I’m trying to set up Rsync on a MyCloud EX2 Ultra (OS 5) so that I can use it as a backup to an Asustor NAS. I am told I need to have a thing called the ‘Rsync daemon’ installed and running on the EX2 Ultra but none of the explanations are very clear. A lot of ‘how tos’ seem to use command line but I don’t even know how to do that, with respect to the WD. I’ve used cmd before but only in Windows and only under supervision! Is there an app I need to download? Any help appreciated.
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I spoke to WD Technical Support over the phone on Friday. The guy tried really hard but without resorting to PuTTY or something similar, it would be difficult and I understand that voids the warranty. At the moment, I’m doing an FTP backup and getting decent network speeds. On the other hand, I’d really like to be able to synchronise my backups, which is kind of the point.
I’d be open to trying PuTTY but I have no idea how to do it because I’m Linux/BSD illiterate.
I think I’ve got it solved. I set it to do an FTP backup and it worked pretty well. I’ve got all the data (10.09 TB) across and I just checked whether it would do an incremental back up and it does. So I’ve scheduled it and well see how it goes.
I was getting a nice 100-112 MB/sec across the network and so it only took a bit under 28 hours. I was expecting three or four days.
To be honest, I don’t expect to be using this solution for more than a little while. Eventually, I’ll get another Asustor NAS and use the proprietary software - which is very easy to use - to handle it. After that, I’ll put some small drives - maybe 1TB WD Red SSDs with caddies - in the WD MyCloud and use it for my remote connection stuff. The app integration is pretty good, IMHO and it has worked better for me in the past than the Asustor (especially since Deadbolt).
The issue with WD is that after configuring all the settings for rsync, they are erased upon reboot. I solved this by creating scripts and copying them to one of the shared drives. My other NAS is a Synology, which has a Windows 10 VM running. With this setup, I can automatically restart the rsync daemon on WD and run the scripts to restore all the modified files. Rsync performs better than FTP and similar protocols; it is faster and prevents the NAS from overheating. I haven’t installed any WD apps on the NAS—I only use rsync for backup purposes. As a result, the device runs much cooler.
The main challenge is to get a VM instance running and customise the scripts for rsync on your WD. There isn’t much information available on this, so I suggest using ChatGPT or any AI tool to help you write the scripts. I have disabled updates on WD because I am concerned they might remove this feature in a future update. WD has been removing useful features like WebDAV, which was a convenient way to transfer files between NAS devices.