Advice on Network attached Storage??

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You and me both.

Backup sw should only copy, and never ever ever ever move or delete anything.

It sounds to me like it wasn’t backup software per se, probably just a standard copy/paste action. But I agree that this doesn’t make sense, which is good, because the data is probably still intact somewhere, barring an extremely bad case of data rot on an infrequently used backup drive.

HOLD ON… It may have been some kind of a glitch (OH MAN I HOPE). Many many of the files that were supposed to be transferred were NOT, I am making a screen recording so you guys can see what I mean. Basically most of it has to do with folders within a folder. Example Christmas>2010>Moms house. The Moms house folder and any others in that layer are empty. However SOME of folders on the original drive that were coming up totally blank a moment ago are now showing me some images that were not there before.

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For the main transfer there is a system inside the NAS that did the file transfer. I had a friend help me set this up, and on the page where all of the NAS programming is done there was some option there to have it done. Later after he was gone I did some transfers of my own doing the copy/paste window to window thing from the PC without using that sofware and it appears that the files I did like that are fine. What I transferred that way were video files. Some of them like 5 folders deep and so far I’m not finding any empty ones accept one “project file” folder which might just have been empty anyway.

I would strongly suspect only a Windows File Explorer glitch. By coincidence I just ran across this:

@vestureofblood: I’m still in suspense! Did you ever find your missing data? Best wishes for a good outcome.

Dude that’s horrible… I’d look into a data recovery tool or even a service. Unless disk sectors are zero’d out / overwritten, perhaps the data can be restored

Thank you all so much for being here for me!
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YES!! I was able to access the data on my original drive. I still don’t know what happened with that part of it. When it comes to this kind of stuff my fist suspect is always me. Knowing that though, when I discovered the data was missing on the original drive I thought, “Well maybe I opened the wrong one.”. So I started over from the beginning etc. double checking to make sure I was really looking in the right place and really seeing what I was seeing. However, now all of the data is showing on the original drive so the only logical conclusion is that in a panic I still made a mistake. Like that some how I had both windows open to “Backup (Z:)” rather than one open to “Local disc (I:)”? Seems more probable than a glitch. In this case I could not be happier to have been wrong though.
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Something I was not wrong about is the failure of the NAS software to accurately make the file copy. Many of the files that are more than two layers deep are loaded with empty folders. I checked all the ones that I transferred like you normally would in windows and have not found one that was incorrect so far. A short screen clip of problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hhaSZmgx_s
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I wish I could just start over and do a new copy without using that sofware, but I have already loaded data from other drives onto the NAS and spent hours sorting it. Not interested in doing that all over again. I guess what I will have to do go through all the folders individually and “refill” the empty ones. After I have that done (probly 2-3 hours more work left to do), I will try running a backup from the first NAS drive to the second one that is installed in it using the NAS software and see if it has the same shortcoming.

Whew! All’s well that ends well I guess.

Well, I’m not not a fan of Windows, so that’s probably coloring my response, but I would still suspect a “minor” Windows glitch of not showing the actual folder contents to be what’s really at fault. Of course, there’s nothing “minor” about being presented with an Explorer window that seems to indicate that you’ve lost your entire digital life…

This shouldn’t be necessary. There’s an industry-standard tool called Rsync that is specifically designed to handle this sort of situation where a large transfer of many files in different folders could be interrupted. It should automatically check to see which files and folders have already been completely transferred during the last run, and then it will “fill in the blanks” until the exact same folder structure and contents that you have on your local disk are replicated on your NAS. The only caveat is that you’d have to make sure that the other backup software that you’re using is actually creating a transparent folder structure directly on the NAS filesystem, not throwing everything into an opaque database that only the backup software can understand. And I personally would not trust that backup software. It’s really best to stick with open source industry standard methods for backups, since that is such a fundamental concept of computing that hardcore geeks have already solved and perfected a long time ago. There’s really no need for proprietary solutions that just reinvent the wheel and often result in flat tires too.

So you didn’t lose your files? That’s great news!

Rsync is good stuff. I’ve used a Windows friendly version long ago called “”DeltaCopy”“:DeltaCopy - Rsync for Windows that might be the easiest way to get started. You’d use the client version on your computer and it would connect to the NAS (if rsync is enabled on the NAS).

I love rSync. I use it to copy files between a remote Linux server and my OneDrive to eliminate the need to consume bandwidth by pulling the stuff down to my own PC first

I’m working on the Rsync thing, or more like I got a guy coming to do it :student: I watched one video about it and decided to call for backup instead.
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Meanwhile I have something else I need to get your opinions on. I’ve got a major security issue with my email setup I need to solve.
Currently I use one main email (gmail account) and the customer support link from my shop goes to that, all outgoing tracking numbers etc. The mail client provided by my web host is the saddest most inadequate thing I have ever seen. To resolve this the gmail address had to be “ported” into the website somehow ( I pay a guy to work on that too). The major down side is that my email address and password has to be stored in the webhost data base for this to work. The guy that works on it for me did encrypt the password so that it cant be seen even from back office of the shop etc, but the fact remains it is inside the database.
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I have recently purchased another domain that I will be switching to (Lumencraft), but its at the same host, on the same platform etc. I signed up for some Gmail thing that will allow me to have a business email name like “customerservice @ lumencraft” which I would like to switch everything to, but at the same time eliminate the email password from being stored in the database. So far the only idea I’ve had is running two separate emails, one for only direct customer responses and one for everything else. Not a great solution, but I could live with it if I had to. Is there some other way I could solve this problem and still have all my email in one place?

Hi there, so I understand that you signed up for Gmail for business with your lumencraft domain? In that case it seems like it would just be a matter of using that directly, assuming you like the Gmail interface. Of course you would also have to configure your website to use that email address for things like contact forms, etc. Generally you would configure your website to send out automated confirmations from a non-monitored email address like noreply @ lumencraft. Or you can also probably create multiple addresses with your Gmail business email. You could also configure a catch-all email address that will receive all messages sent to anything at lumencraft. And you can definitely integrate all your emails into one place in Gmail. Or if you don’t like the web interface then you can connect any number of email addresses to an email client software on your computer like Thunderbird or Outlook. Or is there something else I’m not understanding?

If I understand sb5637’s response correctly I would re-state it in terms that may be easier to understand. Your web host needs an email account to send out notices. You can set up a discrete email account for this purpose. That account would have a unique password and would not give access to your other email accounts. There are many email client programs, including Gmail and Thunderbird, where you can setup multiple email accounts with discrete passwords for each, that will allow you to have all your mail in one place.

Hope this helps.

I don’t want to hijack the thread but would like to ask this question and am not sure of the proper etiquette. For nearly 24 years I have had multiple DNS entries pointing to my network. I believed in the internet and that it should be a great equalizer and that we should all have equal opportunity to have a presence on it. I have had my little piece of the internet for nearly a quarter of a century now. As far as I can determine it appears that pretty much no one else sees things this way. Does anyone else here maintain their own publicly routable IP network?

I have dynamic DNS entries pointing to my home network. Not for public consumption, just for my own use when I’m not at home. I have a jitsi-meet instance in AWS that I fire up for virtual family get-togethers, and I would like to run a matrix server, and maybe join the fediverse somehow. But I haven’t gotten ’round to it.

But I don’t run BGP (ISPs that let you do that are expensive) is that what you’re asking?

Well I do pay relatively a lot for my internet access. My network is a ipv4 .248 subnet business class service. Had to lookup BGP. If I understand it, each of my ISP’s have been doing that and I just use my .248. In the process of switching to a new ISP and they are taking a much different approach. Haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. However, until this point, my gateway IP is part of the .248 subnet. Have been told that I am connected in bridge mode but not certain if that is correct. The gateway IP address has always been handled by my ISP. The 5 useable addresses are what I work with. My new IP wants me to have an entirely different gateway address from them. Then I am expected to create the entire .248 subnet within my network including the gateway address that historically has been at my ISP. Assuming I go through with the change I will be doing something that I think is quite different from what I have been doing all these years.

I guess what I am getting at is am I just a crazy old fool? Are there others out here doing the same thing? The way I look at it, as a business, I am paying to be on the internet. If I want to share something on the internet I should be able to and have been doing so for a very long time. If I want to share a picture I share a picture :slight_smile:

This has suddenly stopped working. For years when I wanted to post a picture on this forum I just did so. I see now that I can no longer do that and that my prior pictures no longer appear.

Hmm, I see the picture in your last post. The TH20 clipped onto the tie?

Hmm, I see that in my web server log. Wonder why you see it and I don’t here? Typing this on my mint box and I don’t see it on the forum on that platform as well. In a separate tab I have the same URL and it displays just fine.

Probably due to HTTP Need to go to HTTPS but it hasn’t been much of a priority as it is all static and most modals not loaded. Need to look at moving to a distro that can replace the Mac Possibly run on some kind of VM?