Unfinished Bitness

In my previous post “Backing Up The Backups” I mentioned I would cover how I push my backups to an offsite location to cover a physical loss scenario (fire, theft, etc).  This post explains how to setup Cloud Sync on a Synology DiskStation to push data to Dropbox.

I have a directory on my Synology Disk Station NAS which is periodically synced to an offsite source.  In my case, I’m using Dropbox, but there are several you can choose from.  I’m not worried about the security.  Dropbox has good security, encryption, and two factor authentication.  On top of that, the files I push to Dropbox are already in an archived,  compressed, and encrypted form (with a very long key).  So even if my Dropbox were compromised, the files are useless to anyone.

First, you must install Cloud Sync.  You will need version 6 or higher of DSM software in order to do this.  Some older DiskStations do not support the newest version.  Go to the Package Manager, and install it.  Once installed, the menu will have an icon for it (in green below):

Open Cloud Sync, and select the Dropbox provider (or other if you prefer):

Define the appropriate settings which include the source location on the NAS, and the destination folder in DropBox (or whatever provider you chose).  You need to also specify the sync type.  I chose a one way sync (from NAS to Dropbox) since I am using it as an offsite backup.  If you want additional encryption, tick the checkbox.  Then click the Next button:

Here you confirm the settings.  Click the Advanced Settings button before clicking Next:

In the advanced settings, validate all the files types you will be syncing are checked.  You may have to add any file extensions that are not present.  Since I’m uploading an archived, compressed, and encrypted file, I just needed to ensure that single file extension was present.   When satisfied, click OK, then when back on the Confirm Settings window, click Next:

If the sync task was added successfully, you will get confirmation.  Just click OK to acknowledge:

Now you can see the defined Cloud Sync tasks.  The new one is probably running.  You can tell a task is running if it has a blue circle next to the provider on the left.  Clicking on a provider will show you detailed status:

If you click on the Task List tab, you will see what tasks are defined and their status.  From here you can also, add, edit, and delete tasks for the provider:

If you click on the Settings tab, you can view or change the provider name, set the frequency it checks for changes, and define bandwidth throttling:

When all the tasks for a provider are complete, if will have a green check next it, and on its detail status:

One thing to note here.  If you don’t have enough online storage at one provider, you can setup syncs to multiple providers, and carefully define which NAS directories are synced to them in order to spread the data across providers.  In my case, I have enough space at Dropbox to meet my needs.