Managment Tool of the Backupper software and then easily created some sync and mirror tasks. I would recommend it for sure for such kind of use.
I keep using ABB for complete system backup though, having ABB Recovery Wizard in a Win10PE environment in case of emergency...
 
If you disregard the well established free packages... Sure.
Their standard (free) versions are excellent products, but some important for me feautures are implemented only in their paid versions. For Backupper that is of importance in this topic, mirror sync and real-time sync are two tasks that I need most followed by differential backup and backup scheme options.
 
I am not a fan of ABB. It backs up your entire drive including Windows and ABB uses a lot of resources on your NAS. I do something similar with multiple Windows computers to my DS216+. I use Synology Drive and I set it up to sync from the Windows computers to the NAS once a day. In your case, you could make it twice a day. It only syncs in one direction. I can control the TOD in order to make sure its not at the same time Hyper Backup is running in the NAS, because my poor little NAS can't seem to handle both at the same time.
 

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