Best Way to Back up Music Library

[DavidHB]

(06-06-2015 06:59)gnomus Wrote:  My impression is that SyncToy is not terribly quick at copying the whole library from one place to another. I am in the process of backing up the library on my 215J (NAS) to an external HD (plugged into a USB port on the 215J). I started this more than 24 hours ago and it is not yet half way through.

I haven't ever timed these operations with stopwatch in hand, but, from my experience, the software used is only one factor in determining the speed of transfer. For instance, I would normally expect USB to be faster than network transfers (there are exceptions, depending on the variety of USB (2 or 3) and network (10/100 or gigabit) in use). By far the fastest speeds in my setup are achieved with a directly connected USB3 drive, and I use gigabit networking throughout.

I'd guess that the Synology DSM copying routines are also a bit faster than anything run on Windows, because they are native to the NAS. I assume that, even for a NAS to NAS transfer, a Windows computer will need to work via SAMBA, which is the bit of the Linux operating system on the NAS which enables Windows-type file handling to work on the NAS. A large copying operation involves accessing lots and lots of files. Simon has a better handle on this than I do, but I'd guess that this slows things down.

You may well be right in your assessment that the initial bulk copy is best done using applications native to the NAS. However, once the copying process is started, it may be best to allow it to chunter on in the background until it is complete. Either way, as you say, Synctoy will come into its own when you want to be sure that all the changes you have made to the master library are exactly mirrored on the receiving device.

David