How can I backup my My Cloud to my My Book?

[quote=“Bennor, post:4, topic:195663, full:true”]
The My Book doesn’t backup the computer. You use software on the computer (Acronis True Image WD Edition for example) to backup the computer to the My Book that is attached to the computer.[/quote]
I meant the software that came with the My Book. The My Book came with something called WD Smartware. I installed that and told it to Backup my computer continuously. Unfortunately Smartware won’t backup a drive that is not directly connected to the computer.

[quote=“Bennor, post:4, topic:195663, full:true”]
When a USB hard drive is attached to the My Cloud’s USB port the USB drive will show up within the My Cloud as a Share that is accessible just like any other Share on the My Cloud. Any backup software that is capable of backing up to an NAS should be able to backup to a USB hard drive that is attached to the My Cloud’s USB port.[/quote]
I understand that. But I need to backup both the computer and the My Cloud. From what I can tell if I were to connect the My Book to the My Cloud none of the software that comes with the My Cloud and the My Book would backup the computer.

So are you saying that I can’t backup the My Cloud and the computer to the same backup device?

As previously explained, to backup the My Cloud to a USB hard drive (like the My Book) that is attached to the USB port of the My Cloud one would access the My Cloud Dashboard and use either Safepoint or Backup depending on which firmware version the My Cloud is running.

To backup a computer to the My Cloud one can continue to use WD Smartware or use a third party backup program.

You don’t generally use one program (like Smartware) to accomplish both tasks if that is what you were expecting. It generally takes two programs to accomplish backing up the PC to the My Cloud and the My Cloud to the My Book.

While I don’t use Smartware from what I remember if may be possible to change the location on the My Cloud where the Smartware backup is saved. One could change that backup destination to the Share created when one attaches the USB drive to the My Cloud. There by putting the backup on the external USB hard drive rather than the My Cloud itself. One should see the Smartware User Manual (http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15136) or the embedded Smartware Help for more information on how to change or modify the Smartware backup settings.

Yeah. It came to me after I replied to you last night (after I was in bed, actually) that I could probably back the computer up to a share on the My Cloud and backup the My Cloud to the My Book.

Backing up the computer directly to the My Book as a share on the My Cloud would be even better so thanks for that idea.

As for software, Windows 10 is supposed to be able to perform backups to an external drive so once I plug the My Book into the My Cloud I’ll see if that will work. If it does I should be able to backup other computers on the network that way too.

I’ll try setting that up in the next few days and let you know how it goes.

Why is it not possible to create a backup job with a schedule on a USB drive connected to My Cloud? I just bought a My Book 3TB to backup My Cloud exclusively and I will have to run the task each time manually … Ridiculous.

Yes Windows 10 does have a built in option to backup to either a USB hard drive attached to the computer or to an NAS like the My Cloud. There are a number of free and paid backup programs as well that may have more features/options than Smartware or the Windows 10 Backup. Here are several free programs:

EaseUS Todo Backup Free: http://www.easeus.com/
Macrium Reflect Free: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
Paragon Backup and Recovery 14 Free: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/download.html
Free File Sync (in Mirroring mode): http://www.freefilesync.org/

That is a common complaint of the newer second generation v2.x firmware single bay My Cloud. For what ever reason WD hasn’t seen fit to address that particular issue with the My Cloud Dashboard Backup app. Feel free, if you haven’t’ done so already, to add your voice to others in the following Cloud Ideas thread:

https://community.wd.com/t/schedule-queue-usb-backups/96993

The older first generation v4.x firmware single bay My Cloud units are capable of scheduling Safepoint backups to a USB hard drive. And no one cannot install the first gen v4.x firmware to the second gen v2.x single bay My Clouds.

This is not working for me. When the My Book is not plugged into the My Cloud the My Cloud works normally; My Win10 computers find my share on it in File Explorer and when I click it in Network Places it opens the browser and lets me log in as Admin and access the controls. If I then plug in the My Book the capacity shown on the My Cloud’s home page increases and the My Book appears in Shares but as soon as I try to do anything with the settings the page stops responding.

When that happens neither of the Win10 computers can access the My Cloud but the one XP computer still on the network can find and access it normally. If I unplug the My Book from the My Cloud and then give the My Cloud a “hard reboot” (unplug its power supply for a while) the Win10 computers can again access the My Cloud.

At first I thought maybe I was being impatient so I let it run and eventually a time out message appeared on the web page. After that I tried again but closed the browser after it locked up and let the drives run overnight (9+ hours) but in the morning I still couldn’t access the My Cloud.

And I am afraid these hard reboots may not be good for the My Cloud.

Can you elaborate on what is happening? Which page stops responding? What model My Book are you using? It sounds like USB Content Availability is enabled under Dashboard > General > Cloud Access due to the Dashboard home page displaying increased capacity when the My Book is attached to the My Cloud. Try disabling USB Content Availability and test again to see if the page freezes or becomes unresponsive.

SEE BELOW
As I said, the My Cloud works as it always has when the My Book is not connected to it.

  • If I plug the My Book into the My Cloud I cannot access the My Cloud.
  • As soon as I plug the My Book into the My Cloud’s USB port I loose access to the My Cloud. I cannot open the My Cloud’s “Dashboard” (which opens as a web page in the browser) and neither of the Windows 10 computers can connect to the My Cloud. Everything else on the computers seems to work OK when this happens and the one XP computer that is still on my network can still access the My Cloud.
  • If I unplug the My Book and reboot the My Cloud and the computers access to the My Cloud returns to normal.
  • If I open the Dashboard and then plug the My Book into the My Cloud the indicated free Capacity increases by approx. the free capacity of the My Book. I think the capacities for the various file types increase by the appropriate amounts for the data on the My Book but I can’t be 100% sure of that.
    —If I don’t do anything for maybe half a minute the page becomes unresponsive.
    —If I select the Shares tab it opens the page and seems OK. The My Book shows as a share but if I select My Book and try to click a button to make a change the a little rectangle with the word Updating appears, the Dashboard page becomes unresponsive and it logs out in a few minutes and won’t let me log back in…

I THINK YOU MAY HAVE SOLVED THIS: Per your instructions I turned off US USB Content Availability. While I was in the Settings I changed the Web Access Timeout from 5 minutes to 20 minutes (this is probably why it logged out before it finished updating). When I plugged the My Book back in the capacities on the Home page did not change but the My Book appeared in Shares. When I changed a couple of the settings on it it said Updating for a second or two and then the page returned and continued to respond.I have been dabbling around switching between tabs and changing settings back & forth (yes, it is back where it should be) off and on for a while in between typing this and it continues to perform as expected.

Its late and I’m tired so I’m will try setting Win10 on one computer to back it up on the My Cloud and the My Cloud to back itself up to the My Book. If that works I’ll set up Win10 on the other computer to back it up to the My Cloud and retire the XP machine.

Thank you very much. I will report on how it works as soon as I know.

This morning I logged into the My Cloud, went to Backups and created a job to back up to the My Book, Backup type Copy. In retrospect I would have been better to do that before I went to bed… You know what they say about hindsight:slight_smile:. It said Updating and stopped responding. I couldn’t access the My Cloud from any of the computers but this time the drive light on the My Book was flashing steadily so I took that as it was performing the backup so I left it alone for the most part, checking to see if I had access every few hours.

I now have access to the My Cloud again so I logged in and checked. It says that the Backup is completed.

I have changed the Backup type to Synchronize now and it says Updating. I am not sure whether that means that it is performing another backup or if I am just waiting for it to change the setting but it has been doing it for several minutes now.

I have read page 75 of the manual (particularly the part about updating automatically) and I can’t figure out what it means I should do. It just tells how to open the Modify Job box and then says “Change the job details, and then click Save.” but it doesn’t say what changes to make. It says you can set when the update occurs but I have not yet seen any way to do so. Maybe those fields will appear after it finishes doing whatever it is doing?

I’ll see what it has done by morning and report back again.

I

I let it work for about 15 hours with no access to the My Cloud and finally unplugged the My Book from it (no change) and did another hard reboot of the My Cloud. After that I had access to the My Cloud again so I went back to the Backups page and clicked Job Detail to see if the change had been accepted or not. It appeared to have been but it said “Backup completed on Wednesday, 31 December, 1969 7:00:00 PM”

I knew that was wrong so I closed that and opened Modify Job. Everything looked OK so clicked Save just to see if it would lock up again. It said Updating for a couple of seconds, then went back to the USB Backups page. A bar with a sort of barber pole graphic had been added, which shortly turned into a progress bar with the name of one of the shares above it so it must have started another backup.

There is still no way to set when the backup occurs. I think I must have the same problem in that respect as cyberjabs. I can’t see anything in the manual about what Auto Start When Connected is; Am I correct in assuming that if I was to unplug the My Book after the backup finished it would initiate a backup when I plug the My Book in again?

This is still not working for me. After I last posted I let it run for more than a day and I still could not access the My Cloud. I cannot go without access to the data on it My Cloud for more that long so I unplugged the My Book from the My Cloud and rebooted the My Cloud.

BTW: Dashboard>Backups still says Backup Completed (even though I forced it to stop) but this time the Job Report says it finished at 8:45 last night (about 8.5 hours after it started).

I have been doing some more research.

  • Internal Backup allows you to choose when to backup.
  • If you use Internal Backup it basically copies the data onto the same drive so that you are limited to using half of the available memory for files and half for backups
  • We already established that if I enable USB Content Availability the memory of the My Book is added to the My Cloud and the My Book shows up as a Share.

Could I enable USB Availability and set up Internal Backup Jobs to backup each of the other shares to the My Book share on different nights? I’m thinking that since the My Book is 3TB and the My Cloud is 2TB that should allow me to still have most of the My Cloud for data…

Nobody???

Hi Bob,

Why not just let the NAS do what it is supposed to do? Just create a backup job as you did and let the NAS do its job?
Maybe in the next firmware they will fix the scheduling issue.

But if you insist, get yourself a Linux system and learn the basic.

You need to learn:

  1. how-to navigate the file system using command such as ls, cd, mkdir, etc. also understand system and file permissions. plenty of tutorials online.
  2. learn some very basic shell scripting such as a bash tutorial
  3. learn about “rsync”. This is the command you will use to do internal backup. you will need to learn how to do full backups, incremental backups, rotation
    and deletion, logging and how to read logs to resolve issues.
  4. learn how to use cron to schedule jobs.
  5. learn how to use ssh to login.

search the forum there are many how-to.

For a competent use it is easy to do this, but someone has to sit down and write it and then test it. Since we are dealing with backups and other people’s data
it is important the solution is sufficiently tested. then write a Linux script to automate the procedure in such a way that it is easy to understand,
configure and maintain by any user.

Currently I don’t have the time to do that. Someone else might be able to help you.
One day I will do such a thing but really no urgency.

It is great adventure and learning to do it yourself :slight_smile:

Just Do NOT LEARN ON YOUR NAS. PUT LINUX ON A USB DONGLE AND BOOT FROM THAT AND START LEARNING or install Linux on a spare PC or laptop.

I believe there are some scripts on the forum, search for rsync or the web.

Because when I did I had no access to my NAS for more than 24 hours and even then I only regained access because I unplugged the My Book from the My Cloud and then re-booted the My Cloud by unplugging its power supply, which I don’t believe is a good idea to do very often.

Since I posted about my last attempt I plugged the My Book directly into the computer and found what seems to be a complete backup of the NAS in a folder called MyCloudbackup (I didn’t check every single file but all folders are there and everything I spot checked appeared to be complete).

There is more than enough space on the My Book to backup the data on the My Cloud again so later today I will plug the My Book back into the My Cloud, re-enable USB Availability of the My Book, and see if the My Cloud will let me set up an Internal Backup Job to automatically backup some of the shares to the My Book overnight.

Re Linux: I have no inclination to learn how to program in Linux just so that I can have my data backed up automatically when the hardware I have is supposed to be able to do that for me. That would be like having to learn how to rebuild your car’s engine in order to be able to drive it from the driveway into the garage.

Sure. You don’t have to learn anything which is the idea behind those NAS drives. if a feature is not present, as others suggested, contact WD and aks for this feature. There is a voting subforum for this.

I don’t have gen 2 wdmycloud or my book so I cannot claim I know their performance. However, I do have a gen 1 and Seagate USB 3 drive. it has been working and backing up for 4 years non stop, sitting under the stairs. I don’t watch it and I don’t care how long it takes. All I know is the backups are there (I do check from time to time).

So your main problem seems to be that when you plug mybook drive, everything stops working or rather you don’t have access to the NAS drive?

Have you tried a different USB drive if you can?
I always advice to check with support first (before even coming here) and work with them.

See my previous posts in this thread for more details. With the My Book Plugged into the My Cloud everything is normal until I start a backup and then I loose all contact with the My Cloud.

Have you tried performing a 40 second reset? Sometimes a reset can fix the odd ball error with the My Cloud. Also if possible try another USB device and see if the backup completes. Could be a problem with that one particular My Book device.

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=13986

Bob,

We are all users just like you , there is no WD Support on this forum. Since you have been trying to get help and not getting a solution I suggest contacting WD Support directly. Both, your MyCloud and My Book, are WD devices they SHOULD be able to solve your problem.

The users here are helping each other because that is about the only place we can get help. WD support is somewhat lacking unless you can get to a level 2 or 3 within their organization, but it is worth a try.

SectorGZ: I understand that the people here are not WD techs but just users (hopefully some of whom have more experience than me; that wouldn’t be hard :slight_smile:). I spend a lot of time on bike forums, both giving & getting advice so I know how that works.

Jamalaya: I’m sorry if my last reply to you seemed curt. I was in a bit of a rush but i did want to acknowledge you.

Bennor: I haven’t done the 40 second reset. Yet. I am reserving that for a last resort. I have transferred the backups from the My Book to the other USB drive I have borrowed and re-formatted the My Book so that I can use it as an ordinary USB drive for this.

All: I tried my idea about doing an internal backup to the My Book Share and the My Cloud software doesn’t allow it. When you try to set up an Internal Backup Job the USB drive just doesn’t appear in the list of destinations. Its not just the My Book; I tried plugging a different USB drive into the My Cloud too.

I have done a bunch more reading, both on this forum and from other sources including WD Support. It seems that the My Cloud’s transfer rate for backups is about 10 Mb/sec which means that backing up my data would take about 17 hours, which could explain why the My Cloud was too busy to allow me to access it for such long times.

USB Backup as permitted by the existing software is unacceptable. I know myself well enough to understand that I am lazy & forgetful enough that I need the backups to happen automatically or they will never happen.

I have been looking for a free 3rd party application that will do what I need. This page looks like a good resource for that

After reading the descriptions (my eyes started to glaze over about half way through and I had to give my head a really good shake to wake me up :weary:) I think one of these might work. What do you folks think?