OS BACKUP

[aka]

How can I backup ASUSTOR OS ?
I have 4 drives where 1st HD hold only OS, nothing else. I know I can pull out the HD and make an image but this would require opening the unit etc. To much work and I want to do this on a regular basis (especially that I have a RAID on other 2 hard drives).
The perfect solution would be to attach another external HD through USB port and run a backup.

Any ideas ?

[Nazar78]

Why would you need to backup the ADM OS? This requires image dump either being done externally or using the SSH terminal. The best approach would be just schedule a System Settings backup in Backup & Restore utility. In an unlikely unfortunate event the OS gets corrupted you can just reinitialize the NAS then restore the backup settings.

[aka]

Yes you can do this if you're not running RAID. In case of a RAID-0 which is my case when you loose OS you loose RAID settings and your drives are not readable. If you running RAID 5 or higher then this is not a problem. I have a RAID on PC as well and the RAID info is stored either in BIOS or UEFI, but this is not a case for NAS.
The RAID is software, not a hardware type.

[Nazar78]

Let's correct some misconception.

Yes you can do this if you're not running RAID. In case of a RAID-0 which is my case when you loose OS you loose RAID settings and your drives are not readable. If you running RAID 5 or higher then this is not a problem.

Why raid 5 or higher then it's not a problem but not raid 0? You can in fact reassemble back your typical mdadm software raid 0/1/5/6/10 on another linux PC/NAS running mdadm provided you have all the disks intact. The raid headers aka metadata are not saved on the OS but on each physical disks itself called superblock https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ ... ck_formats.

I have a RAID on PC as well and the RAID info is stored either in BIOS or UEFI, but this is not a case for NAS.
The RAID is software, not a hardware type.

With the mdadm software raid, you can assemble it on another different machine running mdadm if the current machine won't boot. But with a hardware raid you'll need to replace with the same hardware/firmware and accept its foreign key to assemble back the array. I used to run raid 0 in controller card but it was a nightmare to recover when the card died and can't find its exact replacement.

For what it's worth I'll be more worried if one of the raid 0 disks gets corrupted, be it software or hardware raid.

[aka]

Yes you are right about first part. I have not said RAID info is in the OS. without going into discussion about RAID other than 0 I do not believe that the RAID-0 can be restored when the drives are moved to another NAS unless this other NAS has exact image which holds the information about the RAID-0 and that is the purpose of doing backup of that non RAID drive where the information is stored. RAID holds the disk ID's and other info which in case of another unit will not match existing drives.
If you state it makes not difference, then answer this: have you made an experiment and moved the RAID-0 drives to another NAS and it worked (in a sense that you could immediately see all RAID-0 data) ?

[aka]

Obviously the other reason for backup is to keep all the apps and configurations so if the OS drive fails I can replace that drive and have OS boot up in a matter of minutes. I think this is logical, so I do not even want to discuss validity of your statements becaue the question is about the backup - how can we do it. If you don't have a solution, we can simply stop here, and perhaps somebody else has.
Thanks

[ndl101]

How can I backup ASUSTOR OS ?
I have 4 drives where 1st HD hold only OS, nothing else. I know I can pull out the HD and make an image but this would require opening the unit etc. To much work and I want to do this on a regular basis (especially that I have a RAID on other 2 hard drives).
The perfect solution would be to attach another external HD through USB port and run a backup.
Any ideas ?

Have you read through the backup related documentation to see if there is anything that fits your need?
Alternatively, you could write an udev rule which will trigger when an USB device is inserted and runs a backup command or script. Options for that could e.g. be snapshotting via Btrfs if using that, rsync, partimage/partclone, dd and a many, many other.

[Nazar78]

Yes you are right about first part. I have not said RAID info is in the OS. without going into discussion about RAID other than 0 I do not believe that the RAID-0 can be restored when the drives are moved to another NAS unless this other NAS has exact image which holds the information about the RAID-0 and that is the purpose of doing backup of that non RAID drive where the information is stored. RAID holds the disk ID's and other info which in case of another unit will not match existing drives.
If you state it makes not difference, then answer this: have you made an experiment and moved the RAID-0 drives to another NAS and it worked (in a sense that you could immediately see all RAID-0 data) ?

Do you think I would even reply if I've not done it in the past? Forget about the simple raid0, currently in my setup I have x5 partitions in mirror array holding the Asustor OS where 4 of them is in the 4 bay NAS set as write-behind and 1 ssd is in a USB enclosure set as write-mostly. I could easily move this to another NAS/PC or even rasp pi. Can you move such setup including the simpler raid0 to another machine? https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=850229

Obviously the other reason for backup is to keep all the apps and configurations so if the OS drive fails I can replace that drive and have OS boot up in a matter of minutes. I think this is logical, so I do not even want to discuss validity of your statements becaue the question is about the backup - how can we do it. If you don't have a solution, we can simply stop here, and perhaps somebody else has.
Thanks

With certain experience and knowledge it can be easily done with ease of automation. I also have Ubuntu Desktop for web browsing, 4K media and steam games for the kids (LXC viewtopic.php?f=213&t=10570&hilit=Sound&start=10#p39810 not the slow Virtual Box) running in the NAS on ssd which auto dump the whole OS nightly. But I don't think I would waste my time providing the more technical method and steps. The foolproof method has already been replied in the 2nd post which is, backup the OS data and settings, reinitialize and restore when necessary so everything is as good as previously. Good luck.