May 14th, 2024
Situation:
I’m doing trying to do a backup from my Synology NAS – DS220+ to a USB 3.0 3TB drive connected to the front usb slot. This would be to copy all my critical data, mostly family photos, videos and financial documents. The goal is a backup I can read if the NAS goes offline. It also provides an air gap when disconnected for protection against ransomware.
My attempts:
I was only able to obtain Slow USB Backups a few kpbs to 5 MB/s vs the 90 – 100 MB/s that I expected.
I tried:
- Regular 3 TB USB drive backup – 1 to 5 MB/s updates
- A different 3TB USB drive and did a low level format of the drive prior to use. The low level format was using the Mac disk utility, 2 clicks to the right. Still 1 – 5 MBs
- I tried both of Synology’s solutions – Hyper Backup and USB Copy with the low level formatted hard drive, no effective difference between the two.
My solution:
Move to using rsync through Hyper Backup to a network drive. I get 75 – 90 MB/s, sustained at 80 MB/s. I use a basic 2gb Raspberry Pi running Open Media Vault with an external, mechanical HDD connected through usb 3.0 to the pi. I still want the air gap as protection from ransomware so once I have the rest of my backup strategy completed I’ll revisit the USB 3.0 issue.
Other options:
If you want to try to use a usb drive, here are the solutions I found on Synology’s community forum. All solutions come from 5 pages of comments on:
https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/122991?page=1&sort=oldest
All comments are cut and pasted, as written:
- Using rsync with EXT4 + write cache works much smoother, ends up at transfer speeds of about 15-20 MB/s. That’s much slower than USBcopy but can possibly accepted if one wants to have more flexibility.
- Low Lever format of the HDD before using can achieve speeds of 100 mb/s – words from windows or a Linux format
- Jiggle the cable (Unplug, plug-in) on both sides.
- I recommend to do following things:
- use external hdd (test it prior in laptops in usb3 ports, it should achieve over 100 MB/s) ; some of standard USB have lower speed even they are marketed as USB3.
- format the hdd in Synology and check mark : DSM->control panel->external devices->device settings->write cache support
- ntfs driver implementation on the synology (on a lot of systems btw) creates huge fragmentation. ext4 driver is better in this regard.
- video software deinstallation makes sure there is no read of video files after writing to usb (so less usb load so more usb performance)
- Synology Package USB Copy – URL >> https://kb.synology.com/api/v1/findHelpFile/dsm/USBCopy/2.0/enu/6.2-24922/synology_apollolake_218+/100/usbcopy_general.html. Results are incredible with simple and intuitive backup / copy/ paste capabilities – with transfer speeds 90mbs to 182mbs from what I have noticed. In the graph, you can see the original data read/write speeds was from a 3rd party backup application on my MacOS that would copy files from the LAN storage to the connected USB HD. THEN, you see the massive speed increase using USB Copy Package by Synology.
- In the end, I found an old nuc like device which I booted with a linux live usb stick and attached it directly (cross cable) to the NAS network port (after breaking my bond). I attached both usb disks to the nuc and did an rsync. I now get +110MB/s
- Like mentioned earlier formatting the disk on Windows without “quick format” works.
- I did an ExFat format without “quick format” on Windows. After that i formatted the disk in the Nas as Ext4 and now i’ve got USB speeds of 82MB/s read and 85MB/s write.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several different ways that one might be able to beat issues with slow transfer rates from a Synology NAS to an external USB 3.0 drives. Unfortunately, I haven’t found one that works for me, but maybe you will.