Acronis and NAS

I'm looking at getting some NAS but have picked up on a user's review of a Netgear NAS unit that said Norton Ghost can't use it directly. Does anyone here use ATI with NAS, and is it satisfactory?

 

I have successfully used a Linux-based D-Link DNS-323 NAS on my LAN with TI 11. TI 11 recognized it just fine on my Windows XP Pro SP3 system, both from within Windows and from the Recovery CD..

Just realize that, even with a gigabit (1000 mb/sec, nominal) network, backups and restores are slow and archive validations take even longer.

The only problem I had was that a backup that I had made to the DNS-323 restored fine from the DNS-323 but not from a regular hard disk to which I had copied it. TI said the copy of the archive on the HD was corrupted but the original archive on the DNS-323 was OK. I haven't pursued this, yet, to see if this was a one-time problem only or a systemic, character representation problem. This concerns me but I am generally happy with this part of TI's operation.

I hope this helps.

 

That reassures me, thanks. I had anticipated that it wouldn't be anything like as fast as a local drive, but as long as it actually works that will be fine.

Thanks again.

 

Earthling:

Performance will probably depend on the NAS and how it's configured. For my "NAS" I have a Linux PC on the network that is running a SAMBA server to manage the Windows networking. The server is visible on Windows PCs on the network and thus shows up in TI's recovery environment in the "Computers Near Me" area. On a Gigabit LAN the performance when saving to/restoring from the server using the TI recovery environment is just as fast as in Windows (above 1 GB/min).

Then again, with the TI Linux recovery environment you never can tell. I'm one of the lucky ones whose PC hardware seems well-supported in the TI10 recovery environment.

 

The Netgear NAS requires a program to be installed on every PC that will access it. It can't be seen by any computer that doesn't run that program.

As a result, it's won't work with the TI Rescue CD that uses Linux and doesn't have the Netgear program.

If a NAS requires a special program to be seen, it's not a good choice if you want to use any recovery system such as the TI Rescue CD.

 

That's the main thing I've been concerned about, and probably explains the user review I referred to in #1.

Thanks John.

 

Hello Earthling and everyone interested,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please notice that we do not expect any difficulties using properly configured Netgear NAS with Acronis Bootable Rescue Media.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Hello Marat and thank you for responding.

I actually selected a Buffalo LinkStation NAS and would appreciate any comments you may have re the following -

In XP I can create a Backup Location on the NAS but ATI 11 doesn't obey any of the associated rules re number of backups etc.

In Vista I can't even create a Backup Location on the NAS. ATI 11 just hangs.

Other than that ATI 11 will create backups directly on the NAS, and will restore from it using the Rescue Media.

 

I backup my laptop to a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ daily with no problems. I haven't actually restored from a backup (I keep meaning to test this), but I verify my backups and never had a problem.
I did find that I have to backup to a UNC path, not a mapped drive. Once I did that, no issues.

 

ginigma:

I don't have any problems with any of those things either, and I can even backup to a mapped drive. The problems relate to trying to use Backup Locations on an NAS drive.

What has been your experience in this area, and which OS are you using?

 

Earthling,

That problem was supposed to have been fixed in TI 11. You may have to submit a support request to Acronis.

Problem with backup location rules

 

MudCrab:

Thanks for that link. I'll first make sure I've done everything it says before anything else, particularly in relation to upgrading from TI 10.