NAS Backup Strategy

[Skormy]

I have ordered a Synology 2 bay system with a 2 TB and a 4 TB drive, I wanted to bounce some ideas off of the forum just to make sure I've thought of everything. I have an iMac, a MBP, a old Dell laptop, and a collection of iPhones and iPads. Never having done this before, here's my current plan:

• The 2 TB drive will be for network storage for all the computers.
• The 4 TB drive will be for TimeMachine backups. I currently have a direct attached Lacie drive that is about 90% full. The plan is to migrate TM backups to the big drive.

This is what I'm currently thinking. But here are some questions I have:

• Is there any reason to have the 2 TB setup as more than one volume.? One of the users will be by son, should he have is own space on the NAS?
• I plan the 4 TB drive for Time Machine backups, copying over the old data and continuing to add to it while setting up the MBP to use it. Do I need to setup a different volume for the MBP?
• What is the best approach for backing up the 2 TB drive? Will TM back this up as well? Or do I need to use something like SuperDuper?
• Are there any other configuration options I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and ideas.

 

[stevech]

mismatched size can be dangerous of course.
Perhaps you want to have the 2TB be your main shared folder drive and the 4TB (separate volume, no use of RAID or hybrid RAID). The 4TB could be the target for time backup (I do that). It gets large as you keep the last n months of versions of all files except backup files like drive images.

My USB3 drive (ext4 format) gets an incremental backup of key folders every morning, automatically.

search in the NAS forum here for discussions on backup strategies, volume/raid strategies, etc.
Lots of prior discussion on this.

 

[Skormy]

Thanks, stevech. That's pretty much my plan to have the 2TB be the share and the 4TB to be the backup. I plan to back up the local drives via Time Machine and the 2TB through the backup software that is available on Synology. Any problems here?

Since I'm a newbie at this, any configuration options I need to be aware of as I do the initial setup -- more concerned with what NOT to do. For example, should the Synology Hybrid RAID option be checked? I searched YouTube and found a few setup videos, but very few in English. Any recommended sites to assist with this? With my 2/4 configuration, I want to all I can to set it up correctly the first time out.

Thanks.

 

[stevech]

I recall way back.. I just elected no on RAID and no Hybrid RAID and created two volumes, one on each drive.

 

[Skormy]

Again, thanks. That's where I'll start then. I appreciate the guidance.

 

[stevech]

the drives can be different sizes

 

[Skormy]

I've done the initial setup, configuring each drive as a basic EXT4 single volume (which I think I did correctly). It seemed to default to the hybrid RAID, but I undid that and was able to figure out how to configure each disk as its own volume. I was wondering if there is any need to set up multiple volumes on a single physical drive either for the disk I am using for network storage or the disk I'll be using for time machine and network storage backups? Can I put the Time Machine backups for different Macs in the same Share?

The initial config went pretty well, now sorting through some of the somewhat murky documentation.

Thanks, as I appreciate any and all helpful tidbits.