# ZFS ISCSI Reading



## Kaji (Dec 7, 2009)

Hello Guys,

i hope its the right Forum, when it doesnÂ´t please move it to the right one. 

With ZFS i have made an Volume. With the iscsi-target in the Ports-Collection i have made the Volume as ISCSI Avaible. I have mounted it with Windows XP and Formatted. It is alright. 

So now i want to Backup it from the FreeBSD side. How can i make it the right way? I want an clear Backup , donÂ´t zipped or anything. So i could take it on an USB HD and look at, without ISCSI mounting or anything else. 


Greetings Kaji


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## phoenix (Dec 7, 2009)

I don't think you can.

In theory, you should be able to shutdown the Windows machine, and then use ntfs-3g to access the ZVol like a harddrive.  Not sure if that would actually work or not, though.

For backups, you can:

stop the Windows machine
snapshot the ZVol
start the Windows machine

You now have a backup of the ZVol (the snapshot) that you can do with as you please.  zfs send/recv it to another machine.  zfs send it to a file that can be copied to external media.  Keep it on the zfs host.  Etc.


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## Kaji (Dec 8, 2009)

Jeah ok. But than i have an zvol snapshot, but this one ist even only a single file. When the windows maschine breaks, how can i access this files? WerenÂ´t it nice when it were "unpacked" so that every maschine could easily read it? I think i would like it the most. Maybe i should try to make an snapshot and access it with ntfs-3g ? I will try that and and tell u wether it works.


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## VictorM (Dec 28, 2009)

ran in a similar problem with some embedded iSCSI targets based on FreeBSD. my solution was to backup to another target, but yes, that means double the hardware.


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