Question about "Safepoints"

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

I am having some difficulty setting up a safepoint. It might be because I dont fully understand how it works.

Is safepoints made to be a file fore file, data for data secondary backup stream of the mycloud essentially requiring matched storage to save a second copy of the files?

Or is it like the function of a pc where you can recover the data from a given date set.

Thank you

2

I suggest reading about safepoints in the manual pg. 92

“You can create a complete backup or snapshot of your WD My Cloud device, called a safepoint, and save it to an external location on your home network or an attached USBdrive attached to the USB expansion port. Safepoints can be created or run on a schedule you define. They include a record of users, data, and shares on your device; any backups created using WD SmartWare, Apple Time Machine, Windows 7 Backup, or Windows 8 File History, and any associated device configuration details. Creating a safepoint ensures that you can easily recover your data from a specific point in time to a new WD My Cloud device in the unlikely event that your WD My Cloud device fails.”

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Are safepoints encrypted?

If they are then it’s a nice way for WD to make you buy another drive in case the first one dies.  Keep giving them money.  If they were not encrypted then you wouldn’t need another WD MyCloud and could buy something else instead.

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Safepoints are not encrypted.

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thank you, but what is a snapshot? What does it consist of in data storage? Let’s say that I have two gigabytes of data on the my cloud. Let’s say that I take a snapshot. That snapshot would be stored lets say in my hard drive of my computer. How big of a file would it be?

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Basically, the contents of your MyCloud are copied across to the backup location you specify. As noted above this can be a USB drive you attach to the MyCloud or some other location on the network. The next time you run the safe point process, it will look for changes between the files on the MyCloud and the backup, then it will update the backup accordingly. Anything deleted or added to the MyCloud will be reflected in the files contained in your backup. This is essentially a synchronising process rather than a true backup. Clearly you could delete an important file from your MyCloud then this would also be deleted from your safe point when you run the safepoint process. Hence it is better to run the safepoint say once per week rather than daily, but that depends on you. I have two MyClouds each with a USB drive connected directly to the MyCloud’s USB port. I find this works quite well for creating regular and automatic safe points.

Hopefully, it is clear from the above that your safepoint will take up exactly the same space on your backup drive as is on your MyCloud. Also, if your MyCloud fails you can easily gain access to your safepoint from another computer. This is easy if you use an attached USB drive. If you have critical data there is a lot to said for storing a backup offsite.