FreeNAS backup solution

Many of you may have read about my recent Windows Update woes. I’ve decided it’s time to set up a real, proper backup solution.

What I need

  • Back up Linux and Windows data in one place
  • Back up to FreeNAS
  • Only back up when on the same network as the FreeNAS box (I’ve got laptops that I don’t want to try and back up over the internet or anything crazy like that)

Another thing I would really love is an automated backup of pictures to Amazon’s Prime Photos. We have Amazon Prime, so that takes care of offsite backup for arguably the most irreplaceable things. If there’s some kind of tool to upload things from the command line to Prime Photos, I’m happy to build a script/cron job around that if there’s not a finished product to back up to Prime Photos.

The only thing that holds me back from just storing everything directly on FreeNAS instead of taking the “backup” approach is speed; in my experience I only get 300Mbps to my FreeNAS server from a typical laptop computer.

Any recommendations? Or would I be better served to use a SSO system like Active Directory and just store everyone’s stuff directly on the NAS, with a local copy cached on each computer?

There's actually an app for windows that'll backup your pictures for you:

You could create a network share on your FreeNAS and use the application to auto-upload from that folder.