Does anyone here know how to set up a regular Windows 7 PC to act as an rsync server? All I've been able to find so far are programs that use rsync, like something called DeltaCopy, but they appear to require their own server side and client side software to work (or I'm doing it wrong). I need something that makes the computer act as a standard rsync server, so that a Synology Diskstation can see it as an available place to back up its data.

Beyond that, is anyone here familiar with ways to back up a DiskStation to the cloud? Specifically Crashplan? I've been trying to follow several guides that instruct me how to create a headless Crashplan install on the Synology, and after following them all to the letter, I just can't get it to work.

That's why I'm trying this rsync solution. I figure that I could just back the data up to another computer on the network, then a normal Crashplan installation can back up the files. Does this sound crazy? It does to me... I really wish that Synology or Drobo or Crashplan or anyone would create a native, official app for cloud backup to one of these services. Synology has a few cloud backup options, but they're just not very good or they're terribly expensive.

Rsync on windows in my experience goes like this:

- install cygwin (or one of the rsync specific distributions of cygwin)
- fiddle about for ages trying to get it to work
- install a different rsync specific distribution of cygwin
- curse a lot
- get it just about working
- find that while it in theory works, it drops out in the middle of long rsync sessions

At least that was my experience with it five or so years ago. I gave up in the end and used smb to mount the Windows drive on my Linux box and ran rsync there.

It would probably be easier to use just rsync and not rsync server on each end. Getting the rsync exe running on Windows is easy enough, just have it ssh to the NAS to do rsync.

I've had rsyncd working on my Windows Server box; I haven't bothered with running it as a service, though -- I usually just fire it up when I need it.

Here's my config file:

https://www.itefix.no/i2/cwrsync

cwrsync installs easily and has worked well for me. I'm pretty sure it was free when I last used it (some 7 or 8 years ago at least) but appears they want to charge for the server version now.