This guide explains why backing up NAS to NAS is critical for business continuity. It compares three practical methods, highlights common challenges, and introduces Info2Soft’s enterprise solution offering unified management, ransomware protection, and granular recovery for scalable data protection.
Efficient storage has made NAS (Network Attached Storage) the backbone of business data infrastructures. However, storage is not backup. Without redundancy, companies risk losing core data due to hardware failure, ransomware, accidental deletion, or environmental disruptions. That is why enterprises increasingly adopt the strategy to backup NAS to NAS—a reliable way to enforce redundancy, accelerate data recovery, and build a strong foundation for disaster resilience.
Why Backup NAS to NAS Is Business-Critical?
NAS systems host mission-critical assets including databases, backups, archives, media files, virtual machine data, development resources, and surveillance recordings. These workloads demand:
- Continuous availability
- Fast recovery when failure occurs
- Cross-site data redundancy
- Protection against ransomware and corruption
- Scalability without performance bottlenecks
| Benefits | Business Value |
|---|---|
| High-speed local network replication | Faster backups and faster restores |
| No dependency on internet bandwidth | Stable resilience even offline |
| Cost efficiency | No recurring cloud storage or egress fees |
| Direct file-level access when restoring | Saves recovery time |
| Supports 3-2-1 backup strategy | Can be extended to remote NAS or cloud |
Despite these advantages, many IT teams still face challenges when performing NAS-to-NAS backups, especially in heterogeneous environments.
Common Challenges of NAS to NAS Backup
| Challenge | Impact |
|---|---|
| Mixed brands (Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, Dell, EMC…) | Native tools often lack cross-platform compatibility |
| Limited retention & scheduling control | Short-term backup history, compliance issues |
| No centralized monitoring | Complex management, uneven policy execution |
| Weak ransomware protection | Encrypted or corrupted backups compromise recovery |
| Slow recovery at scale | Longer RTO, business disruption |
To overcome these challenges, many organizations consider dedicated nas to nas backup software instead of relying solely on built-in NAS utilities.
How to Backup NAS to NAS [3 Methods]
This part introduces three methods for backing up your NAS, each provided by step-by-step instructions:
1. Backup Synology to Synology (Hyper Backup)
Hyper Backup is Synology’s built-in solution for scheduled data replication to another Synology device.
- Open Hyper Backup
- Click + → Data backup task
- Select Remote NAS device
- Enter target NAS IP, credentials, and shared folder
- Select source folders
- Configure schedule, compression, and encryption
- Set retention policy → Apply
✅ Best for: Synology-to-Synology environments
❌ Limitation: No enterprise-wide management; limited cross-vendor support
2. Backup QNAP to QNAP (Hybrid Backup Sync)
QNAP provides Hybrid Backup Sync (HBS) for local, remote, and cloud backups.
- Open HBS 3
- Choose Backup & Restore
- Click New backup job
- Select source and remote QNAP destination
- Enable versioning, compression, filters, or encryption
- Run or schedule the job
✅ Best for: QNAP-only environments
❌ Limitation: Cross-platform backup still requires manual configuration
3. Cross-Brand NAS Backup via Rsync
When backing up Synology ↔ QNAP or other mixed brands, Rsync is commonly used.
- Enable Rsync service on QNAP
- Create Rsync backup task in Synology Hyper Backup
- Enter QNAP connection details
- Start replication
✅ Works across vendors
❌ Complexity increases quickly
❌ Limited visibility, poor scalability, weak security hardening
Enterprise-Grade Solution: Info2Soft for Backup NAS to NAS
Info2Soft is a vendor specialising in data replication and disaster recovery management. Its core product i2Backup provides enterprise users with a unified data protection platform that spans multiple platforms and storage systems.
- Unified Management
i2Backup integrates NAS into a central pool with other storage types (disk, object, tape), enabling management of all your backup resources from a single platform.
- High-Performance Transfer
- Storage Optimization
- Ransomware Protection
Granular RecoveryQuickly restore individual files or folders directly from the NAS without the need for a full-volume recovery, minimizing downtime.
- High Availability
Grouping NAS devices provides load balancing and automatic failover, ensuring your backup operations remain continuous and resilient.
Conclusion
To ensure data resilience, simply storing business information in NAS is not enough. Implementing backup NAS to NAS delivers fast, cost-efficient local redundancy, while integrating nas backup to cloud enables complete off-site disaster readiness.
Basic tools like Hyper Backup or HBS can work for small single-brand setups, but growing businesses require a more powerful nas to nas backup software with:
- Cross-vendor compatibility
- Centralized control
- Ransomware-safe repositories
- Hybrid cloud DR scalability
Info2Soft empowers enterprises with a secure, scalable, and automated NAS backup and disaster recovery architecture, delivering lower RTO, lower TCO, and stronger protection than ad-hoc NAS utilities.