Backups, smart outlets and Home Assistant

Hi everybody,
I‘m trying to do something cool but can‘t think of a way of realising it and I thought maybe somebody already has a solution.
Here‘s the idea: I want my QNAP-NAS to backup important data to an external HDD: For security reasons, as well as not having the HDD run 24/7 I would like to hook it up to a smart switch and only have it powered when the backups run.

Now: I could have the smart outlet power the HDD half an hour before the backup is scheduled. But how do I know when the NAS is finished and I can safely power down the HDD?

Has anyone tried this before and has a good idea?

Cheers!
Jonathan

I don’t think that unplugging a hard drive is a good idea. They normally shut themselves down after some period of inactivity.
If you still want to go that route you’ll need some way for the NAS to tell HA about backup status. Maybe through SNMP or some integration.

Unfortunatley, there is no integration for QNAP (at least that controls Backups). How do other people solve this problem? Do you just leave the HDD hooked up to the NAS?

Yes, you just leave the drive connected and always on.

1 Like