Synology DS212J backups failing.

[frogstomper]

I bought a Synology DS212J last week. I have 2 WD 2TB drives inside, in a Hybrid Raid setup.

I first tried using Chronosync to scan the NAS and backup to a hard drive connected via USB to a Vantec dock on my Mac. After waiting over 3 hours for it to scan and compare the NAS drive to the USB connected drive to work out what new or modified items needed to be backed up, I gave up. It seemed to be scanning REALLY SLOWLY!!!

I then tried connecting the Vantec dock directly to the NAS, formatted the drive to (ext4) and tried using Synology's Backup & Restore to backup the drive, but it kept giving me errors and wouldn't complete the initial backup.

The only option I have left is to buy another DS212J and use the network backup function to keep the two NAS's in sync. The reason I don't want to use Time Machine is because i want to make a backup of my NAS at work and be able to take the backup home and work on the files at home.

Does anybody have a suggestion. I'm a bit disappointed that it's not working as I had hoped it would.

 

[r0k]

I bought a Synology DS212J last week. I have 2 WD 2TB drives inside, in a Hybrid Raid setup.

I first tried using Chronosync to scan the NAS and backup to a hard drive connected via USB to a Vantec dock on my Mac. After waiting over 3 hours for it to scan and compare the NAS drive to the USB connected drive to work out what new or modified items needed to be backed up, I gave up. It seemed to be scanning REALLY SLOWLY!!!

I then tried connecting the Vantec dock directly to the NAS, formatted the drive to (ext4) and tried using Synology's Backup & Restore to backup the drive, but it kept giving me errors and wouldn't complete the initial backup.

The only option I have left is to buy another DS212J and use the network backup function to keep the two NAS's in sync. The reason I don't want to use Time Machine is because i want to make a backup of my NAS at work and be able to take the backup home and work on the files at home.

Does anybody have a suggestion. I'm a bit disappointed that it's not working as I had hoped it would.

I have a DS212J with a single 2TB drive. When I get around to adding a second drive, I won't be using RAID. What I recommend is a second NAS so that if something happens to one, the other is still there. With a second drive in a single NAS if the power supply in the NAS dies you are still out of luck.

In your situation, I recommend something like crashplan which seems to do its scans a lot faster than you are reporting with chronosync. The free version of crashplan backs up to usb, local network drives or even over the internet to a "friend" who allows you to back up to their location. I use the pay version of crashplan as second backup so Time Machine isn't my only backup.

 

[frogstomper]

What I recommend is a second NAS so that if something happens to one, the other is still there.

With that option, would you be backing up one NAS to the other NAS using the built in Network Backup ?

 

[monsieurpaul]

I have also a DS212j with two 2 To drives inside (no RAID) and two 2 To drives as USB backups. (I am using backup and restore from DSM). 2 comments:

- There is a lot of compatibility problem between USB enclosure and Synology. You should check the compatibility hardware page on this. I had to change my USB enclosure for my backups to work.

- In addition, it seems that USB backup is no longer working with DSM 4.0 (there are lots of threads on the synology forums about this). I am still on DSM 3.2 and I don't plan to upgrade until it is resolved.

 

[fhall1]

I have a Synology DS211 with two 2TB drives in hybrid RAID and a USB connected Iomega external drive. I am at the latest Synology firmware level and I use the Synology backup program to back up the NAS to the external every Sunday night at midnight and send me an email upon completion. It's been working fine for months now.....there should be no need for you to have to buy a second NAS to back up your first.

 

[r0k]

What I recommend is a second NAS so that if something happens to one, the other is still there.

With that option, would you be backing up one NAS to the other NAS using the built in Network Backup ?

No. I've been manually copying things to both drives. My music and media get copied manually. My Mac gets backed up by Time Machine (to a USB drive plugged in to a Time Capsule) and just my home folder gets backed up by a cloud based backup service like Crashplan.

I've looked into software to sync two folders and so far haven't found something I'm totally happy with other than the Windows freeware Syncback. It was Syncback that allowed me to migrate seamlessly to Mac. I had let Syncback sync the "My Documents" folder from my Windows box to an NAS every night at 1am for several years. The day I came home with my new Macbook, I shut off my old Windows box, plugged in my Macbook and copied all my files over from the NAS that Syncback had been sending files to. The whole thing took 5 minutes, not including downloading apps like OpenOffice, Firefox (at the time) and Gimp.

I suppose I could set up carbon copy cloner to clone one NAS to the other but I haven't tried that yet. Whatever the case, I don't plan to use Synology or LaCie or Iomega or anybody else's software to handle backing up from one NAS to the other. Well that's not entirely true. Since Synology's DSM is essentially Linux running on Arm, I may eventually get around to looking for a way to get the my DS212J to "clone itself" to another NAS drive automagically.

I became a huge fan of Cron back in my Solaris days and I've used it on Linux, OSX and even use WinAt to make things happen "automagically."

I have a Synology DS211 with two 2TB drives in hybrid RAID and a USB connected Iomega external drive. I am at the latest Synology firmware level and I use the Synology backup program to back up the NAS to the external every Sunday night at midnight and send me an email upon completion. It's been working fine for months now.....there should be no need for you to have to buy a second NAS to back up your first.

Excellent point. Adding an external USB drive to any NAS allows automatic backup that does not necessarily depend on the NAS if something goes wrong. First of all, having the Synology with removable drives provides a kind of backup because you can always get a replacement DS211, pop your original drives in and keep running like nothing happened. This is what convinced me to move to Synology in the first place. Having the external usb drive adds yet another safety net. Thanks for bringing this up.

There is one good point to having a second NAS. If the first goes down, your backup strategy can continue with the second drive until the first drive gets replaced. The individual user has to decide whether it's worth the extra cost of a second NAS or take the middle ground of simply adding a USB drive to an existing NAS.

 

[frogstomper]

There is a lot of compatibility problem between USB enclosure and Synology.

I had to change my USB enclosure for my backups to work.

As you suggested, the problem was my Vantec dock. I put the drive in a CoolerMaster case and the backup worked.

Yesterday I purchased a second DS212J and the Network Backup works very well and quite fast.