Personal Computer
To backup personal computers, Synology Active Backup for Business Agent is required to be installed on the target personal computers. You can configure the backup tasks for personal computers on DSM. There are three backup types to protect your personal computers: entire device, system volume, and customized volumes.
Before You Start
Please note the following:
- Install Synology Active Backup for Business Agent on the target device you wish to protect. You can either go to Synology Download Center or go to Active Backup for Business > PC > Add device to download the 32-bit or 64-bit installer for the device.

- Configure a Template on Active Backup for Business. Go to Settings > Template > Create to create a template or select the default template and click Edit to edit the default template.
- Configuring backup settings of a template can help apply the same backup settings to multiple devices in a mass deployment. To avoid the gap between deployment and protection, a default template set to protect personal computers will be listed and cannot be removed. You can always edit the default template or add other templates.
- When creating a template, you can decide the backup type, backup schedules, compression, encryption settings, and the version retention policy. The restore privilege of a personal computer backup template is not configurable. Only admin (user), administrators (group), and the logged-in account (user) owner can access the backup versions of devices from Active Backup for Business Portal or restore the device with the recovery media.
Note:
- To learn more about Synology Active Backup for Business Agent and installing the agent to multiple devices at the same time by Microsoft Windows
Active Directory Service (ADS), please refer to this help article.
To create a backup task:
Once the agent is installed on the personal computer and the personal computer is connected to the server, a backup task of the connected server will be created according to the matched template. You can also create more than one backup task for each device.
- You do either of the following to start the backup creation wizard:
- Go to PC > Devices, select a device you want to back up, and click Create Task.
- Go to PC > Task List and click Create.
- Create Backup Task:
Task name: Configure the name of the task. It is suggested to have a naming pattern for faster filter/search for the task.
- Select Target Device:
This step only appears if no device is selected before clicking Create. A list of personal computers that have been connected to the server will be shown in this step.
- Backup Destination:
Select a shared folder which is in Btrfs file system as the backup destination. During package installation, a Btrfs shared folder, ActiveBackupforBusiness, will be created automatically.
- Select Source Type:
- Source type: The following types of source are supported.
- Entire device: The entire personal computer including the device settings, applications, and all the files will be backed up in this mode.
- Backup external hard drive: You can choose to back up the entire device including the external hard drive.
- System volume: The system volumes including data and Windows system data, such as boot partition, system partition, recovery partition, WinRE Tools (GPT), and system reserved partition (MBR) will be backed up.
- Customized volume: Click Select then choose the target volume you wish to protect. Floppy drive, thumb drive, or flash card reader are not supported. Only external hard drive is supported.
- Task Settings: The following task settings can be configured in this step.
- Enable Data Transfer Compression: Compresses data during transmission to reduce transferred data size.
- Enable Data Transfer Encryption: Encrypts data during transmission to enhance data security.
- Schedule Backup Task:
- Manual backup: Manual Backup means one-time-only backup. After creating a backup task, you can run the task by choosing to back up immediately in the last step or selecting the task then click Back up in the Task List tab.
- Scheduled backup:
- Backup by time: Define the desired backup schedule to daily or only on specific days. The task can run once a day or once an hour according to the settings. The backup task will be started when it is the set point of time on the defined days. For example, when the schedule is set as Run on: Wednesday and Saturday, Repeat type: Hourly, and Start at: 03:00, the task will start from 03:00 on Wednesday and Saturday each week and repeat running every hour until the end of these two days.
- Backup by event: Once the defined events, such as Screen locked, Signing out, Startup happens on the protected device, the backup task will be run automatically.
- Screen locked: The screen of the protected device is locked.
- Signing out: The user logs out from the protected device.
- Startup: The protected device is started up.
- Backup interval: You can define the frequency of backing up the device. Within the configured time, the backup task will only be run once even when the defined events happened more than once. For example, the backup interval is set as 1 hour. Due to the backup by event settings, if the screen of the device had been locked which triggered the backup task, the backup task will not be run again when the device was started up ten minutes later.
Note:
- When Backup by time and Backup by event are both enabled, the configured backup frequency will be applied to both of them.
- Only run backup tasks within the allowed backup windows: Click Configure Backup Window to specify the time when the backup task is allowed or forbidden to be run in order to maintain the operational efficiency of the backup source device. Only the restore points scheduled by time will be displayed on the time slot since the restore points of manual backup and backup by events are not predictable.
- Select Retention Policy:
In this step, you can choose either one of the following retention policy to apply to the created task:
- Keep all versions: All the backed-up versions will be preserved.
- Apply the following methods:
You need to set at least one policy if you check Apply the following methods.
Keep only the latest versions means the maximum number of the recent versions you may keep. The exceeding versions will be rotated based on the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy or will be deleted when no other retention policy is configured.
Synology employs the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy. You can configure the time ranges of backup versions to be retained for the following time ranges respectively: daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. If more than one backup version exists within a time range, only the latest one will be kept. For example, if you set a policy as Keep the latest version of the day for 1 day for the backup task which will be run every hour per day, only the version backed up at 23:00 will be kept.
Please note that every configured policy overlaps with each other. For example, if you would like to set the policy as keeping daily backup versions in the first three months, weekly backup versions in the second three months, and monthly backup versions in the third three months. Please tick the checkboxes and insert the numbers as the below picture displays.

The duration of 24 weeks includes the previous daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first weekly backup will be equal to the seventh daily backup. The duration of 9 months also includes the previous weekly backup versions of 24 weeks and daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first monthly backup will be equal to the fourth weekly backup.

- Backup now:
The wizard allows an immediate backup regardless of the schedule.
To edit one or more backup tasks:
After creating the backup task, you can edit (or batch edit) the tasks. Except for backup destination, most of the settings can be modified. Please note that, when batch editing the tasks, the task name and the destination cannot be changed.
- Go to Task List.
- Select a task you wish to edit and click Edit. You can also edit tasks in batch by pressing Ctrl when selecting multiple tasks, and then click Edit.
- Click OK after editing the settings.
Note:
- When batch editing the tasks, please tick the checkbox of the section which you wish to modify to double check the settings. If the checkboxes are not ticked when you click OK, the options will remain unchanged.
To delete one or more backup tasks:
Go to Task List to select the task, and then click Delete. After confirming the action, the selected task will be removed and the backed up data will be deleted from the destination.
The device would remain connected to the server even when no task attached to it. This device can always be found on the Device List, and you can create a task for the device at any time.
To enable Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology:
To streamline the backup process, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology is adopted when backing up personal computers by default. To ensure CBT is functioning well, please make sure Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on each protected device has been turned on.
The CBT technology adopted in Active Backup for Business leverages VSS to take snapshots for devices and identify the changed block between snapshots. VSS belongs to Microsoft's built-in technology, and thus it can avoid performance interference while Active Backup for Business is performing the CBT technology. After the first full backup, the CBT technology allows each device to transfer only the changed block to your NAS. Therefore, it helps you to save the bandwidth resource and speeds up the process of backing up.
Note:
- The first backup of each backup task will be a full backup, and CBT technology will not be applied to the first backup. From the second backup, Active Backup for Business will only conduct incremental backup unless the VSS service of the device is off.
To update the agent:
Agent can be updated by installing a newer installer directly on the device. To remotely update the agent, administrators can install the newer agent on multiple devices with the existing Microsoft Windows Active Directory Domain Services or go to DSM > Active Backup for Business. You can follow the below instructions to update the agent from Active Backup for Business:
- When your Synology NAS is connected to the internet:
- Go to Active Backup for Business > PC.
- Select the target device that needs an update and click Update Agent.
- When your Synology NAS is not connected to the internet but only private network:
- Download the Active Backup for Business Agent installer from Download Center, and upload it to any folder of your Synology NAS with File Station. Please keep a note of the location of the installer.
- Log in to DSM with root permission on your computer. Please refer to this article for detailed instructions.
- Execute the below command to install the agent to your target devices.
cp /[volume_where_you_uploaded_the_installer_to]/[name_of_the_folder_where_you_uploaded_installer_to]/[installer_name]/[volume_where_you_install_Active_Backup_for_Business]/\@tmp/
For example, the location of the installer is /volume1/Files/Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.0.4-0621-x64.msi and Active Backup for Business is installed on volume1. The command would be:
cp /[volume1]/[Files]/[Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.0.4-0621-x64.msi]/[volume1]/\@tmp/
- After setting up, the agent will be successfully updated.
To have a personal computer backed up as a physical server:
You may change the device type and have a personal computer protected as a physical server when the personal computer needs to be backed up and perform Instant Restore to VMware or Instant Restore to Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).
- Select a device and click More.
- Click Change device type.
Restore Personal Computer
- Granular (file/folder level) restore:
Personal computer backup supports granular (file and folder-level) restore through Active Backup for Business Portal. Admins are able to delegate the restore permission to each end user through DSM Control Panel. For more information, please refer to the help article: Active Backup for Business Portal.
- Entire device restore: Entire device restore is available with a recovery media. To restore the entire device or the backed-up volume, please create a recovery media in advance. You can refer this creation guide to learn how to use Synology Active Backup for Business Recovery Media Creator to create a media automatically or create a customized media. You can download Synology Active Backup for Business Recovery Media Creator in Download Center. For more information on restoring the entire device, please refer to this article.
Note:
- Only admin (user), administrators (group), and the logged-in account (user) owner can access the backup versions of devices from Active Backup for Business Portal or restore the device with the recovery media.
- For Entire device restore, the recovery media does not contain the backed up PC data; whereas, the backed up data is stored on your Synology NAS.