Before you ask me why I would want to do this, let me just say that I am looking to transition my business PC backup utility from Synology Drive Client, which is backing up a single very large folder, to ABB and make bare-metal backups of the HDD. The PC runs on Windows 7 and has lots of legacy software that will not run on a newer Windows OS. I want to clone the drive to assure that I have copies of the installed software. My install disks for the software are no longer supported by the publishers so I cannot just reinstall in the event of a disk crash (software install product keys are no longer valid). I know that ABB uses Microsoft’s VSS (Volume Shadow Service) to do backups but I cannot determine if Drive Client also uses VSS or not. I am concerned that both backing up at the same time will cause VSS conflicts. I have Drive Client running very often as there are hourly changes occurring (files/folder added, deleted or modified). I’d like to be able to run both for a short time to verify that ABB is working the way I want before I transition completely to ABB. My question is if anyone has done this before or if you know this will absolutely create conflicts? Both will be using the same QuickConnect ID.
Good to know. But I don’t think that whatever you can do on a MAC you can do on a PC. I’m not even sure that if it is doable in Win11 that it will be doable in Win7.
I set it up. It’s backing up! I exited from Synology Drive Client just in case. I have a lot of legacy software on my pc that will not run on anything higher than Win7. I don’t want to rebuy most of it if I have a disk crash. I figure I can do a bare metal backup and if my PC goes bust I can just buy a used PC running Win 10 and write over the entire drive and turn it into my current Win7 PC. Funny, to get current versions of all my software costs more than 4 new PCs.
select PC profile for Backups allows for event triggered backups (e.g. “on power-up”), you can change this to SERVER (easier restore-to-VM process) profile if desired
if the Synology bos is beefy enough (>4GB of RAM) use the backup verification tool at least once.
Old PCs run with BIOS and harddisks with MBR formating, new machines with UEFI and GPT formating (most likely on SSDs). When doing a bare-metal recovery between these two generations you might run into problems with invalid boot drives. The easiset approach is to
test a recovery on VMM installed on the Synology box
Take a modern W11 PC, enable the onboard Hyper-V feature (under settings ->apps → optional features)
migrate the VM from Synology to Hyper-V
This sounds like bigger project (and for newbies it actually is not something to underestimate) but in a disaster recovery situation you will not have the time for trial and error.
And, once completed this project, you have successfully migrated the legacy plattform to a modern VM running on a modern hardware. And running old systems as VMs is way easier as keeping the old systems alive.
I was watching a YT video where the topic is to do a restore onto aVM image of Windows OS to see if you get a clone of the PC to verify fidelity of duplication. It’s extra work, as you say, but at least you have “piece of mind” that you reallu have what you want. My first backup completed last night so I have yet to create a recovery USB or iso. Do you know if you can do both or do you just get one shot at it? I like the idea of the iso so you can make all the recovery USBs you want.
SYNOLOGY Assistant is the OS that your target device boots so that it can connect to network where the ABB backup files are located. Subsequently SA allows you to select the backup job and restore point to write on the target device.
Creating this tool does not have any impact on your backup files.
When doing this you might create an additional folder on the stick into which you copy all drivers for network adapters, raid controllers and NVMe drives used on your target devices. Some newer hardware like consumer 10g network adapters are not included in synologies driver repository and having them on the stick allows you to mount this hardware before the restore process.
My SA sticks are tried and true and so it has been quite a while since I last created one. SO TAKE THE NEXT INFO WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
When executing the SA programm you download from Synology’s page you can do a direct USB stick installation or create an iso file.
The stick is either MBR or GPT formated and therefore is optmized for BIOS or UEFI plattforms respectivly. So after creating the 1st usb stick i usually run the assisant again with the iso option. Using RUFUS you can create the 2nd USB stick with the other formating/boot option.
In theory the sticks work for both boot modes. But some motherboards are very picky with boot volumes and changing csm/legacy support on new uefi system can cause boot problems with recovery environment.
The mbr stick is my goto stick if i restore
from sata ssd/hdd system with bios to sata ssd/hdd with uefi bios in csm/legacy support mode. With Asus and Asrock boards sometime i do not see NVME as boot options in this setting.
The uefi stick is my goto setting if i restore
from pcie nvme on uefi system to pcie nvme on uefi system
Restores (or migrations) from sata ssd with mbr/bios to pcie nvme with gpt/uefi are tricky and in most cases do not boot out of the box - independently from ABB.
I would say that I tried most of the well known professional backup/cloning/partitioning tools and so far I still have not worked out fail proof process/tool set.