As the subject says, I have a 1 TB DriveStation Axis arriving today. I will use it to back up my LS Duo. So I don;t spend 5 years screwing with it, can anyone give me the step by step? I want to:
1. Format in XFS
2. Connect to LS
3. Create back-up job
Am I missing anything? Can anyone give me the simple step by step to get this up and running and functional? Also, will I have to do Checkdisks/Defrags/Scan disks or whatever on it and if so is there a way to automate? Anyones help is appreciated.
Anyone?
Hi RingFinger,
You should be able to connect the DS to the Duo USB port (im assuming this is what you want to do and not connected to a PC...)
Go the web admin page of the Duo, System\Storage and format the DS.Then setup your backup from the system\Backup page.
Let me kow how it goes, im inrerested...
Cheers,
DS
Digital_Snacks is correct, format it through the Web GUI and not your PC. Once your format is complete, enable disk backup on both the backup source folder and the USB folder. Then you can go to the backup tab and create the job.
Lost me a little there. Are you saying I set up a folder, say "LS Backup" on the USB drive after formatting? I can do that through the web gui? How do I enable back-up? Also, I have five shared drives(folders I guess you would call them) to back-up, do I have to enable each to back up and do I do that through the web gui? I am confused here.
Also, is there a way to automate maintenece on the usb drive? Like doing a defrag or checkdisk weekly? Is this necessary?
Here we go, step by step.
1. Plug in the drivestation axis to the linkstation
2. The Linkstation automatically creates a share folder for a USB drive called USBDisk1.
3. You need to go to the shared folders tab and edit all 5 of your shares (or any shares that you want to back up) to have disk backup checked under folder support.
4. Go to the system tab, storage and then click on the USB disk and choose format. If the size is 2TB and above make sure you check GTP disk.
5. Once the format is complete you will need to go back to the shared folders tab and click on the USBDisk1 share folder and make sure that disk back up is checked.
6. Go to system, then backup and create a new job.
7. Choose any options that you want for your backup
8. To add the folders you have to click the add button. A window will appear with the source folders on the left and the destination folders on the right. Give this window some time. I have seen it take 5 minutes to load due to the number of folders. Add the folders that are on the Linkstation on the left and then add the USBDisk1 share folder on the right.
9. Apply your backup settings and that should be it.
That sounds simple, thanks. I'll now give it a try.
Are defrag and ckdisk and the like necessary for this usb drive and is there an easy way to automate?
You cannot defrag the drives through the interface but you can do a disk check on any disk. The unit acts almost like the USB Disk is internal. You have all the same options except for using it in a RAID. So if you have disk errors set up through the email notifications it will send you an email if it finds an error ont he USB Disk as well.
Oh okay, understood. So I will have to set this up for a seperate notofication or because I allready have the e-mail for errors set up fro my NAS I am allready good to go?
Anyone?
So, since I have it set up for my LS, it will automatically report on the DriveStation and I don't have to set up any checks to be done? So, I do nothing and it reports on it?
Okay, set it up and some questions:
1. I have it set up as a normal back-up weekly. I assume this just writes over the older files? This makes sense to do?
2. I can't see the USB drive from windows but I see it through the web access for the NAS. Is this normal?
3. When I set up the job, many folders were listed however I only chose the five shared (main ones) folders and not their subfolders. By choosing the main folders will the subfolders automatically copy/backup?
4. Is there any way to see the files in the USB drive to verify they are there?
1. Will change that, thanks!
2. Okay
3. What I have are five folders, one for each user and the Media Server folder. Each one of those has subfolders that are created in the Windows interface. You are saying that it will automatically pick up those subfolders and I do not need to specify them in the back-up job? I just need to specify the five main folders?
4. So, in My Computer I just type that in the address bar up top and it will map to just that specific computer and I would have to do that on each computer?
4. Open My Computer/Computer -> Tools -> Map Network Drive -> where it says folder type: "\\IP-Of-Nas\USBDisk1" then click Connect.
It will then appear as another drive letter in My Computer/Computer.
Okay, thanks!
As far as the differential back-up. Do I need to do a normal one first, then change the job to differential afterward once the first normal back-up runs? It seemed that when I set the job us as differential, it took three hours but it ended up not copying anything over. Can anyone help?
Let me clarify. I had done a normal back-up prior while not at home. When I got home, I reformatted the USB drive, and then created a differential back-up job. While this was running, I added some subfolders to a source folder that was on the NAS. After the back-up was complete, like three hours later, all that showed up on the USB drive were those folders which were empty as I had not added anything yet. Shouldn't al least an entire back-up had occurred? Anyway, Overnight I again reformetted, and then ran a normal back-up, no issues, worked fine. Now this morning I changed that job to a differential which will run next week. Will this now work fine or have I set myself up for failure? Will the differential just add any new files and erase ones that may have been deleted?
Also, is there anyone who can help with Novastor? Their forums have not been so helpful. I am just trying to do a simple back-up and create a disaster recovery.
Anyone?
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be thick but I just want to make sure this all works as planned.
You cannot defrag the drives through the interface but you can do a disk check on any disk. The unit acts almost like the USB Disk is internal. You have all the same options except for using it in a RAID. So if you have disk errors set up through the email notifications it will send you an email if it finds an error ont he USB Disk as well.
As far as this, It does this for the NAS, now that I have the USB drive installed, will it automatically do it for that? I just got my nightly e-mail report and it shows the capacity and usage for the NAS and the USB drive and then shows the disk error status for DISK1 and DISK2 but not the USB. Any thoughts why it is not reported?
The error reporting can only be done on the internal HDD's. The best way to test the USB HDD is to either run a disk check or a SMART test when its connected to a PC.
Reposted:
As far as the differential back-up. Do I need to do a normal one first, then change the job to differential afterward once the first normal back-up runs? It seemed that when I set the job us as differential, it took three hours but it ended up not copying anything over. Can anyone help?
Let me clarify. I had done a normal back-up prior while not at home. When I got home, I reformatted the USB drive, and then created a differential back-up job. While this was running, I added some subfolders to a source folder that was on the NAS. After the back-up was complete, like three hours later, all that showed up on the USB drive were those folders which were empty as I had not added anything yet. Shouldn't al least an entire back-up had occurred? Anyway, Overnight I again reformetted, and then ran a normal back-up, no issues, worked fine. Now this morning I changed that job to a differential which will run next week. Will this now work fine or have I set myself up for failure? Will the differential just add any new files and erase ones that may have been deleted?
Just did it again, is not backing everything up. Very confusing.
It is only like backing up three folders. I have reformatted, I have set up a new hob and deleted the old one, Ihave added the folders that need to be copied. No luck. What gives? I chnaged to a full everytime and will have ro manually delete old jobs I guess?
This back-up function is really messing me up.
Another thing I just noticed, I formatted the drive as XFS however it shows in Windows as a NFTS. What gives?
Also, I may have an issue here. I have a disk image of one of my computers on my NAS that also backs up to the USB drive I have. My guess is if needed, I can't access that image file from my computer if I have to boot from my recovery disk since it is in XFS format, right? If so, now I need to buy another USB drive that I can directly access from my computer.
I can't directly plug in the XFS formatted drive into my desktop and recover the image, can I? If so, how would I recover the data if I needed to?
Windows does not know what XFS is so it just assigns it a file format of NTFS. Strange I know, but I get it too. If you want any files from your linkstation, not just a disk image, you would have to access the linkstation from the Pc and copy it to the PC or another form of media. Most restore programs cannot access network locations. If you needed to recover data from the USB drive and this was the only location of the data then you could use a PC running an application called UFS explorer. You could also try using linux to recover the data. And finally you can use another Buffalo product to recover the data.
So basically, I need a portable USB drive to hook up to my theoretically dead desktop and that USB drive has to be formatted as FAT32, NTFS or some other Windows friendly format, right? I could copy the files onto that (the USB drive formatted in NTFS or FAT32) from the NAS or the USB drive attached to the NAS (from another non-dead pc is what I am inferring). It does not matter that those drives are XFS, I should still be able to copy data from them to a FAT32 formatted drive, right?
So, off to buy yet another external HDD, right?
Lastly, can you answer the backup dilemma from prior posts regarding why I can't get a full backup of my NAS to the attached USB drive? I am perplexed by this.
Yes, purchase another drive. As for the backup, make sure you check the box for full back up. This will do a full back up the first time around and then send only the changes after.
Okay, that didn't work.
I reformatted the USB drive, I added a new job with the 6 folders to back-up. I checked full back-up box, set it to differential back-up.
All it did is copy one folder, and it is the one folder that it always backs up when I do this. The only way I get a full back-up is to set the back-up to full, not differential.
So, can anyone help. If it means anything, the one folder that it does back-up was added after the first time I tried a back-up so in my mind it seems that have it ingrained that is the differential and only copies that, however that was weeks ago. Please please help!
I even tried to set it to do a full, and then after that was done I changed the job to differential and it only copied that one folder I was talking about, the other five were gone.
Wierd.
As I am warching it now, it seems to be writing files to the drive as I see them there, then next thing you know they are all gone as if it were a differential and the data was allready there.
The only thing that works for me is a full backup every week. Fix this!!