Setting up a NAS backup on S3

The goal

Your material lives on the NAS. A second storage in a data centre holds a copy. footage.one creates it automatically at import time, and you can check per item whether it exists.

Prerequisites

• A NAS with WebDAV that's reachable from outside your network — see Exposing a NAS to the internet and the guides for Synology and QNAP.
• An S3 bucket with a provider. For a verified selection, see European WebDAV and S3 storage.
• Credentials for both storages: username and password for WebDAV, access key and secret key for S3.

Step 1 — Connect the NAS as a WebDAV storage

1. In the sidebar, under Ingest, open Storages.
2. Click Connect new storage.
3. In the Server Storage group, pick the WebDAV tile.
4. Fill in your NAS credentials:
   • Storage name — e.g. "Office NAS"
   • Description (optional)
   • Host address — e.g. https://my-nas.example.org:5006
   • Default path (optional) — restricts the folder view
   • Login and Password — your NAS's WebDAV user
5. Leave Expert options → Usage type at its default STORAGE — the NAS is the source for imports, not the backup target.
6. Click Create storage.

Step 2 — Connect an S3 storage as the backup target

1. Click Connect new storage again.
2. In the Business Cloud Storage group, pick the AWS S3 tile.
3. Fill in your S3 bucket's credentials:
   • Storage name — pick a name that makes the role obvious, e.g. "Backup Hetzner"
   • Description — e.g. "Backup target for NAS imports"
   • Access Key Id and Secret Key
   • Bucket
   • Endpoint — your S3 provider's URL
4. Open Expert options and set Usage type to BACKUP.
5. Click Create storage.

Tip: footage.one identifies a storage's role solely by its Usage type — name and description are free text. A descriptive name like "Backup Hetzner" still helps you tell your storages apart later.

Step 3 — Import media

1. Open the WebDAV storage from step 1 in the storage list.
2. Navigate to the folder you want and select the files, or the whole folder, via the checkboxes.
3. Click Import selected at the bottom.
4. In the Import assets dialog, click Customize to see the import options, and enable Create backup copy.
5. Optionally, enable Remember for all future imports to keep the setting for future imports.
6. Confirm the dialog.

Step 4 — Verify the backup

1. Open the imported asset.
2. Click Origin and master file.
3. Find the row with usage type BACKUP — its status should read OK.

For what the columns mean and which actions are available there, see Origin and master file.

What this doesn't do

Note: This is not an ongoing synchronization. Media that was already imported before you set up the backup storage does not get a copy retroactively. For individual items, there's the Copy to archive action instead — see Origin and master file.

Next steps

• Backup and archive — the concepts behind usage types and import options.
• Making local media reachable — other ways to connect material to footage.one without a WebDAV-capable NAS.