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February 22, 2026

Unlocking the Power of TrueNAS: Backup Data, Set Up Cloud Sync On Old Dell PC!

3rd installation of the Dell Vostro 220s TrueNAS series. Creating a Network Attached Storage, trying to breathe more life into the old boy. Create your own ...

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Unlocking the Power of TrueNAS: Backup Data, Set Up Cloud Sync On Old Dell PC!

Hi everyone, welcome to 5UBZERO664!

In this post, we're going to learn how to back up our data and set up cloud sync on a TrueNAS installation. TrueNAS lets you take complete control of your data storage, but backing up and keeping your data protected is a crucial best practice. We'll look at cloud sync which provides easy, automated backup to cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and others.

What is TrueNAS Cloud Sync?

Cloud Sync is a function built into TrueNAS that lets you easily schedule sync, copying, and moving of files between your TrueNAS server to almost any cloud service provider. You have an account to a cloud service provider that you trust. Then you set up your account's cloud credentials on TrueNAS scale.

Imagine Cloud Sync like an automated butler tirelessly keeping your files safely stored in a secure offsite location of your choosing, on a schedule that you decide.

TrueNAS allows us to back up our data onto several cloud service providers like Amazon S3, Backblaze, Google Cloud, Dropbox, and Microsoft Azure.

Step-By-Step Guide: Setting Up Cloud Sync

Here’s how you set up a cloud sync task:

Choosing a Cloud Service Provider

The first thing you need is an account to a cloud service provider you like and trust.

Then, you'll need to set up your account's cloud credentials on TrueNAS Scale. In this example we'll be using iDrive e2. Setting up backup to any cloud service provider should be similar to how I will do it today.

First, set up an iDrive e2 bucket. Then log in to your iDrive account. Go to "buckets" and create a new bucket for your backup. Choosing the region closest to you makes the most sense. Give it a name that you can easily identify. Files on iDrive are defaulted to being private. If you have a paid subscription, you can choose to make this public so you can share the files to others, for example, in your team. Here it shows that the bucket name can only accept alphanumeric names in small caps. Once you update the bucket name accordingly, you can click create bucket.

Now, your first bucket is created and we can proceed to create the access key for our bucket. Go to "access keys" and click create. As you start to type in the name, it will give you suggested names from the buckets that you have. Make sure the permissions you select for TrueNAS is read and write, otherwise you will not be able to push files if read only is selected, and you will not be able to pull files from your backup if right only is selected. Once you click create access key, it will give you the endpoint, access key ID and secret access key. All of which you need to enter in cloud credentials on TrueNAS. Make sure to copy and save all this information as it will only show once. If you lose this information, you will have to create a new access key.

TrueNAS Configuration

To begin setting up cloud sync, go to "credentials," then "backup credentials." Click on "add cloud credentials." Here, TrueNAS Scale provides a list of providers that you can use. If you are using iDrive like I am, you will need to select Amazon S3 as the provider. Put "iDrive" as the name to identify that this is for iDrive credentials.
Here we will enter the access key and the secret access key we created on iDrive. Under Advanced options, we just need to update the Endpoint URL and click disable Endpoint region.

Verify that the credentials are valid, then save.

Now we have cloud credentials set up and can now set up our cloud sync task.

Click on "add", enter a description. Under credentials, select the one that was just created. On "direction", we can select either push or pull. Push would be backing up our system to iDrive. Pull will be, for example, if we want to restore our folder from iDrive.
Right now, we want to select push. Under bucket, you should be able to see the bucket we created on iDrive. Select "truenas." On transfer mode, we can either select sync, copy, or move. Sync would be changing data on the backup to match data from the source. Added files from the source would be added to the backup. Deleted files from the source will also be deleted on the backup. copy would be overwriting all that is currently on the backup, while move will delete from the source and copy to our backup.

For today's demo, we are going to select sync. If you have any folders on the iDrive bucket, it will show here. Select the dataset you want to backup under the directory files. This backup has to have no further nesting, or there are no further subfolders under the folder you selected to backup.

Under control, we can select when we want the task scheduled to take place. You can select hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or if you need to, you can set it to run every minute by going to custom.

Pre-script and post-script if you need to run a script before and or after sync is performed. "Exclude" is to exclude different separate entries by pressing enter.

It is highly recommended to use remote encryption. You would be entering an encryption password and encryption salt. We will proceed without encryption.

Click save. Our first Cloud sync task is now pending. It should be running in a minute or so.

Key Takeaways

  • Cloud Sync automates backups from TrueNAS to many cloud providers.
  • Setting up credentials correctly is essential for access.
  • Choose push or pull direction based on backup vs. restore.
  • Sync, copy, and move settings determine file handling.
  • Remote encryption is critical to secure your backups.

I hope you enjoyed the video and found value in it! Thank you for watching!

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