Best Way to Backup QNAP/Synology NAS to PC

About the NAS you’re using

NAS is the abbreviation of Network-attached storage which is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. It is specialized for serving files either by its hardware/software or configuration. NAS systems are networked appliances which contain one or more storage drives. 

There are many NAS manufacturers around the world. You may know their products like Synology DS1515+ NAS, QNAP TS-251+-2G-US NAS, Netgear RN31400-100 NAS and so on. Most people backup files to NAS for extra data security.

Why backup NAS to PC

You are able to create your own personal cloud with NAS to store music, movies, documents and data. This is a relative conception to public clouds. The personal cloud create with NAS will keep all your content in one safe place on your home network so you can share files, stream media and access your content anywhere. Several NAS devices are quite popular among personal and home users around the world, such as QNAP NAS, Synology NAS, and Seagate NAS and so on.

However, as a storage device, NAS would fail due to various reasons. For instance, NAS units use regular RAID, and then it is likely to fail. Therefore, some ask if they can backup QNAP NAS to PC. Anyway, to protect data, you can backup NAS to NAS or backup NAS to computer.

Free software to backup NAS to local drive on PC

To backup NAS, you need to find professional NAS backup software. Some software claims they support backup NAS, but the truth is they CLONE files on NAS to PC. This operation achieves your aim of protecting data and wasting your disk space at the same time because backup image takes less space than its original form.

AOMEI Backupper Standard is free backup software that will help you, for example, backup Synology NAS to PC in simple steps. Features File Backup and File Sync allow you to randomly backup from NAS to PC, including individual files and folders. Schedule backup and sync in Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Event-trigger modes help a lot in regular backup tasks.

In addition to backing up NAS to local PC, you can also backup NAS to external hard drive. You are able to compress and encrypt backup image if the data is quite sensitive and personal. Incremental and schedule backup also are supported by this software. It has a user-friendly interface so that you don’t need to worry about losing data by mistake.

How to backup NAS to PC step by step in Windows

Download and install free AOMEI Backupper Standard first. It is important that you know the IP address or path of your NAS device because you’ll need that later. Following details how to protect NAS file in two different methods.

Backup NAS files to local hard drive

1. Start AOMEI Backupper and click on File Backup under Backup tab.

2. Click Add File or Add Folders to add files on NAS. Your account and password may be required to access the data during this process. Just follow the wizard.

3. Click to select another place from local disk to store NAS backup image.

4. You can compress and encrypt backup image, or set schedule backup by clicking Options and checking Schedule Backup box (Optional). Then click Start Backup.

Sync NAS files to PC with freeware

The difference between file synchronization and file backup is that you don’t have to restore backup images before you can use it. In other words, file sync saves time and effort when you need those files. However, file sync requires more disk space on PC. Thus, make sure you have sufficient storage on your PC for files on NAS.

1. Open AOMEI Backupper, go to Sync and then Basic Sync.

2. Click Add Folder > Browse > Share/NAS to select folders on your NAS device.

3. Choose a folder on local PC as the destination path.

4. As covered, you can do some customized settings if you want to. Then click Start Sync to sync files on NAS to PC for the first time.

Tips: If checked Schedule box, you have two options available. One is “Add the schedule and start sync now”, and the other is “Only add the schedule” and the sync task will run at the next time you set up.

Conclusion

With free AOMEI Backupper Standard, you can backup NAS to PC in different ways. This software supports Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista and XP so use it with worry free. You can backup PC to NAS on the contrary with this utility. 

It also has many other helpful features that could help you solve practical issues, such as clone hard drive with bad sectors, create bootable media, backup hard drive without booting Windows, backup system/disk/partition, system clone etc.