To back up a 12tb NAS, can you use a USB3 multi-disc hub with 12tb?

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Let's say you have a NAS with three 4tb drives in, which you want to backup every few months.

An easy solution - if it's possible - would be a USB3 multi-disc hub with three 4tb drives in, which you then mirror the NAS to (even just using robocopy over the network on a PC).

Has anyone done anything like this?

Clearly when you get into NAS territory and large blobs of storage (eg: 8+tb) backing up to anotehr single disc over USB become less and less feasible.
 
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Just had a look at Richcopy GUI (robocopys newer incarnation) seems can have only 1 target not 3 which you would require.

A bit of data management on the NAS may be in order, create/move data so you have 3 volumes/folders of 4Tb in size use 3 instances of *copy to mirror this data to your 3 usb attached drives.
 
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Just had a look at Richcopy GUI (robocopys newer incarnation) seems can have only 1 target not 3 which you would require.

A bit of data management on the NAS may be in order, create/move data so you have 3 volumes/folders of 4Tb in size use 3 instances of *copy to mirror this data to your 3 usb attached drives.

Yes, I think one solution would be to simply split the NAS upto into folders such that they are in sizes that match the discs you'd be robocopying them to. eg: Ensure they don't exceed 4tb, and then just robocopy each folder to a 4tb backup disc in a caddy.

The other simpler solution would be, if these multi-disc-usb3-bay devices create a single blob of storage just like a NAS would, then simply mirror the exact hard drives into one of those as you have in the NAS. So if you have a 3TB and a 4TB drive in NAS, put a 3TB and a 4TB in that multi-USB3-device to you have 7TB of storage there too! HOWEVER, this is assume those USB3 devices then offer the 3TB and 4TB drives as a single 7TB blob? If they don't that's a deal breaker!
 
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From what I can see...

I could get a 4 bay NAS and run it in JBOD mode... Get a 4 bay USB enclosure and run that in JBOD mode. Then simply mirror the discs in the two bits of hardware, so what ever size disc I put in one, I also put the same in the other.

I can then basically robocopy the NAS to the USB enclosure every few months... Done!?!?
 
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USB3 devices then offer the 3TB and 4TB drives as a single 7TB blob?
the problem they dont, you would need
'4 Bay 3.5 Inch USB3.0 RAID External HDD Enclosure (£181)' so its seen as a single disk, basic conclusion from this you'd be backing up nas to das
 
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you mean one of these or similar, Icybox IB-3664SU3 External 4-Bay JBOD Enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA I/II/III HDD
alternatively fit one of these to your pc and do one disk at a time, you can then remove disk and keep in a safe place, probably slower than usb3 directly attached but cheaper
 
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Yeh, that seems like a plan... So simply use that Icybox once every few months to robocopy the NAS JBOD to the the Icybox JBOD? Simple and effective...
 
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Looking at your other post, you don't actually have a NAS yet.
So starting at the beginning do you actually need a NAS or do you need DAS (desktop attached storage) or 1 of each?
Consider,
no other devices need to read and write to your 'NAS' as its only to supply data to your i5 which is on plex duties.
is your data static ie you add files but dont delete or 'move them around'
your little optiplex has little room for expansion ie extra drives , dell psu cant supply extra power for more drives etc

If above is true cheapest and simplest method, 2 identical 4 bay usb attached jbod enclosures, 1 for active 1 for backup. Start off with one disk in each, when active disk 1 is full add another disk to each enclosure. robocopy drive 1 to drive 1 etc on regular basis. There are still possible points of failure, but then you get into backups of backups.
More expensive of above, 2 identical raid enclosures, may possibly give more data security but you lose HD space.

Solution above open to discussion, I've not covered all eventualities as it depends on other intangibles.

just seen your update you could swap 1 usb attached for a NAS, so when Opti goes bang your tv etc should hopefully still be able to access the NAS via built in DLNA/network addressable file shares depending upon the NAS spec
 
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So maybe get a QNAP TS-431X, and put a single 4TB drive in it. And I'll buy another 4TB drive to robocopy/backup to a USB3 cradle I have.

If/when I expand the NAS, and say put in another 4TB drive (giving me 8TB), I can then look at getting a 4bay usb JBOD enclosure, and put two 4TB in that to do the simple regular robocopy to as the backup.

...and so on...
 
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may be, depends upon how you configure the qnap (QTS user guide), you may have to set up a raid with volumes
looks like it stores the os etc on the hard drives you install, in hidden partitions


also look at this
 
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Just throwing this into the mix. Not a fan of external enclosures with JBOD etc as if you lose a single disk you lose the lot. I have a 10 bay USB 3.0 enclosure connected to my PC and run the following:

https://stablebit.com/DrivePool

Which presents whatever disks you add to the pool as a single drive within windows however each disk is just that, a single drive. You lose one you only lose the data on that disk. You can access each individual drives data at any time as it is just a normal NTFS disk (or ReFS should you wish).

Been running a 24TB pool now for months and not had a single issue. I am very happy with it as a solution.

EDIT: Oh and should you need to format or move the "array" to another machine, simply do what you need to do and re-install DrivePool and that's it. The "array" data is stored on each disk in the pool so as long as the disks exist on the new machine it just works.
 
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Is that true? I thought you just list what was on the disk in question?

I guess it depends on the JBOD mode, the ones I was talking about is where the USB enclosure actually presents all the disks inside it as a single disk (like a spanned disk). JBOD in it's essence is single drive presentation so in that regard no, you wouldn't lose all the data.
 
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I guess it depends on the JBOD mode, the ones I was talking about is where the USB enclosure actually presents all the disks inside it as a single disk (like a spanned disk). JBOD in it's essence is single drive presentation so in that regard no, you wouldn't lose all the data.
In truth it doesn't matter.

The USB3 JBOD would simply be used as a backup of the JBOD NAS. If some/all of the files on the USB3 JBOD were lost, the faulty disk would be replaced, and the backup redone from the NAS to sync them again.

It's almost tempting for some extra expense to actually run the NAS (or USB 3 device) in RAID mode to add in yet another level of redundency TBH!
 
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There is no right or wrong answer here, there are so many options at your disposal the difficult part (for you) is deciding on what works best for your scenario. In my experience though the more complexities you add to the mix the more difficult recovering from data loss can be. KISS always applies :p
 
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There is no right or wrong answer here, there are so many options at your disposal the difficult part (for you) is deciding on what works best for your scenario. In my experience though the more complexities you add to the mix the more difficult recovering from data loss can be. KISS always applies :p
Well, for me a NAS being regularly robocopy mirrored to a USB 3 JBOD seems the simplest approach. Run the robocopy, and any updates on the NAS are quickly applied to the USB 3 device.

If a disk on the NAS or the USB3 device fails, simply replace, and robocopy acccordingly.

Possibly at extra expense RAID the NAS (or USB3 device) for even more redundancy!



Cloud backup as appealing as it sounds just doesn't seem practical IMHO. If you need to replace Xtb of data, it will take weeks of downloading!
 
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