I am having the same issue understanding how backups actually work. I am new to ZimaOS and just set up my NAS last week. I have three Windows computers and a WD MyCloud that is plugged into the router with a WD My Passport USB drive plugged into the MyCloud. My main reason for building the NAS was to be able to back up the three computers and the MyCloud and external USB drive. I installed the latest version of ZimaOS available when I set up my NAS so I am sure I have version 1.5. But when I set up by backups the Auto and Manual buttons were not there. My expectation from the videos I had watch was that there would be a way to schedule automatic backups but I have found no way to do this. I have tried running backups on all three computers but not the MyCloud or USB drives yet. Two computers backed up everything correctly but one was missing a lot of files and folders that should have been backed up. I tried restarting another backup from that computer about 30 minutes ago but it seems to be hung up.
Since I have been trying to run backups the 5G wifi network has shut off and had to be reset twice. The computer that failed to backup correctly is connected to my network by the 5G wifi band. The other two computers that backed up correctly are connected by the 2.4G band.
I am having a lot of trouble getting my backups to work as I expected them to and I don’t know if scheduled backups are not just available yet or if I am doing something wrong. Would appreciate any guidance.
Would you please show me the setting process of your backup task? The screen record is best.
Thanks for your response.
I am having trouble figuring out how to get a screengrab of the problem I am having. I hope what I pasted will show you what you need to see.
The one computer that has never backed up properly of the three that I have is my laptop. It is a Windows 11 HP laptop connected to my home network by the 5G WiFi band of my router. At first I tried setting up the backup using the Backup button in the dashboard, but that only seemed to give me the option to backup things from cloud locations or from the ZimaOS NAS itself to some other location. I want to back up my three computers to the ZimaOS NAS storage drive.
I found that I had to use the backup function in the Windows client that I had loaded on my laptop. Using that I was able to choose the folder on the laptop I wanted to back up and created a folder on the NAS storage drive where I wanted the backup to be saved. The first time I tried it when I clicked on the Start button the Client window said “Backing Up”. I checked back several times for over a day and every time it was still backing up. I felt that it had had plenty of time to back up what was in the folder and had read in a forum post that it automatically did another backup every day so I thought it was hung up or stuck or doing another backup so I stopped the back up. When I checked the Backup folder on the NAS it contained 702 folders, and 155 files; 252 MB of data. The source folder I was trying to backup contained 24045 folders and 109,263 files; 32.6 GB of data.
When I went back to try doing another backup it said “Add your first backup” like I had never done one before. I have tried to do the backup again several times now and once I choose the source and destination folders and press the Start button there is a little white circle going around by the start button and it never does anything else. It seems no matter how long I wait the backup never actually starts. The other thing that has happened every time I have tried to run a backup on this laptop I discover later that my 5G WiFi band has stopped working and I have to reset the WiFi adapter to get it working again.
My other two computers, because they are father away from the router, are connected with the 2.4G wifi band. As far as I can tell the backups on those computers did backup everything I wanted backed up and the 2.4G wifi band has not been affected.
I also have a WD MyCloud with a USB hard drive plugged into it that I also want to back up to the NAS. I wanted to schedule each different computer or folder to backup on a different day of the week at about 1 am so the wifi network wouldn’t be overloaded trying to do all the backups at the same time. But ZimaOS doesn’t seem to give me that option right now. I planned to created a schedule so that each source got backed up once a week.
Any guidance you can give me would be greatly appreciated. The primary reason I built the NAS was to be able to set up automatic backups of my other three computers and so far, with ZimaOS, I have not been able to do that.
William Ferrell
This is what I do with Windows:
- Press
CTRL + Winkey + S
- Hold
CTRL + left click, drag and select the area you’d like to take a screenshot of with your mouse
- Release
CTRL + V here in the text box to append the image to your post
Hey @wferrell54 , I have moved your post here since your issue here is with the Zima Client instead of ZimaOS.
The backup function in Zima Client is slightly different from the one in ZimaOS.
I still suggest you use a phone or a camera to take a video of your backup operation process, your issues, and expectations.
And as far as I am concerned, the 5G signal should not do anything with the backup.
Also, I will invite our engineer to look at this issue.
Please ensure you have updated the OS and Client to the latest version.
Look forward to your reply.
Thanks for your response. It has taken me a while to respond because I am still new to posting in the forum and still trying to figure out how to do a screen capture and all this other stuff. I actually tried replying to the email I got that was the same as your last response, but of course it didn’t go through because it was from a no-reply email account.
I thought I found the problem with my backups a few days ago. I realized my Windows Firewall was blocking the Zima app from some functions. I went to the security settings on all three computers and added the Zima app as a trusted app in all three. After that all three computers were saying they were backing up. However as I went back to check on them I realized after a while that no new data or files were being added to the destination folders.
Sometimes beside the place where it says “Backing up…” there was a number of MB/s indicating that files were actively being transferred. Occasionally one of the backups I had started would say “Completed”. But most of the time they would say “Backing up…” but it didn’t look like anything was happening. They just seemed stuck. One night I went around to each computer and wrote down the number of GB and files in each destination folder. The next morning I checked each one of them again and the number of GB and files in each destination folder was exactly the same even though they said they were “Backing up…”
I would like a detailed explanation of how the current backup process from the ZimaOS Client on a Windows 11 computer to the ZimaOS NAS is supposed to work. How often does it re-run a backup once you have started one? Does it run a complete new backup or does it only add or change anything that has changed on the source drive? When do you expect users to be able to schedule backup to happen when they want them to instead of being stuck with how the OS decides to do it?
I have three Windows 11 PC’s and some NAS drives that I want to back up automatically on a regular basis. The three PC’s are connected to the network by wifi. The NAS drives are connected directly to the router by ethernet. I have a total of seven drives or folders on these devices that I want to back up. My plan was to schedule each one of them to run a backup at 1 am on a different night of the week for each. I didn’t want all of them to be trying to use the network at the same time and possibly overload it. So far I have not been able to get it to work reliably at all, much less on the schedule I want to use. And since I have been trying to get the backups working my wifi network has shut off four times and I had to reset the network adapter to get it working again. I have no idea whether the backups all running at once are crashing the wifi network or if the router is developing some problem with its wifi function.
I am new to trying to set up and operate a NAS, other than the WD My Cloud that I bought years ago. But the only way I have used it is to have it mapped as a network drive. I chose to use ZimaOS because I thought it was the simplest to use for someone like me who is not very familiar with the inner workings of computers. I thought that setting up scheduled Backups would be the core function of a NAS OS and should be fairly straightforward to set up and get working. I am getting very frustrated that I can’t seem to get this basic function working like I think it should.
I hope someone can help me get this working correctly.
William Ferrell
Thank you for your detailed reply. Our team will carefully read and consider the issue you are experiencing. In the meantime, please confirm your software version here. This is helpful for determining the cause of the problem.
Thank you for your reply.
My ZimaOS is version 1.5.1 and it has the word Plus beside it.
The ZimzOS Client is version 2.3.0
I am including a screenshot of the device info that gives some of the specifics about the NAS I built.
Thanks again for your help.
It seems that there have been files in your C drive/user/owner folder that cannot be successfully backed up, it may be because of insufficient file permissions, What does the owner folder on the C drive contain?
- Later, we will support backing up these files with insufficient permissions, and if the backup fails, the specific files that failed the backup will also be displayed, and you will be given a choice of how to handle these files (for example: skip/retry).
- The existing backup logic of the client is that if the file fails to be backed up, it will always be retried, so you will see that it is always in the Backing up state. Then the client backup is always listening for your file changes, and once there is a file change, it will immediately trigger the incremental backup. Secondly, an incremental backup will be automatically performed at 1 a.m. every day to prevent missed backups (we will optimize this to the directory where your backup failed to be performed at 1 a.m. every day, or once a week)
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