New to NAS and ATI; some basic questions about both
I'm in the early stages of adding a NAS (WD MyCloud EX Ultra) to our home network. One of the uses is as a backup target for 3 laptop clients via ATI. I got good response to my first post, including both ATI and NAS comments. Since the NAS and the ATI use are evolving at the same time, I'm hoping to continue to get advice on both here. (with no disrespect, the WD forum hasn't been very responsive)
Focusing on the user guides, I've learned that the documentation, particularly the NAS user guide, is pretty technical, and both the NAS and the ATI have lots of options which can make the user guides difficult to navigate if there's no clear target in mind.
Today the NAS is physically connected to the home network, and gone through setup. Two users have been created (me and her), and two shares have been created in each (one for client backups, and the other for miscellaneous). Both users have read/write authority to all shares. WD has MyCloud.com for remote (browser) access, and those accounts have been successfully created and tested for admin and each of the users.
There is some content, but I'm still testing to make sure I understand. Eventually, a bunch of digital images will be uploaded to one of the public shares, each of the clients will have backups on the NAS. I'm probably going to install WordPress to provide a gallery for the digital images, and I may setup WD Sync. I'm also interested in getting iTunes on the NAS.
I've successfully installed ATI on all three clients, and was recently able to successful create a full NAS backup of one of the PC clients, which means that ATI can "see" the NAS and its shares. The attempt for a second client was cancelled when it failed to complete in 10 hours. I'll make another attempt with that PC connected directly to ethernet, and with some of the files moved to the NAS as archive or public (e.g. photos).
The first question is about ATI file cleanup. I'm using differential backups for all the clients, with the intent to run backups every 6-months or so. In the backup scheme, I've chosen to create a full version every 1 differential. I assume that means create full, create differential, create full, create differential. In the cleanup rules, the choice is to store no more than 2 recent version "chains". Is a version chain, in the case of a differential backup, a full and differential file pair? Does my choice mean that eventually there will be 2 fulls and 2 differentials, and, when the next backup is run, 1 full and 1 differential will be deleted, and a new full created?
My NAS question has to do with being about to move a large number of folders/files from a PC to the NAS. I see how to add individual files via the NAS dashboards, but I want to move a bunch using Windows File Explorer (Win 10 and Win 7). For some reason, when I navigate to the NAS via explorer and click on the icon, I get sent to the WD device dashboard.
I went down the path of attempting to map a network drive to one or more of the shares, but have had no success. Is it possible to use drag and drop to move a bunch of the files off of one or more of the clients to the NAS? What's the difference between mapping a drive and just being able to access the NAS as a network storage device with explorer? Any thoughts on why I don't see the NAS as external storage ala Windows Explorer?
Thanks in advance.
