Is there anyway I can get my mycloud to automatically backup only certain shares via usb. From what I can see the only backup is of the whole drive and I don’t want to purchase another drive the same size as the original as I don’t care about loosing some of it.
You don’t need to have a drive the same size as your WDMC to use Safepoint, all you need is a drive big enough to hold the data you have on the WDMC
Safepoint, despite firmware updates is still flaky and I’ve stopped using it in favour of a faster, simple solution to backup to a USB drive…
DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK
- I don’t know whether your warranty will be invalidated or not. If you’re not comfortable, then go with Safepoint!
Assuming you know how to SSH into your WDMC (see elsewhere on here), use PuTTy to log into your MC.
First we create a backup task called “backup” or whatever you like and we’ll put it in a share called ‘utilities’,
Enter the command
mkdir utilities
then
nano /shares/utilities/backup.sh
In the editor that comes onto screen enter the following line:
rsync -a /shares/'whatever share name you want to backup here, minus the quotes"/ /var/media/“The share name of your USB drive minus the quotes”/“Whatever folder you want to place your backup in, minus the quotes”/
Note that there are spaces after ‘rsync -a’ and another before ‘/var/’
You can repeat this line for other share names as many times as you wish, I put my backups in separate folders that I’ve created on my USB drive, each with the same name as the share.
It’s then Ctrl-X to exit the editor and follow the oncreen instructions.
Now make your file executable by typing
chmod +x /shares/utilities/backup.sh
Now schedule a backup job, say for 0100 daily:
crontab -e {enter}
add a line at the end of the file
00 01 * * * /shares/utilities/backup.sh
(You cannot use the numeric keypad for this btw, you may wish to copy and paste to make sure of getting the spaces right))
Ctrl-X and follow your onscreen instructions
I’m working on a script to confirm that the backup has been completed, but for now, just check your backup folders the next morning.
Job done!
Thanks a lot for this! Will try it later. Also if you ever do work out a script it would be much appreicated if you share it 
One question do I need safepoint on or off in the mycloud UI before carrying out this procedure?
No, you don’t need Safepoint enabled, and you’d probably run out of space on your backup drive if it was.
Thanks. Just one more thing. This part
is the 00 01 the part that specifies it for 01:00 daily? And what would I change it to in order say to set a backup at 01:00 but only once a week or month.
A very useful guide to crontab here is your friend…
http://tecadmin.net/crontab-in-linux-with-20-examples-of-cron-schedule/
