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Acronis 2015 and Western Digital EX2 My Cloud

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I upgraded to Acronis 2015 to use it to backup my three computers to a Western Digital EX2 My Cloud operating in Raid 1 mode that I just purchased. Acronis does not recognize the EX2 as a NAS, but I was able to easily initiate the backup on a folder on the EX2 on the network. It went through the process of transferring all of the data to the EX2, but then gave an error message that the Backup could not be opened. I tried again by mapping the EX2 folder to a drive letter and it seemed to have worked.

I then went to my next computer, mapped to network to a drive and tried again. The backup again went through the process of transferring all of the data, then giving the same failure. So using a mapped drive does not seem to be the final solution. Does anyone have any idea or been successful with Acronis on WD My Cloud.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jim

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Make sure that you have only one set of user name and password that access the NAS within one Windows session, across all apps, mapped network drive, etc. This is the most common source of problems. For example a user access the NAS using user A credentials, and ATI tries to backup using User B credentials. This is a limitation of Windows, not ATI.
To clear up any access, shutdown any software that might access the NAS, type "net use * /delete" in a command prompt, delete any NAS credential stored in the User and Family Safety, Windows Credentials manager control panel, adn reboot the computer.

After you have successfully done a backup on the NAS, make sure you can restore using the recovery CD. This is where it failed for me with a WD MyCloud. I then switched to a Synology NAS for many reasons, and I don't have any issue with the Synology.

Thanks Pat,

Here is what I have found out after more tries. When I cam signed on with the correct credentials, I am able to create a backup. Sometimes, it will say unable to open backup at the end of the process, but if I do the validation, it shows up as valid. However, the problem you noted Pat is what I found. In using the recovery disk created by Acronis, it is unable to find the backup or even the My Cloud on the network. Is there any work around this. Why is it that Acronis does not recognize the My Cloud as a NAS. Thanks in advance.

There are 2 differents things going on.

The first is that you don't need this "NAS" connection. It doesn't add or substract anything to a simple CIFS/SMB connection. On the contrary, Acronis supports what it seems to be a relatively obscure protocol (NDAS) with limited commercial support at the NAS level. Acronis website lists the models of NAS it supports through this connection type.

The recovery CD should see the NAS shares on the network. If it doesn't, this is probably an SMB/CIFS configuration on the NAS side.

In my case, the recovery CD could see the NAS on an Ethernet connection of the computer, and could browse to the image, but all images were deemed corrupted and unusable directly. I had to copy them onto a USB disk (and the USB connection at the back of this NAS is really slow, so you have to use a computer which can be a problem when you are trying to restore the computer :-)

Anyway, since I had a WdMyCloud, I was using safepoints to a USB disk attached to the disk. Therefore I had the images available on a USB disk that I could then use to restore. IF you do that, remember to eject the USB disk from the NAS using the NAS UI (you need a browser to do that). Unplugging the USB disk from the WD NAS without ejecting it from the NAS admin UI WILL corrupt the file system of your USB disk.

*** Last sentence has been corrected.

Pat L wrote:

There are 2 differents things going on.

The first is that you don't need this "NAS" connection. It doesn't add or substract anything to a simple CIFS/SMB connection. On the contrary, Acronis supports what it seems to be a relatively obscure protocol (NDAS) with limited commercial support at the NAS level. Acronis website lists the models of NAS it supports through this connection type.

The recovery CD should see the NAS shares on the network. If it doesn't, this is probably an SMB/CIFS configuration on the NAS side.

In my case, the recovery CD could see the NAS on an Ethernet connection of the computer, and could browse to the image, but all images were deemed corrupted and unusable directly. I had to copy them onto a USB disk (and the USB connection at the back of this NAS is really slow, so you have to use a computer which can be a problem when you are trying to restore the computer :-)

Anyway, since I had a WdMyCloud, I was using safepoints to a USB disk attached to the disk. Therefore I had the images available on a USB disk that I could then use to restore. IF you do that, remember to eject the USB disk from the NAS using the NAS UI (you need a browse to do that). Ejecting a USB disk from the WD NAS WILL corrupt the file system of your USB disk.

Pat,

BTW - Thank you for your help in this forum.

Referencing this part of your post ....

"Anyway, since I had a WdMyCloud, I was using safepoints to a USB disk attached to the disk. Therefore I had the images available on a USB disk that I could then use to restore. IF you do that, remember to eject the USB disk from the NAS using the NAS UI (you need a browse to do that). Ejecting a USB disk from the WD NAS WILL corrupt the file system of your USB disk."

Just a clarification on the above as I have a WD MyCloud-EX2

Regarding the WD MyCloud (or MyCloud - EX2 ?), I understand that you are saying to eject the USB disk from the NAS by using the WD Browser UI. What do you mean by your next sentence "Ejecting a USB disk from the WD NAS WILL corrupt the file system of your USB Disk". Are you saying that even if you use the WD NAS Browser UI that it will still corrupt the attached USB disk ?

I've also found that the NAS USB port is very slow - best I've attained is around 27 MegaBytes/sec with a single file transfer. Transferring the same file from the NAS to a USB 3.0 Ext. Drive attached to a networked (Gigabit) PC's USB 3.0 port I get 87 MegBytes/sec.

Thanks,
Bill W

Mandacat wrote:
, I understand that you are saying to eject the USB disk from the NAS by using the WD Browser UI. What do you mean by your next sentence "Ejecting a USB disk from the WD NAS WILL corrupt the file system of your USB Disk". Are you saying that even if you use the WD NAS Browser UI that it will still corrupt the attached USB disk ?

I meant unplugging the USB disk from the NAS *without* ejecting it from the NAS admin UI WILL corrupt the file system of your USB disk. What is interesting is that the corruption is not serious enough to trouble a PC computer (although a disk check on Windows will repair something), but it will prevent the NAS from recognize the USB disk reliably upon plugging it back.

I've also found that the NAS USB port is very slow - best I've attained is around 27 MegaBytes/sec with a single file transfer. Transferring the same file from the NAS to a USB 3.0 Ext. Drive attached to a networked (Gigabit) PC's USB 3.0 port I get 87 MegBytes/sec.

Your numbers look good with your EXT2. Are they for a Safepoint or rsync?
On the WDMyCloud, a Safepoint (that uses rsync) will copy to the ISB disk at less than 10MB/s, whether it is a USB 2.0 or 3.0 disk. At that pace, users are better off, from a speed perspective, using PC based software to sync the contents of the NAS to a local USB. In fact, synching my MyClouy to my Synology using PC software I get about 15MB/S (and the data is roundtripping between the NASes!).

Pat,

Understand - I was hoping that's what you meant.

Re: the Drive transfer rate: I used a copy / paste within Windows 7, and the WD Browser UI. Both gave exactly the same slow results. Other than that, so far the WD-EX2 is working well, but just using it now for file sharing & backups.

I use Acronis 2014 & 2013 True Image Fam Paks to do monthly images and weekly differentials from PC's on the network. Not gambling with 2015 as I have enough anomalies with 2014 and don't need any more.

Thanks,
Bill W

@ Mandacat,

Just curious. So you are doing backups to the EXT2, and you can validate them. That matches my experience. Can you restore them though?

Pat,

I have not tried a restore directly from the NAS EX2.

I run scheduled differential images to the NAS, weekly. When they complete successfully, they validate.

If I needed to restore one of the weeklys, my plan was to transfer the latest to an External USB and restore from there.

I also manually do monthly full images to an external USB Drive. I have restored one of those just recently, but usually not often. I save two of the latest monthly image backups on the External USB.

Both weekly & monthly image versions have failed at times but, again, if they complete, they'll validate.

I was under the impression that if they validated, they would restore. Based on your findings, that may not be the case so I will need to check that out, hopefully before the end of the weekend, but as soon as I can. I'll let you know.

Thanks,
Bill

Yep, on my WDmyCloud they were validating alright from Windows, but the recovery CD didn't like something about the files and wouldn't restore.

Pat L wrote:

Yep, on my WDmyCloud they were validating alright from Windows, but the recovery CD didn't like something about the files and wouldn't restore.

Pat,

Here's a follow-up

I transferred a 30 gig, 3 partition backup image file from the NAS-EX2 to a USB 3.0 Drive, connected to a network workstation's USB 3.0 port. It took about 7 1/2 minutes to transfer the file.

I connected that USB Drive to an Office PC and mounted the backup file in Windows with ATI. I figured that if it failed to mount it wouldn't make much sense to go any further. Thankfully, it mounted.

After I transferred the backup file to the Office PC's Hard Drive, and since the original backup was made with ATI 2013, I booted with a ATI 2013 boot disk (bld 6514). I was able to recover the 3 partition backup to a 160 gig HD connected to the Office PC's USB 2.0 port.

I re-booted into windows and, while still connected to the USB port, browsed the recovered drive. All folders & files appeared to be OK.

What I didn't do was boot with it.

Bill

Looks good!