Best format to use for Synology backup drive?

Feek · 16 Apr 2021 at 08:05

I'm about to hang a large USB 3 drive out of the back of my DS1019+ for weekly backups and was wondering what I should format it as. I only have Macs in the house so if it all goes bad, I'll probably need to access the data via a Mac.

Any suggestions please?

Armageus · 16 Apr 2021 at 08:19

As a weekly backup of the Synology?
May be better to hang it off a Mac, and then copy the data across the network

Feek · 16 Apr 2021 at 08:35

Armageus said:
As a weekly backup of the Synology?

Aye, yes, sorry. I didn't make that clear. This is to run a weekly backup of the contents of the Synology.

I want to try and fully automate this from the NAS itself. I think I can configure a backup in Hyper Backup and have it eject the drive when finished so my plan is to have a smart plug on the external backup power supply so it will switch on a certain time, the backup will start two minutes later and when it's finished, it'll eject the drive.

Then somehow (not 100% sure how yet), I want the drive to power off fully. I’m thinking I might be able to use IFTTT to notice when the drive has been ejected and send a switch off command to the smart plug.

MrFunex · 19 Apr 2021 at 11:03

A quick Google suggests ExFAT might be a good file system to use?

Feek · 19 Apr 2021 at 11:11

I went with HFS+ which means I can read it natively on the Mac but although the Synology can read/write HFS+, it won't format it to that so I had to plug it into my iMac first. I've used USB Copy instead of Hyper Backup.