Bjorn3D.com Bjorn3d.com – Satisfying Your Daily Tech Cravings Since 1996
The HBS 3 Hybrid Backup and Sync: Revamped Backup and Sync Tool
The HBS 3 Hybrid Backup and Sync is QNAP’s all-in-one tool for backup, restore, and sync data. Interestingly, the old Backup Station is still bundled with older QNAP firmware before we upgraded to 4.5.1 but once we installed 4.5.1 or later firmware, the Backup Station is no longer listed under the list of Apps. However, QNAP did not replace the app with the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup and Sync, instead , we have to install it from the App Center.
Compare to the Backup Station, the HBS 3 is a much easier to use app with its modern UI and the step by step guide makes setting up the tasks a breeze. While the older Backup Station supports only Amazon S3 as a cloud storage, the HBS 3 supports many popular cloud service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and others. The HBS 3 also handles syncing data between NAS to and from another NAS, both locally and remotely. Additionally, Time Machine, Rsync Server, RTRR Server, and External USB copy are supported. Users have the option to set up “Active Sync Job” for two-way sync or “One Way Sync Job” for syncing from NAS to another device.
The HBS 3 allows apply filters, compress data, and dedup data when creating a backup task. Data can be encrypted and the transmission rate can be capped so it won’t bug down the network during active hour and it also supports TCP BBR congestion control. Up to 30 schedules can be applied to a given task where we have the option for one-time, periodic, daily, weekly, and monthly. Versioning is also supported with the ability to have Simple Versioning where backed up files are retained after the set number of versions or days, or Smart Versioning that gives us more granular control of number of hours, weeks, days and months when the files are retained. Dedupe is automatically turned on when versioning is enabled order to reduce the unnecessary duplicates being backed up. (QNAP does not recommend using Dedupe with video file, instead, it recommends using Snapshot to maximize backup efficiency)
The QuDedup is a new feature added to the HBS 3 that handles the data deduplication so only a single version of duplicated data is backed up. Since the dedupe process is done at the source (ie on the NAS), it helps to have a powerful NAS and QNAP recommends an x86 NAS with an SSD. Meaning any NAS with Intel or AMD processor would work which our TS-453D has no trouble handling our quick tests even with a traditional drive. We duplicated the same files in a folder and set up a backed up task to Google Drive and seen only single copy is backed up. With dedupe, backup process takes a little bit more time because the NAS first examines the data so that only new data and not the duplicates is being uploaded. Despite some resources on the NAS is being used for the deduping process, we did not notice big impact on the performance so home users probably could get by without an SSD. Though given to the fact that the price of SSD is dropping to less than 10 cents per gigabyte, we would still recommend to equip the NAS with one if data backup is your priority.
When dedupe is enabled, data are stored a “qdff” folder. QNAP provides QuDedup Extract Tool that is available in Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu for user to use to view or extract the file. There is a mentioning that the NAS’s own built-in File Station would be able to view and extra deduped file in the future. Until then, users would require to download the entire qdff folder if it is not saved locally in order to read and extract them. Clearly, the benefit with QuDedup would reduce the amount of data needed for backup and hence not only saves the storage space and the time needed for back up.
