Back Up a Synology NAS to Google Drive — Encrypted
Send versioned, AES-256-encrypted backups of your Synology shares to Google Drive — run from your Windows PC, with schedules, retention, and failure alerts.
Your Synology holds the archive — photos, documents, years of projects. Google Drive is the off-site leg most people already pay for. Connecting the two properly means backup semantics, not sync: point-in-time versions, retention, and encryption applied before anything reaches Google. Here's how to do it, and an honest look at the alternatives DSM ships with.
The DSM-native options, honestly
- Cloud Sync (free, on the NAS) — mirrors folders to Google Drive. It's sync: a deletion or ransomware-encrypted file propagates to the cloud copy. Client-side encryption exists but breaks file-by-file browsability.
- Hyper Backup (free, on the NAS) — real versioned backups to Google Drive in Synology's proprietary
.hbkformat. Solid, but restores generally need Hyper Backup, and the job runs opaque on the NAS. - BackupKit (from your Windows PC) — versioned, AES-256-encrypted standard zip archives in your Drive. Restore with one click in the app, or with any AES-zip tool on any machine — no proprietary format, no vendor required.
If you're happy running everything on the NAS and don't mind the .hbk format, Hyper Backup is a fine tool — we honestly recommend it over Cloud Sync for backup. BackupKit earns its place when you want open-format archives, encryption you control, and every backup you run — PC, NAS shares, servers — visible in one health dashboard.
Step-by-step
- Map the Synology share on your Windows PC: File Explorer →
Map network drive→\\synology\photo(or use the UNC path directly). A read-only NAS account is enough. - Connect Google Drive in BackupKit via OAuth — no password stored, revocable any time from your Google account.
- Create the job: source = the mapped Synology folders; destination = a Drive folder, e.g.
/synology-backup. - Set AES-256 encryption with a passphrase only you hold — Google never sees plaintext.
- Schedule nightly or weekly, set retention (e.g. 30 versions), and enable failure notifications via email or Telegram.
BackupKit runs on Windows: the PC reads the share over the LAN and uploads to Drive, so it must be on at backup time (the missed-run policy covers a PC that was off). Fully NAS-side jobs are Hyper Backup's territory — this route trades that for open formats and client-side keys.
Versioned archives of a large photo library add up. Pick the shares that actually need off-site protection, use retention to cap history, and check the first run's size in the job log before letting it loose on 2TB of RAW files.
Related
- Back up any NAS to the cloud — the general guide.
- Back up Windows to Google Drive
- Back up Windows to a Synology NAS — the opposite direction.
- AES-256 encryption
- One-click restore
Coming August 2026
Back up anything to anywhere — encrypted, scheduled, automated. Join the waitlist and be first to know when BackupKit is ready — the founding license is $69 lifetime for the first 100 buyers at launch.