Network Attached Storage (NAS) is your own personal cloud. With the help of some apps, you can backup and sync your Android phone to NAS.

There are a few apps (not many) in Play Store which claim to back up your phone’s data to SMB NAS and I have tried a few apps and chose the best out of them for you. You can also do this manually with some File Explorer apps which support NAS and copy and paste all your files.

Also Read: How to backup and sync Photos to NAS.

Two-way Sync

You should know that there are some methods of auto sync viz. A<+>B or A<->B, etc. We’ll not get into the complex details of this. But you should know that a sync means two-way data transfer between folders. With NAS backup, you’re going to copy all your device folders and files into NAS cloud which will be a mirror of your device.

Things you’ll need:

Your Android Phone. SMBSync2 app. NAS Machine. Wifi.

About the app (SMBSync2)

The app has the worst UI you’ve ever seen. The app was recently updated on 14th May’18 and still, the dev didn’t update the UI. If you can tolerate the bad UI part, this is the only app which works flawlessly.

Getting Things Ready

Before starting this tutorial, I assume that you already have a NAS device ready. I don’t have a standalone NAS machine but a Windows gaming PC in which I have installed a 2TB NAS Drive for this purpose and shared that drive to the cloud.

Install the SMBSync2 app on your Android phone and follow the instructions below to setup backup and sync.

How to set up the app for NAS backup and sync.

You’ll see some default tasks which you don’t need. So delete them all and create a new task. Write the sync name. Sync type is, by default, Mirror. Choose the Master and Target folders. The Master folder is your phone’s root folder, you can modify it to any folder you’d like or select specific folders down on ” task” page. Target Folder is your SMB NAS folder. Select Folder type as SMB server. Click on Search SMB server to search your NAS device. In case you know the IP and port details, write them OR just press on Search to select your NAS device on-screen. Write down the port number, if that applies to your NAS device. In my Windows Shared folder, this didn’t apply. Write your username and password. And on the bottom of the page, click on List Directory. Choose or create a Folder in your NAS cloud. And Save.

That’s all for the setup part. Now simply press on that “Sync” button in the toolbar. And it starts syncing your device to your own cloud.

In case, it shows an error, close the app from recents and restart the app. If the error still persists, recheck your config.

You can also schedule the sync task. Just click on the calendar icon near the sync button and you’ll be prompted to add a schedule.

Hope this helps to create an auto backup and sync of your device. This is extremely helpful when something unfortunate happens to your device like theft, drop, data loss, unwanted deletion of some files, etc.