Active Backup - Whole-PC and Mac Backups to Your Synology

What Active Backup for Business Is

Active Backup for Business is free Synology software that backs up whole computers onto your NAS. It runs on the NAS, and a small helper program runs on each PC or Mac you want to protect.

The word Business is just Synology's name for it. There is no separate home version and no fee. A family with two laptops uses the very same tool as a small office with fifteen machines.

• Windows PCs - laptops and desktops.
• Macs.
• It can also back up file servers and certain virtual machines, but for a home or small office it is the computers that matter.

Whole-Device Image vs. Just Files

There are two different ideas of backup, and understanding the difference is the key to why this tool is so useful.

Active Backup makes the whole-device image. That is what makes it powerful. When a machine dies, you do not rebuild it piece by piece over a painful week. You restore the image and the computer comes back the way it was, as if nothing happened.

• Just files. You copy your documents and photos. If the computer dies, you have your files - but you must reinstall Windows or macOS, every program, and every setting by hand. That can take days.
• A whole-device image. You capture the entire computer as one complete picture - the system, the programs, the settings, and all your files together.

Installing the Package on the NAS

First we put Active Backup for Business onto the NAS itself. It is free, and you add it through Package Center, the app store built into your Synology.

DSM is the Synology system you see in your browser - it stands for DiskStation Manager. This guide is written for DSM version 7. If a screen looks slightly different, the ideas are the same; look for the same words.

• Sign in to your NAS in a web browser (DSM, the Synology desktop).
• Open Package Center from the main menu.
• Search for Active Backup for Business.
• Click Install and wait for it to finish.
• Open it once it appears in your main menu.

The Small Agent on a Windows PC

The agent is a small, free helper program you install on each computer. It is what actually sends the backup to the NAS. On a Windows PC, here is the general idea.

The agent then runs quietly in the background. You do not have to open it every day. It wakes up on schedule, sends what changed, and goes back to sleep. Most of the time you will forget it is there.

• Download the Active Backup for Business Agent from Synology, or from the link the package provides.
• Run the installer on the Windows PC like any other program.
• When it opens, it asks for your NAS's address and a login to connect.
• Enter the NAS address and sign in with an account that has permission.
• Once connected, the PC appears in Active Backup on the NAS.

The Agent on a Mac

Macs are covered too. The agent for macOS works the same way as the Windows one - a small helper that connects the Mac to your NAS and sends its backups there.

That approval step matters on a Mac. To capture the whole machine, the agent needs permission to read the full disk. macOS asks you to allow this on purpose, for your safety. Say yes, and the Mac is protected.

• Download the Mac version of the Active Backup for Business Agent from Synology.
• Open the installer and follow the prompts.
• macOS may ask you to approve the software in System Settings - this is normal for backup tools that read the whole disk.
• Grant the permissions it asks for, so it can back up everything.
• Enter your NAS address and sign in to connect.

Connecting the Computer to the NAS

Connecting is the handshake between the agent on the computer and Active Backup on the NAS. Once they shake hands, the NAS knows about that computer and can manage its backups.

After the handshake, the computer shows up in the Active Backup console on the NAS. From there you decide how it is backed up and when. The computer just quietly does as it is told.

• The agent needs the NAS's address on your network - a name or a number.
• It needs a login that has permission to use Active Backup.
• Both the computer and the NAS should be on the same home or office network.
• Once connected, you manage everything from the NAS - you rarely touch the agent again.

The First Full Backup

The first backup is the big one. It copies the entire computer to the NAS, so it takes the longest - possibly several hours. This only happens once, so be patient with it.

Start the first backup when you will not need the computer at full speed for a while - overnight is perfect. Let it finish completely. Once that first full picture is safely on the NAS, everything after it is quick.

• It copies everything: the system, programs, settings, and all your files.
• How long it takes depends on how much is on the computer and how fast your network is.
• You can keep using the computer while it runs - it will just be a little busier.
• A wired network connection makes this first run much faster than Wi-Fi.

Incremental Backups After That

Here is the clever part that makes this practical. After that first big backup, every backup after it is incremental - meaning it only copies what changed since last time. Those runs are fast and light.

Think of it like a diary. The first day you write your whole life story. Every day after, you only add what happened that day. You never rewrite the whole story again, yet the diary always holds the complete picture.

• Daily backups finish quickly because only the changes go across.
• It uses far less space than saving a full copy every time.
• It is gentle on your computer and your network.
• Yet you can still restore the whole machine as it was on any backed-up day.

Setting a Schedule

A backup only helps if it runs regularly, and a schedule means you never have to remember. You set it once on the NAS, and the computers back themselves up on their own.

Ask yourself: if this computer died right now, how much recent work could I stand to lose? Let that answer set how often you back up. For most people, once a night is the comfortable sweet spot.

• Daily is a great default - overnight, when nobody is working.
• A small business usually wants daily, so at most one day's work is at risk.
• You can back up more often if the computer holds fast-changing, important work.

Deduplication - Saving Space

Deduplication is a big word for a simple, clever trick: the NAS stores only one copy of anything it has seen before. This saves a surprising amount of space, especially when you back up several computers.

Think about it - five office PCs all run the same Windows and the same programs. That is a lot of identical files. Without dedup, you would store five copies. With dedup, the NAS keeps one copy of each shared piece and simply remembers which computers use it.

• Backing up many computers takes far less space than you would guess.
• The more similar the computers, the more space you save.
• It happens automatically - there is nothing for you to turn on or manage.

Restoring a Single File

The everyday reason backups earn their keep: you deleted or ruined a file and want it back. You do not have to restore the whole computer for that. Active Backup has a Restore Portal for grabbing just what you need.

Because each backup is a point in time, you can reach back to a day when the file was still good - even if the bad version was backed up later. That is a safety net a simple copy cannot give you.

• Open the Active Backup for Business Restore Portal from the NAS.
• Choose the computer whose file you want.
• Pick which backup date to look in - today's, or an older one.
• Browse to the file or folder you need.
• Download or restore it back to where you want it.

A Full Bare-Metal Restore

This is the headline feature: rebuilding an entire computer from nothing. Bare metal means a blank machine - a new hard drive, or a replacement computer - with nothing on it. Active Backup can put the whole system back.

When it finishes, the computer comes back the way it was - Windows or macOS, your programs, your settings, your files, all together. No reinstalling from scratch. This is the payoff for taking whole-device images all along.

• You create recovery media - a bootable USB drive made with a Synology tool.
• You start the blank or replacement computer from that USB drive.
• It connects to your NAS and finds the computer's backups.
• You pick which backup to restore, and it rebuilds the whole machine.

Protecting Several Computers at Once

Active Backup shines when you have more than one computer. Whether it is two laptops at home or a dozen machines at a small business, they all back up to the same NAS and you manage them from one place.

For a small business, this is a genuinely professional-grade backup that costs nothing beyond the NAS and drives you already have. One person can keep an eye on every computer in the office from a single screen.

• Install the agent on each computer and it joins the same central console.
• Deduplication means each similar computer adds far less to the storage than the first.
• You set schedules and check status for all of them from the NAS.
• Restoring any one of them works the same way, no matter how many you have.

How It Compares to Time Machine and File History

Your Mac has Time Machine and your Windows PC has File History built in. Both are fine, and you can even use them alongside Active Backup. But it helps to know what each one really does.

The big difference is central and whole-machine. Active Backup captures the entire computer, backs up PCs and Macs together to one NAS, and lets you rebuild a machine from bare metal. The built-in tools are handy, but they do not centralize several computers the way this does.

How Long to Keep Backups (Retention)

Retention is just a plain question: how many past backups do you keep before old ones are cleared away? Keep too few and you cannot go back far; keep too many and you fill the NAS. There is a comfortable middle.

You do not need every backup forever. What you want is enough history to catch a problem you did not notice right away - like a file that got corrupted a couple of weeks ago. A sensible retention setting handles that without stuffing the NAS.

• Keep recent daily backups so you can undo a mistake from the last week or two.
• Keep a thinner history going back further - a few weekly or monthly points.
• Active Backup can thin out old versions automatically on a schedule you set.
• The right amount depends on your NAS space and how far back you might need.

The Admin Console Overview

Everything is run from one screen on the NAS - the Active Backup for Business console. You do not have to learn every corner of it. A quick tour of the main parts is enough to feel at home.

Most days you will not open it at all - it runs on its own. When you do look, it is usually just to confirm everything is green, or to restore something. Glancing at it now and then is a good, quick habit.

• A list of your computers and whether each one backed up successfully.
• Backup settings and schedules for each machine.
• The Restore Portal for getting files or whole machines back.
• Status and logs that show what ran and flag anything that failed.

It Backs Up Computers, Not Phones

One honest limit, so you are not caught out: Active Backup for Business is for computers - Windows PCs and Macs. It does not back up your phone or tablet. Those need a different approach.

This is not a flaw - it is just the right tool for the right job. Active Backup handles the heavy lifting of whole computers. Your phone's photos are best handled by the phone photo app or your phone's own cloud.

• Synology has a separate free app for phones and tablets that backs up their photos to the NAS.
• Your phone likely also backs up to Apple iCloud or Google, which covers a lot already.
• The point is simply that Active Backup is not the tool for the phone in your pocket.

Fitting It Into a 3-2-1 Plan

Active Backup is powerful, but by itself it puts every backup in one place: on your NAS. To be truly safe, we fit it into the 3-2-1 rule that the pros live by.

Active Backup gives you the first two beautifully. But every one of those backups sits on the one NAS. If a fire or theft takes the NAS, it takes all of them at once. That is the gap the offsite copy fills.

• 3 copies of your data - the computer, and backups.
• 2 kinds of storage - the computer's own drive and the NAS.
• 1 copy offsite - somewhere away from your home or office.

What's in the 27-page PDF

• What Active Backup for Business is, and why a whole-computer backup is powerful
• Installing it on the NAS and the small helper on each computer
• The first full backup, then quick automatic ones after that
• How it saves space across several computers
• Restoring one file, or rebuilding an entire computer
• Fitting it all into a safe 3-2-1 plan

Why I wrote this

I write these as printable handouts because a guide you can keep in a drawer beats a web page you have to find again. No jargon, no judgment, no rushing. If you'd rather have someone sit beside you and go through it together, that's a flat $99 first visit with the 30-day follow-up included — serving Portage County from Atwater, Ohio. — Bill