I’m new to Synology and just tried backing up a PC. I just want backups of certain partitions on the PC, but I can’t see how to select this.
I’m really only interested in backing up the system partition and my email. The other stuff on the computers do not need to be backed up.
The Synology does not have enough disk space to back up all file systems on the computers I have and disks are too expensive at the moment to buy larger ones at this time.
I’ve never seen a backup system before where I can’t select exactly what I want to backup, so what am I doing wrong?
Unless you set partitions on your PC, it’s likely all content, including email, is on the system partition… aka “c-drive”. Without substantially detailed information about your PC drive configuration, we can only speculate.
How many partitions are on your PC. What is their primary role?
Synology Drive also has a backup feature, but it is primarily for your content … documents, pictures, music, video… it cannot back up your Windows OS.
There are several programs that do backup from Synology. Some do only the entire disk, some allow you to select specific “areas”. Look around Program Manager for what you need… it is there…..just a bit more difficult to get to than it should be…..
If you just want to backup the C drive of your endpoint client, i.e., desktop, laptop, etc., you can do that using the Synology Active Backup for Business app (ABB) and the Synology ABB-Agent app on the endpoint(s).
Install the ABB app on the NAS.
Install ABB-Agent on the endpoint(s) and launch it.
Ensure your endpoint is turned on, plugged-in if it’s a laptop, and online with your LAN.
On the NAS launch ABB and go to PC/Mac > Windows or Mac > Create Task. ABB will look on your LAN for the device. (It does not have to be on the LAN for backups, but that’s a different discussion.) Once it finds your device select Customized Volume. Here you can choose a volume, likely C for backup.
The first backup take a long time due to indexing, but subsequent backups happen in the background, normally go unnoticed and generally quite fast. We use this to backup several endpoints, some attached to the LAN, some remote, desktops and laptops. It will do phones too, and the restores are very simple.
If you want to backup individual folders, i.e., C;\Documents\Letters it will not do that as an individual option. If you have divided your storage on the endpoint over multiple volumes, i.e., C:, D:, E; … Z you can select the volumes individually.
CAVEAT: Be very careful about “versioning”. Set too expansively, it can consume all of your storage and if it runs out of space, it just stops backing up. It’s your responsibility to determine how much space you want to dedicate to backups, how many versions you need, etc. That can be tricky so you’ll need to keep an eye on it over time. Also, any adjustments you make to the versioning of the Task will for re-indexing.