How to wake up NAS?

[brett]

I have a network attached storage device that I backup to every night.
It goes to sleep after a period of inactivity. To wake it up takes
about 8 or so seconds. My backup will error out saying the path isn't
available. I'm assuming the backup just doesn't wait around. I don't
know how to adjust that on the backup. I need a way to automate
waking up the NAS just before the backup runs. Any suggestions?

I've tried pinging the NAS IP but that doesn't wake it up. Accessing
it through Windows Explorer will wake it up.

Thanks,
Brett

[Shenan Stanley]

Schedule a task a few minutes before your scheduled backup to
copy/move/check for existance a file on the NAS.
Simple batch script would likely work fine.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

[brett]

What "exactly" would be inside of that batch script?

Thanks,
Brett

[Shenan Stanley]

brett wrote:
> I have a network attached storage device that I backup to every
> night. It goes to sleep after a period of inactivity. To wake it
> up takes about 8 or so seconds. My backup will error out saying
> the path isn't available. I'm assuming the backup just doesn't
> wait around. I don't know how to adjust that on the backup. I
> need a way to automate waking up the NAS just before the backup
> runs. Any suggestions?
>
> I've tried pinging the NAS IP but that doesn't wake it up.
> Accessing it through Windows Explorer will wake it up.

Shenan Stanley wrote:
> Schedule a task a few minutes before your scheduled backup to
> copy/move/check for existance a file on the NAS.
> Simple batch script would likely work fine.

brett wrote:
> What "exactly" would be inside of that batch script?

I have no idea in your case. I cannot see your setup.

Something where you try to copy a file (maybe create and place a text file
on your boot partition someplace - or use a file that already exists -
whatever) to the drive letter assigned to your NAS device or using the UNC
path..

copy /y c:\myfile.txt n:\

That would copy the file found at the root of c: called "myfile.txt" (that
you would have to create) to the n: drive (assuming your NAS is mapped as
N.)

Essentially - you probably want to perform some sort of file/folder access
on the NAS device so that it wakes up. Nothing major - something simple.
You could even add a second line to the script to erase the file. You could
even use echos and create the file on the fly - and then erase it
afterwards..

@ECHO OFF
ECHO content of small file >> n:\myfile.txt
erase n:\myfile.txt

Almost anything that you could do manually to wake up the NAS could likely
be scripted and scheduled.

[brett]

Perfect. Thanks.

I couldn't figure out the UNC syntax in DOS. When I'd do cd n:\, I'm
still on my c drive and not the mapped n drive. However, copy works
just fine.

Brett