Confused about whether to use Rsync or USB Backup

Hello,

I want to backup to a 14TB easystore that will always be connected via USB. I have installed the USB Backup plugin and have already used it to backup ~6TB of data. However, I'm thinking that I probably should have used Rsync, instead, but would like to confirm my suspicions since I've backed up so much data already.

For one, I am not sure how to schedule USB Backup to run periodically, which makes me think that it's intended only for those who only want to initiate backups upon connecting the external storage (like a photographer, I guess). I was also surprised to see it preserved the existing exFAT filesystem on the easystore. This is annoying because I have to unplug the easystore and connect it to my Windows PC to make sure the backup is working. It's also annoying that I can't preserve permissions; though, I understand why and I suppose both of these issues are my fault for not having formatted to POSIX first.

For my use case (regularly scheduled backups to always-connected external drive), would I be better off just reformatting to POSIX, mounting the external drive, and then using Rsync? Then, I can just set-and-forget the backups and will be able to browse the files via ssh for sanity checks?

Thanks!

Zitat von macom

If the drive is permanently connected, I would say yes. I would use ext4.

You could also add the shared folders to SMB to check the content from Windows using file explorer.

If I use ext4, can I still password protect data or will all of the data that's normally user-only be unprotected?

Zitat von macom

If you use SMB you can use privileges to control who has access to which data using SMB. That is a core functionality of OMV.

Which filesytem did you have in mind?

I suppose the filesystem doesn't matter as long as I can keep certain folders password protected and can browse the backed-up files on the external drive without having to disconnect it. Sorry, can you explain how SMB fits in to this? Are you saying that I can share the backed-up folders directly via SMB? I don't see that option now for USB Backup but it should be doable after switching to straight Rsync because the external drive will be mounted?

Zitat von macom

Right. To set up the rsync job you need to define shared folders anyway. You can add these shared folders to SMB service.

It is just an option to use SMB to be able to check the data. You don't have to do it.

Understood. I think I have it pretty much figured out except, is there a way to have Rsync target a subfolder of a share as the destination, rather than a share itself? I'd like to have a single "backup" share with a subfolder for each backed-up share but I can't figure out how to configure it using the 'Local' option. Do I need to set up a remote configuration and just target myself as both source and destination?

Zitat von macom

Shared folders can be nested. So you can have one folder "backup" and then another shared folder "music" with the path

/backup/music

Ah, I didn't think nesting was possible because shared folders didn't populate as options in the drop-down list but now I'm realizing that I can bt manually editing the path, thanks!

Zitat von crashtest

If you don't share the external drive, the data on it will be owned by root, by default. That's good protection in itself. The down side is, you won't be able to view the data from windows. You'll have to use something like Midnight Commander from the SSH command line (apt-get install mc) or, maybe, install -> WinSCP on a Windows client. WinSCP uses an SSH connection to display files and folders in a graphic format on your windows client.

Setting up an SMB share for the external drive, if you want to control access, will require creating users and setting permissions.

That's good to know, thank you!

Zitat von crashtest

You can set up an rsync command line to copy from and to any locally mounted destination without creating a share. But, you'd need to run it from Scheduled Tasks.

Something like the following that would work with data drives, mirroring the source (left) to the destination (right):

rsync -av --delete /srv/dev-disk-by-label-DATA1/ /srv/dev-disk-by-label-DATA2/

The above example copies a full disk to another disk but it can used to drill farther down to the folder level, by adding the path to sub-dir's in each drive. Details, a few considerations and scheduling are in this -> guide starting on page 59 (in the current version).

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This is perfect, thank you!!