I would like to have a drive that I can back up some data to. Currently I have an external drive that I use for this. I am moving to TrueNAS this weekend once the parts for my NAS come in.
Should I remove the drive from the enclosure and use SATA or does TrueNAS handle USB drives well enough?
USB connections are not reliable for permanent pool members, but for external backup to a single drive it works well enough.
@Arwen uses USB for backup and has described the process in detail: Look for her post on the old forum.
Can you add it without adding it to a pool? Or you mean donât add it with other SATA drives in a pool?
You actually make a pool out of the single drive and replicate to it.
Thanks!
Do you have any good tips on backing up?
Basically, Iâll have about 5 shares, I want to back up. Incremental would best keeping the last several copies. Is there any way the backup files would be available outside of Truenas? I am thinking, if the OS takes a poopie I would lose the data and the backups.
Replication to another TrueNAS system.
Replication to an external driveâwhich is then removed and safely stored elsewhere.
To a non-ZFS system, use rsync.
Thanks!
When you say âexternal driveâ, is it the kind that requires its own power (1 data cable, 1 power cable), or the âportableâ kind that only has a single USB cable?
It has itâs own power.
Those are better.
They hold 3.5" HDDs (sometimes Western Digital âwhite labelsâ, which are great drives on their own), and are less likely to be SMR, especially at higher capacities of 8-TiB+.
I guess I am going to have to just plug it in and figure it out. Not like I have never been giving a device from a user and told âmake this work on our networkâ before HAHA
This might not have been addressed: Does the external drive currently hold data?
It does currently yes. I plan on plugging it into my computer and copying the data over, after the NAS is setup and share are created, before I do anything. It backs up all the data on my NAS right now.
Is âStripeâ the only pool you can make for a single external drive? Despite all the âwarningsâ it throws up about not being recommended.
Yes. No redundancy possible with a single drive (save for copies=2). Just ignore the warnings.
I use a USB drive for external backup and it works just fine. As has been said, it is not reliable enough for 24/7 full time operation but I have never had problems using it to back up data. Iâve been creating external backups this way since 2021.
I use rsync for backups. Originally, I studied the scripts that @arwen had posted, referenced above by @etorix , and once I understood what they were doing then I created my own scripts. I started this back in the old Core days and now continue with the same procedure in Scale.
And, the old backups created in Core can be mounted and read in Scale. A nice surprise.
System:
TrueNAS 25.04.2.6 | Supermicro X9SCM-F | Xeon E3-1240V2
32GB ECC RAM | PNY 120GB SSD for boot
3 WD Red 4TB + 1 HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB in RaidZ2
Toshiba 128GB M.2 SSD
ZFS is ZFS⌠Install OpenZFS on OS X or OpenZFS on Windows and you may even access these backups on your desktop.
Out of curiosity does that allow someone to just plug-and-play a ZFS-formatted external HDD on their Mac or PC? Does it transparently present the disk to them like any other USB storage?
My concern is that my family, who are not technical, should have a way to access data if Iâm ever unavailable. The NAS could fail or become inaccessible for whatever reason and they wouldnât have any easy recourse.
I was considering just a regular external HDD (formatted exFAT or whatever) and ârsyncâ for backups. Then they could just plug it in on any Mac/PC without assistance. Someone could also fall into the trap of accidentally formatting the disk when their computer doesnât recognize it and prompts them to format. 
Then a ZFS formatted backup disk is probably not the right backup file system for you.
TrueNAS does not support direct attachment of exFAT HDDs. Not for data import, not for data backup.
If that is your criteria, then either perform the backup using RSync, (or work alike program), on the PC or Mac. Or perhaps find other NAS software that does what you want.
We occasionally get people who want free NAS software. But, some of the limitations of TrueNAS or ZFS is just too much for their use. (Neither TrueNAS nor ZFS are perfect, both have limitations and quirks.)
