Backup NAS to an external HDD for Disaster Recovery

[OHS]

Hello Community,
I have a link station, I was wondering if there is a way to backup my entire NAS to an external HDD, I want to ship it offsite for an additional Disaster Recovery backup.
I run Symantec Backup exec, would it be easier to perform a one time backup to an external drive for each of my jobs via Symantec or is there a way I can plug in an external HDD to my linkstation and backup my entire array directly from the link station.  Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[Texturtle]

Most LinkStations have the ability to backup to an attached USB drive built in.

[OHS]

Would the NAS have to re-build the array if i plug in an external HDD? I just want it to recognize the drive and then backup all of my data on it.

Or could i just open up IP via file explorer on my PC and transfer data to a external that way?

[Texturtle]

If you go into the web GUI for the LinkStation under the backup section it should give you the option to back up to an external drive. Attaching the drive will not affect the RAID.

[OHS]

When i go to the backup section, my options are as follows:
Search for backup destination by password
Backup Jobs Setup
Replication

Which one would i choose?

[davo]

What's the model number of the NAS you have?

[OHS]

Model: TS-X8.0TL/R5

[Texturtle]

That's not a LinkStation, that's a TeraStation. Go to "Backup Jobs Setup" and create a new job. When you select the target, pick the external USB drive. It will have to be formatted for the TeraStation. If there is already data on the drive, it will be deleted.

[OHS]

I am sorry about the wrong information, thank you for correcting me. 

Thank you so much for this info, I am going to attempt this within the next few days. Just a few more questions.

-I assume I need to purchase an external HDD with AC power instead of USB power?
-Lets say a Disaster does happen and I need to use this drive, Can I plug the external drive into the terastation and restore my data in the case that I would have to purchase a new terastation?  Or how exactly would this work?
-For my source Drive, I should select my "root" folder correct?
-To Format my new external drive I would go under, storage>select my drive>format disk, correct?

Sorry for all of the questions, I am a one man show with not many resources.

[davo]

-I assume I need to purchase an external HDD with AC power instead of USB power?

Yes.

-Lets say a Disaster does happen and I need to use this drive, Can I plug the external drive into the terastation and restore my data in the case that I would have to purchase a new terastation?  Or how exactly would this work?

If you connect it into any other Link/Terastation it will mount as a share called USBDisk1 or you can attach it to any linux PC to access the data straight away.

-For my source Drive, I should select my "root" folder correct?

You cannot select "root" but you just need to select all the share folders you have created, this can be done on 1 backup job.

-To Format my new external drive I would go under, storage>select my drive>format disk, correct?

Correct.

[OHS]

So for backup source, I have a folder called "share" at the top, underneath that i have "b2d" "b2d/IMG005893" and so on and so forth, probably about 50 entries in total.  Do i have to add each entry individually?

To paint a better picture, under my Shared Folders>folder setup section i have the following folders listed:
info
share
B2D
B2D-2

Also, is there a way to tell what size external HDD i would need for the backup?

[davo]

Yes you need to add each share to the one job, the size of the USB HDD would ideally need to be more than the amount of capacity used on the unit. You can check  this on the left hand side of the admin page.

[OHS]

Great thanks so much!  I will follow up once I attempt the backup. 

[OHS]

It shows this, would i be safe with a 5TB drive?

Storage:
RAID Array 1: 3553.4 GB / 5545.4 GB (64.1 %)

[davo]

Yes