NAS to NAS

[Hollywood]

I use FFS to copy/sync files to and from local drives, and to and from my PC to network (NAS) shares. In those 4 examples, the path the files take is obvious.

If I have on my NAS bay1 mapped as a network driveN and bay2 as driveO, and I want to copy or sync the files from N to O, USING FREEFILESYNC, would the files go directly from bay1 to bay2, or since I setup and ran this from my PC, would they go through the router and/or the PC too?

If so, what is the best way to update or sync from one network bay to another?

Thanks!

[xCSxXenon]

https://superuser.com/questions/629520/moving-files-from-one-network-folder-to-another-does-the-data-come-through-my-l

Yes, the traffic is going through your PC first. You will have to run FFS on one of those remote machines to have a direct transfer

[Hollywood]

Thanks, I suspected as much. Can FreeFileSync be installed on a NAS or will I have to look elsewhere for a program to do NAS to NAS transfers?

My Asustor NAS should be delivered today. I mostly will store a lot music and photos.

My plan is to keep the 2 libraries on my local computer for storage, adding to, and editing, etc. I want to run FFS to Update (copy) my local drive to the disk on the NAS in bay1 every morning with a schedule. Then I want to run another Update to copy the files from bay1 to bay2, also with a schedule. Every so often I will run the job manually in Mirror mode to also delete files no longer on the source drive.

This will give me 3 copies of my data with protection from accidental deletion. Does this sound like a good plan? I was never a big fan of the Recycle Bin, but is that a better option? I also read about versioning and RAID (which I would have to learn and forget). I want to keep this as simple as possible as at my age I forget how I set things up. If I ever had a failure, my data should be available on my computer or either of the drives in the NAS.

Thoughts?
Thanks!

[Plerry]

Some NAS's have tools to connect directly to other NAS's (e.g. Synology).
And, if available, that may be the fastest approach for your initial copy.

Once you have your initial copy, it is a matter of just applying the modifications you made to your source to your backups. And that is what FFS is perfect for.
But if you are not in a hurry, FFS can/will also perform the initial copying for you.
It may even not be much slower than via a direct NAS-to-NAS connection.

I wonder why you want sync LocalDrive=>NAS1 and then NAS1=>NAS2.
Why not simply have LocalDrive=>NAS1 and LocalDrive=>NAS2 syncs?
Then you can simply schedule and run both FFS jobs on you local machine, and no data needs to go NAS1=>NAS2 (either directly or via you local machine).

[Hollywood]

It may even not be much slower than via a direct NAS-to-NAS connection.

I got the new NAS yesterday and am playing with it. I found the direct internal copy/sync program and you are right, it does not appear to be lightning fast, but it does not display stats while copying.

One of the folders I include in my backup (FFS sync) is the appdata/roaming folder. Two or 3 of the folders have sub folders with with the word "cache" as PART of the folder name. Some of these cache folders have thousands of small files and take up most of the time of a FFS sync job.

Is there a simple way to exclude from C:\users\Me\appdata\roaming, any folders that have cache as part of the folder name? What would be the best way to exclude those folders?

Also, thanks for replying, I will read the rest of your reply when I wake up.

Thanks!

[Plerry]

Is there a simple way to exclude from C:\users\Me\appdata\roaming, any folders that have cache as part of the folder name? What would be the best way to exclude those folders?

If you want to exclude all folders and files comprising "cache" in their name, simply add a line
*cache*
to your Exclude Filter.
If you want to exclude all folders with "cache" in their name, but not all files with "cache" in their name, then add a line
*cache*\
to your Exclude Filter.

If there are folders (and/or files) outside C:\users\Me\appdata\roaming comprising "cache" in their names and are part of your sync but should not be excluded, you need to provide more detail about your left-right base-folder pair definition(s) for proper advice on your Filter settings.

[Hollywood]

Is there a simple way to exclude from C:\users\Me\appdata\roaming, any folders that have cache as part of the folder name? What would be the best way to exclude those folders?

If you want to exclude all folders and files comprising "cache" in their name, simply add a line
*cache*
to your Exclude Filter.
If you want to exclude all folders with "cache" in their name, but not all files with "cache" in their name, then add a line
*cache*\
to your Exclude Filter.

If there are folders (and/or files) outside C:\users\Me\appdata\roaming comprising "cache" in their names and are part of your sync but should not be excluded, you need to provide more detail about your left-right base-folder pair definition(s) for proper advice on your Filter settings.

You are my HERO!

The closest I figured on my own was /folder/ but that didn't work properly on folders several layers deep.

I have a music program and Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird that caused the /roaming folder to take 10-20 minutes to copy. Adding *cache* to the exclude filter got FFS to copy the /roaming in 2 seconds to a 2nd physical SSD in my computer! I still have the program settings in /roaming that I need in case my C drive fails.

I really did try to figure out how to filter out the cache files on my own. Your explanation is comprehensive and easy to follow. I really do appreciate you taking the time to reply with exactly the results I wanted.