USB Back Up - Did I Do Something Wrong ?

[Spirit]

Yesterday I installed an external USB disk drive to back up my TS-109.

It's a Seagate if that helps. Anyway, I simply plugged it into one of the USB sockets on the rear.

All seemed fine, and it showed up in my device configuration correctly etc.

I then simply went onto "Backup To An External Storage Device" and started the back up as follows:

USBDisk1
Backup Method: Backup Now
Copy Options: Copy

I have approx 118Gb to back up and it's been running for 24 hours now and only done 75%.......surely this isn't right ? Please can anyone advise ?

Thanks

[klein]

hey spirit, what filesystem is on the drive, ntfs, ext 3, ext 4, etc? that will greatly affect speed from the testing i have done, when i had my drive via esata, i first tried ntfs and it was very slow, do a search and other people had the same issue, i have since switched to ext3 and it is a lot faster and i can still read it in windows if i need to

[Spirit]

I assume it's NTFS.

The backup is all videos, pictures and music that I do not want to ever lose etc.....so will using ext3 allow me to plug it right into my laptops USB and read it if the NAS fails ? Both my laptops are Vista.

Cheers

[klein]

yes you can, if you go here and download the software, which is free, http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html you will be able to read it in windows. I did try it with the ext4 filesystem and didn't have much luck, not saying it can't be done though, but i am using ext3 and have no problems, i formatted the drive, copied a bit of data in different folders, tried it in my windows pc and i would read it so transferred everything and tried it again in my windows pc and all was good, i transferred approx 900 gb of data and it did it over night, so less then 12 hours ... when i was using ntfs, i was seeing results like you had ..

[Spirit]

Ok, thanks for your help mate......really appreciate it.

If I set it to auto backup what happens ? Does it just back up changed/new files and when ?

Thanks

[klein]

no problems ..

that's what i am playing with now, i am using the remote replication within the webgui and there are scheduling options in there from right now, to daily, monthly, etc ... and i am experimenting with the incremental back so it should only copy over changed files after the initial copy ...

i find the web file manager quicker them the remote replication so for the first copy i would recommend coping that way and then play with the remote replication, will just save some time ...

[Spirit]

Last night I reformatted the USB disk to ext3 and began the back up again

This time I used the "Synchronize" option. All looked good when after 5 hrs it was on 62.3%, but now a further 5 hrs on and it's on 62.4% !

Any ideas ?

[klein]

Hey Spirit, no ideas on that one, i have never seen it before, mine just copy over no problems.

it isn't an answer but what happens if you cancel it and restart the job? when you say sync, where are you doing that from? I have always done a copy within web file manager and it just copies everything over ...

[Q]

hi

synchronize is (the first time) much slower than copy. because it's using rsync which is pretty cpu-intensive. but starting with the second sync it will be faster because it just needs to copy the changed data.

[hoejbjerre]

There are some differences as you can read

1. Choosing Sync or backup, you will need to understand/know which Linux technologies that are used in the different processes.

I'm not a super linux user, but I've been having my QNAP for some time, as I read it you have already been introduced to a explanation on this option, rsync is CPU demanding.


2. Choosing Ext3, Ext4 or NTFS
The Qnap uses a Linux filesystem, I think it's Ext3 - so actually when you choose NTFS you ask the QNAP convert your data to another filesystem, which also can would be more CPU demanding than going from one Linux filesystem to another.

3. Other CPU loads
If your NAS is doing a lot of stuff besides backing up, yes then it is time consuming

4. The Choice between USB and eSATA - of course this choice could also affect your speed

5. The choice of disc, running at 5000 rpm, 7000 rpm or 10000 rpm could have some influence when the amount of data goes up.

6. The amount of free space left on the disc

If you would like to have something compareable, I did a 10Gb backup on USB it took aproximately 2 mins. between a 1 TB WD external drive and a 500 Gb WD Caviar Second Generation Serial ATA family

I can see trying with larger data sizes gives a slower performance...

[Spirit]

Ok, I got the back up to work fairly swiftly now (approx 3 hrs for 117Gb), but I now have another issue.

I formatted the USB disk in ext3 as suggested, and used "copy" instead of "synch".

The back up completed fine and all the files are on the USB disk.

The issue now though is everytime I try another back up, or a scheduled back up it fails

[klein]

hey spirit, what error message are you getting when the backup fails?

[Spirit]

Hi Klein

I got that sorted, but now have another issue....posted here: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19576

Hope you can help ?