Active Backup for Business: How to Backup a Windows PC to a Synology NAS

This tutorial will show how you can backup a Windows PC to a Synology NAS using Active Backup for Business. These steps can be used for disaster recovery and to ensure that your data stays safe on Windows 7/10/11. We include full restoration instructions as well that show how to restore individual files or complete a bare metal restore.

1. Install Active Backup for Business & Setup Templates for Windows PC's
2. Active Backup for Business Agent Installation
3. Restoring Individual Files
4. Bare Metal Restore
4.1 How to Create Recovery Media
4.2 Completing a Bare-Metal Restore

DISCLAIMER: The information in this video has been self-taught through years of technical tinkering. While we do our best to provide accurate, useful information, we make no guarantee that our viewers will achieve the same level of success. WunderTech does not assume liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to damage caused directly or indirectly from its content or associated media. Use at your own risk. DISCLAIMER: The information in this video has been self-taught through years of technical tinkering. While we do our best to provide accurate, useful information, we make no guarantee that our viewers will achieve the same level of success. WunderTech does not assume liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to damage caused directly or indirectly from its content or associated media. Use at your own risk.

WunderTech is a trade name of WunderTech, LLC.

[ardentdfender]

This was a great tutorial. As a recent New NAS user i find this very helpful, though it isn’t the first or 2nd video I’ve watched covering this at this point. A clear calm voice and detail step by step never fails when explaining the does of technology setup.

[hangshen]

I love your written instructions. I always print a color copy and then watch you lecture. I am a beginner, I have learned Synology through your lecture with grateful. Your lecture is smooth, clear, and in a logical sequence. After each course, I can follow your step by step, and accomplish my goal. Thanks.

[MrAntonioTech]

I love the fact that Synology provides all-in-one solution! Thanks for the tutorial.

[PatrickBijvoet]

Thank you so much. I replaced the backup with Synology Drive for this one. Drive is a great program which I continue to use for sync folders, and my Macs I will keep on backing up on my Nas via TimeMachine. But now I have a Timemachine for my PC and I love it. I had some troubles logging in with the app on the PC, but it solved itself. I made a backupmap myself on the Nas, because I always want to enable data checksum on my folders and the standard folder had not. But further the proces went as you showed. I have my first NAS for a few weeks now, and learned very much from you and another Synology NAS youtuber. Thanks and grtz from The Netherlands.

[ravensportal]

Makes sense since DSM 7 will be out of beta soon. Looking forward to seeing more tutorials using DSM7.

[thecat]

Great video! one question though, if I am going to back up two different PC's with bare metal restore, do I need to create two recovery medias one for each, or one is enough as long as both PC's are backed up on NAS? Thanks!

[amnongabbay]

Thank you, clear and most useful. Is there a way to make selective backup of the PC rather than the entire disk? I have not found that option.

[kevinhughes]

Great stuff thank you didn’t no u could do this going to use this for my home pc.

[cyberwasp]

Your tutorials are fantastic. I was just watching this again after watching, "Protect your system from bit rot.." I setup my ABB via your tutorial and noticed that the system creates the ABB directory itself and does not enable data integrity. I'm gathering it is why you use your own folder called backup?

[michaelafcadio]

Great tutorial. I only wish there were details about how to create the recovery media with working network drivers. I've done this multiple times on various Windows laptops and each time I had to go through additional non-obvious extra steps to create the bootable recovery media with the network drivers required to boot with a working Wi-Fi network. Considering that a bare metal restore is impossible without a working network these steps should be outlined either in the video or mentioned in the written instructions.

[DavidM]

Do you need to create a recovery media for each device that you backup or is it a one size fits all creation ? If it's a separate recovery USB for each device, should this be recreated periodically if, for example, you add, delete, or change partitions on the backed up device ?

[MikeS]

Active Backup for Business: will this work for Mac/IOS also, or just Windows and Linux? I have a mixed network of PCs and Apple. Thanks, great videos, just subscribed today.

[ardentdfender]

It's been a while since I know I had watched this vid about 2 months ago and after i got my NAS and learning how to setup and use. It took me a while to get to using Active Backup for Businesses and in Backing up my Windows PC and after an event. Initially when i tried using the Agent Backup it seemingly kept failing when i'd look at it later or unslept my PC. Many times it failed. So i set PC never sleep to catch a Backup and its duration. It took somewhere between 24-30hrs to backup about 1.8 TB Data to my DS 1520. This includes 5 drives on PC, (2) M.2, (2) Samsung Solid State Drives, and 1 Segate HDD at 4 TB. Of which which 1.1 TB was on a Media Data Segate HDD, about 130 GB on Windows Drive C (M.2) and remaining 700 GB on another drive (M.2). It was my observation leaving the PC for this entire duration it took this long almost 30 hrs of which it was just slower backing up the slower Segate at like 10-12 mbps. I thought WoW that is loooong! But I got the Backup Complete!

So was like ok, i have another backup scheduled already being like 2-3 days apart and if its gonna be this long again, that's not gonna be good. However, what I observed was that on the very next backup it took less than 25 minutes in total for the Backup to complete. I was like huh, that's interesting but no idea why. After the 3rd successful backup i looked at the Synology Agent log again after the next Backup and observed it took about 22-24 minutes. And so again, i thought this is interesting observation and nothing i've heard anyone explain with the Active Backup. It thus seemed to me that the very first Backup Mapping is the one that takes the absolute longest to "Snapshot", Read then Upload. Then on next time, that same Snapshot image is far reduced to maybe only take into account changes that occurred? Not quite sure. But it still has to take some time to backup some important components of the Snapshot imaged data even with not much changing. As not much data changed over the course of a few days on the entire PC. What I would be interested in is getting your feedback or in a video explanation of what Active Backup is actually doing in these events starting from the 1st and then on each event after. That is all interesting to know and i only learned it from curious observation. But in the various NAS Channels I've watched, so one has exactly explained that. Everyone just goes over How to Setup etc and that kinda stuff but not what exactly occurs and between events.

[berd]

Hi, thanks for the great video. I just bought the DS220+ and would like to do a backup of the PC. However, I am not sure if the active backup business would backup just the C: (where the Windows operating system resides) or would it also include my D: and E: when the "entire device" is selected. I was also using Synology Drive to backup my PC earlier, and I do not wish to duplicate the same backup files again. Also I was informed by the Synology Support Team that Active Backup for business would be more useful for backing up the main operating system. Appreciate your advice. Thanks

[OnetimeRacing]

Does Active Backup include just the system drive (where windows is installed) or does it include all drives attached to the PC? My PC has 4 internal drives? If it is all drives is there a way to exclude certain drives? All files on my drives besides the system drive are backed up to my NAS using Synology drive client. I have been a Synology user for a long time and recently upgraded from a DS213 to a DS220+. I really appreciate your videos; they have helped me better understand how things work and the setup instructions are excellent.

[sal]

Great video. Do I need a USB boot drive for every Windows 10 computer or only 1 Windows 10 USB boot drive for all Windows 10 computers?

[rayoung]

Just a quick question. I just used ABfB for the first time and I noticed that the backup file was just under 1TB. I am assuming that it is making an ISO image of my HD. Do you know if ABfB will do incremental backups after this point or if it will be doing a full backup each time it runs. I have 4 laptops that will be I will be backing up and at 1tb per backup my 8TB drive will be full very quickly.

Thanks Rob

[BrianRBrown-ID]

Now that I have to actually rely on this, hit a brick wall. Had to have SSD and motherboard replaced on Lenovo Yoga laptop and was hoping to do a bare-metal restore. Get it to boot from the recovery USB, but then says it is missing network drivers. Followed Synology's instructions to determine the LAN driver and install those drivers. That gets me through to the IP/login screen. Unfortunately, no matter what I do on that screen, it always comes back with "Failed to connect."

Any recommendations?

[oceanbreeze]

hello! thanks for your super videos in general. Question: how to restore a pc baremetal backup if lets say I cannot connect to the network (where NAS is connected) or in extreme case the NAS is broken? If I use HyperBackup to backup in external device the baremetal backup that was created from ActiveBackup for Business, will I be able to fully restore? if yes, how? thank you very much for your reply.

[MJphenom]

Thanks, great video! 2 quick questions:
First, the area at initialization that asks for NAS ip, username, password, are you/should you be using your synology "master admin" username or your basic user name? Obviously the other user computers all have basic synology username accounts and that will be used on those computers when installing the agent, but wondering on my own computer should I use my master admin name or basic name (I should note the following as this may affect your answer, that on my own computer I am using SMB and logged into the NAS with my basic name).

Second, does it matter which windows user account the agent is installed on? 2 of my other computers have multiple windows user accounts installed, a Microsoft user account that is the administrator (the users don't have the password or access to this account), and a local user account (non-MS account) which is what is mainly logged into and used by those users. As a follow-up question to this, irrespective of your answer, would the active backup agent perform a full backup/image/clone of the files and drive so that both user accounts on the computer are captured?