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Is there a way via PC or automatically, to have two seperate NAS drives that mirror each other? I would like to have a NAS drive for my main storage at home, rather than use the HDDs in the PC. I already have my PC running on RAID SSD's and then two HDD's for current projects, but would like to move these to a NAS device so I can access from work.

Is there any sofware that would take a copy of the one NAS device and copy it to a second NAS device? This could be software on my PC that runs in the background whilst I'm working, or done automatically by the NAS devices themselves. I figured this way, if one goes down, I can utilise the other until it's fixed and then restore the data, a bit like a Raid array.

I was thinking if the drives were mapped I could just use some sort of Backup software to select the drives and copy. Minimal effort in the use of the software would also be of benefit, so literally one or two clicks, rather than selecting folders all the time.

I could leave the HDD's in the PC and then back up to the NAS for access from work, but the two NAS drives would be a bit more useful for me.

Can it be done, and any recommendations to software, paid of otherwise?

Many Thanks

David, a real time mirroring will most probably only be available with professional storage hardware. I don't have any experience with NAS yet, as I'm only working with SAN storage jobwise. But most NAS devices run a light version of Linux, so maybe there's a way to implement some kind of personalised backup yourself.

Else you can use your PC to do the job. Any good backup software (like the one by Acronis for example) should be able to perform regular backups from and to any selectable drive.

If you don't want to spend extra money, then you can set up a small batch script using robocopy within a scheduled task (assuming your PC is running some version of Windows ). It's part of the Windows Ressource Kit, downloadable from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/d ... 8c4790cffd

Cheers Jürgen, I've used Acronis for HDD Cloning, but not for making backups. Does it work over mapped drives do you know?

I think so. At work I've already used Acronis for imaging of system partitions onto network shares. But not for continuous backup jobs. As I'm just lazy somewhere in Burgundy right now, I can't check it out today. But I'll have a closer look some time next week.

Thanks! I'll have a mooch and see if I can find out!

I'm sure that's one of the options available on the Synology NAS devices. They can do backups to a number of devices: an attached USB device, a network device, or an internet based service.

I'll try to find a little more as I only know about the USB backup as that's what I use.

EDIT:

yes, this is the page that describes it.

http://www.synology.com/enu/products/fe ... server.php

DSM3.1 is the appl;ication on the disk station. I use a 2 disc device, mirrored. You can get stations with more to allow hot swapping on failure, but I thought that was a bit too much for my needs!

Perfect! Thanks Duncan, just decided on a Netgear as well as I wanted 4 drives and that seemed the most reasonable. Synology do a 4 bay slim that takes 2.5" drives, however factor in the cost of drives and how much space you have it becomes £££. The jump in cost to a 4 bay 3.5" is quite steep! I think the netgear will be ditched now, the synology I have at work has been pretty flawless, I just can't get the remote printing working.

Bear in mind the support too. I've had trouble with Netgear stuff and struggled to get help. One of the features of the synology is tha ability to support IP cameras, but I had one that didn't work properly. Synology sent me a special version of the FW to fix the problem. Can you imagine NG doing that?

It hans't been flawless, but anything that hasn't worked has generally been fixed fairly quickly by a FW update.