Handy Backup is a perfect NAS backup solution for small business and home, allowing using network storage units as both source and destination for Windows NAS backup. Any edition of Handy Backup has capabilities to use it as effective and reliable NAS backup server software.
Using Handy Backup for saving data to or from your NAS gives you the following key advantages:
These features allow you organizing and automating all backup operations involving your NAS.
Handy Backup support both Windows and Linux in native mode. Now you can install a Linux copy of Handy Backup on your Linux-based NAS and run it locally in a fully native mode, requiring no bridge software to utilize all its functions!
Sometimes, you may want to save a NAS backup online or to a local drive. For these purposes, Handy Backup provides a full set of storage plug-ins, allowing you making NAS backup to Google Drive or OneDrive, to Amazon S3, FTP, a local disk, a DAS device plugged by USB, or many other options.
Besides using NAS as backup storage, you can utilize the following list of options to save NAS content or to download content from these storage solutions to some NAS.
You can use an option of using NAS with offsite backup to another machine only for the Server Network edition of Handy Backup. This solution also allows NAS to NAS backup in a “white-box” mode, presuming that both NAS devices utilize Windows or Ubuntu Linux to run operations. Learn more about online backup NAS to cloud.
You can use Handy Backup as the NAS backup solution with one of two ways:
"Black-box approach": You can use NAS as a mapped drive, or as a shared network resource, finding it by network address. This approach has no requirements for NAS software or configuration, although it links all NAS backup operations to an external machine.
"White-box approach": You can install Handy Backup to your NAS (if it has any edition of Windows as the OS), or use the Network Agent for network editions of Handy Backup (available for both Windows and Linux OS). Handy Backup becomes a part of your NAS software.
The second approach requires some skill to install Handy Backup on your NAS. As an advantage, it allows redirect some or all of your backup operations to the NAS (very useful if you plan to schedule your backups on a regular basis and do not have a server mainframe in your network).
The main advantage of a NAS unit is its relative cheapness. Using a NAS with offsite backup is much cheaper than purchasing a vault on some commercial cloud, especially with big amounts of data. Another advantage of using NAS for backup solution is a quickness of a local network access.
Disadvantages of keeping data on NAS with backup software are much more obscure. The key disadvantage, compared to global clouds, is a necessity of maintenance and regular tech support of NAS for backup storage, which completely depends on a NAS owner.
As compared to DAS (direct-attached storage, such as USB external hard disks), a NAS device has two big advantages. This section illustrates the “black box” approach when using Handy Backup as NAS backup software. To keep your dataset on a NAS connected to your network, please use the following sequence:
Note: If you have your NAS mapped as an external disk, use the “Computer” destination feature instead of the "Network" feature, and select your NAS by name and/or drive letter.
"Handy Backup resolved my backup problem: backing up an NAS raid to a USB attached drive. The setup is easy, and it does its work very quickly, so I can utilize my NAS as backup storage on a full-time basis. I even trigger my NAS backup task to a USB by just plugging my drive into a PC. I could not find another product to do that!"
Mike L. Gonn, a private user