Hi All
I just wanted to get you thoughts on backing up Truenas to a USB HDD by creating a pool and creating a replication task to up some dataset. I will give you some context by backup NAS just went to need it maker and i can’t find a better solution.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned but I would just set up a Rsync job and copy the data set and all the snapshots over.
That works very well. I have a similar backup solution with several of these rotated with some schedule.
It all boils down on the USB HDD adapter, a high quality one with decent throughput and preferably the ability to put the HDD in sleep mode will give better results.
Two main benefits: you can deposit some of the HDDs offsite and rotate them say once per month. Also, offline backups. Once it’s unplugged, it’s no longer accessible. If you want to go the extra mile, some padded, magnetic proof cases for archival work quite well.
I do this. I rotate two large USB HDD’s monthly, storing them in a safe when not connected.
I use regular snapshot replication as well. And you don’t need a schedule setup if you prefer. You can just run the replication job manually when needed.
The only thing I would stay away from is creating a vdev with multiple USB disks (or pool with multiple USB based vdevs). Keep it as single disk.
Of course, this is only practical when a single HDD is large enough to store the data (remember to leave enough free space). Depending on how large your pool(s) are, you may need to limit your backups/replications to only your critical datasets/zvols.
Also, unless you have the space to store two copies of everything, ZFS will be unable to repair bad blocks since there is no parity or mirrored data to reference. Scrubs will still detect the problems though at least.
I worked with USB too, but found it to much of a hassle and too slow mainly.
So i bought myself a 5.25” removable HDD bay so I could hot swap my hard drives and have SATA available. (Startech HSB100SATBK).