Backup files on local drive without zfs

TrueNAS General
1

Hello, I’m a newly approached user to Truenas.

I managed to install it on a computer and set it to have:

  • a disk that serves for sharing folders
  • a cloud backup to pcloud

I would like to set a second drive to copy the files of the first hard drive, with weekly scheduled task,

I tought I could simply set a source and a destination in rsync and adding a scheduled backup (like I do on Mint using GUIs like Vorta or Borg) but I can’t: I must use remote host or ssh.

I tried to use snapshot but:

  • I saw that they are not browsable, you must copy the entire snapshot back
  • when the first snapshot starts it locks me the destination of the backup and become blocked

A browsable folder on the destination of the backup would be ideal so I could recover a single file instead of have to restore the entire folder/partition.

Is there a way to set a backup that copy files on a second local drive?

I hope everything is clear and thanks in advanced!

2

First off, ZFS snapshots can be browsed. It is tricky because you have to have a dataset property enabled:

  snapdir=disabled|hidden|visible
      Controls  whether  the .zfs directory is disabled, hidden or visible in
      the root of the file system as discussed in the "Snapshots" section of
      zfsconcepts(7).  The default value is hidden.

Then you have to go into the appropriate directory.

Note that if set on the top level pool dataset, this will be inherited by all children datasets.

Next, TrueNAS GUI has a weakness on local data copies. While SOHO users might want local copies, either removable disk, another pool in the same server or even just a copy of the dataset in the same pool. But, Enterprise users generally would not be doing such, so the GUI is not perfect for this function. Others here in the forums might be able to help with options.

Last, TrueNAS does not really support any file system other than ZFS. People sometimes want their additional copy of the data on something else, like EXT3/4 or exFAT. Neither of which have official support. Yet some people don’t want to use ZFS on their removable disks.

3

Maybe I did not understand correctly, but from this, it looks like there is only one drive for data files.

If so, there is not much benefit from TrueNAS. TrueNAS and ZFS are designed with reliability in mind, so all benefits from them will manifest if you use multiple drives (the more, the better).

Yes. As ZFS is the most advanced file system, there is no point to use anything else.

Therefore, load your system with several drives and be sure that your data are safe. And after that, if you want a backup copy on a single non-zfs drive, you can set another computer that will pull data from TrueNAS using either some native OS feature or some 3rd party application.

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