Back Up Cloud Storage Directly to Your NAS

You have files in the cloud (GoPro footage, Dropbox archives, Google Drive projects, S3 buckets) and you want them on your NAS. Each of the usual options has a real cost.

Download then copy is the default workflow. Download everything from the cloud to your PC, then manually copy it to the NAS. You need enough free space on your PC for the entire dataset, every byte gets written twice, and if the NAS connection drops mid-copy you start over.

CLI tools like rclone can mount cloud storage or sync directly, but you need to configure remotes, write YAML, manage credentials, and troubleshoot provider-specific flags. It works once you get it set up, which takes more time than most people want to spend on a backup.

SaaS migration services like MultCloud or Cloudsfer route your files through their servers. Your data leaves your network, passes through a third party, then comes back down to your NAS. That is slower and a privacy concern, and it costs a monthly subscription, usually with transfer caps.

GoPro Cloud has no solution at all. No migration tool supports it, rclone and MultCloud included. You're stuck batch-downloading 25 files at a time through a web browser, manually.

Blober is a desktop app that connects to a growing list of cloud providers and transfers files to any local or network destination, including NAS drives.

Blober runs on your computer, pulls data from the cloud API, and writes it to whatever destination you select in the file picker. If that destination is a mapped network drive (\\SYNOLOGY\backup or /Volumes/NAS/media), the files go there. No server sits between the cloud and your NAS, nothing is staged on your local disk, and there is no subscription.

Blober works with any NAS that your OS can see as a folder:

There's nothing NAS-specific to configure in Blober. You just pick the folder.

1. Connect your cloud source and authenticate once. Blober supports GoPro Cloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, AWS S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, and DigitalOcean Spaces.

2. Pick your NAS folder. The standard OS folder picker shows your mapped network drives, so select the target directory on your NAS.

3. Start the transfer. Blober streams the files and writes them directly to the network path. If your connection drops or the NAS goes to sleep, the transfer resumes from where it stopped.

Blober supports path templates that sort files as they arrive:

{file_created_date}/{filename}

This turns a flat cloud dump into a folder per day:

2024-12-15/GH010432.MP4
2024-12-15/GOPR0900.JPG
2025-01-03/GH010904.MP4

The template runs before the file is written, so files land on your NAS already organized.

A library that spans many years gets thousands of day folders this way. For one folder per month, use:

{file_created_year}/{file_created_month}/{filename}

which gives 2024/12/GH010432.MP4. Photo apps on the NAS, such as Immich, read either layout.

NAS owners tend to be people who care about data ownership, long-term archival, and not paying recurring fees for storage they already bought.

SaaS tools route data through external servers, while Blober pulls from the cloud API and writes locally, so your files stay on your network. That matters to people who chose a NAS to keep data under their control.

Blober is also a one-time purchase. NAS owners already turned down the subscription model when they bought hardware instead of renting cloud storage.

Whether you're backing up 50 GoPro clips or migrating 10 TB from S3, Blober adds no transfer caps, per-GB fees, or throttling of its own. The data still comes down over your own internet connection, so it counts against any cap your ISP sets.

Each source is one workflow in Blober: set the source, set the NAS folder as the destination, and start it.

The standard rule for data you cannot afford to lose is 3-2-1: keep three copies, on two kinds of media, with one of them offsite. Most people apply it to files on their computer and forget that a cloud account is one copy, held on someone else's hardware, under someone else's terms.

The provider can lock the account, change pricing, suffer an outage, or (as GoPro Cloud and rclone's Google Photos change both showed) alter API access overnight. Pulling your cloud data down to a NAS turns a single rented copy into a backup you control.

Applied to cloud accounts, 3-2-1 looks like this:

1. The cloud copy you already have (Google Photos, Drive, Dropbox, S3, GoPro Cloud).
2. A NAS copy on hardware you own, pulled down with Blober.
3. An offsite or second-cloud copy, for example a cheap object-storage bucket, so a fire or theft at home does not take the only local copy.

Blober handles steps 2 and 3 with the same kind of workflow: pick a source, pick your NAS or a second provider, and run it.

The destination is the same NAS folder in every case. What differs is the source.

• Google Photos. Google has no "download all" button, and since March 2025 rclone can only see photos it uploaded. Blober connects to Google Photos directly and writes your whole library to the NAS. See how to back up Google Photos without Takeout.
• Google Drive. Native Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are not real files. Blober converts them to Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) as it writes them to your NAS, and keeps your folder structure intact.
• Dropbox. Point the source at your Dropbox and the destination at the NAS share. Folder hierarchy is preserved exactly.
• AWS S3 and other object storage. Select a bucket or prefix and write it to a NAS archive folder, which is a way to pull cold S3 data onto cheaper local storage.
• GoPro Cloud. Blober is the only tool that connects to GoPro Cloud, so a NAS is the natural home for footage you want off a subscription. See the GoPro Cloud guide.

• NAS owners who want cloud backups on hardware they control
• GoPro users who need their footage off GoPro Cloud (Blober is the only tool that connects)
• Photographers and videographers archiving years of work to local network storage
• Home lab users consolidating data from multiple cloud services onto one NAS
• Small businesses migrating away from cloud storage subscriptions to on-premise drives

Does Blober copy files to my NAS without storing them on my PC first? Yes. Blober pulls each file from the cloud provider's API and writes it to the network path you select, with no second copy left on your local disk. The data still passes through your computer on the way.

Which NAS brands work? Any NAS your operating system can see as a folder: Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, Unraid, Western Digital My Cloud, or any SMB or NFS share. You select the NAS folder in the same picker as any other folder.

Can I back up Google Photos to my NAS without Google Takeout? Yes. Blober connects to Google Photos directly and writes your library to the NAS without Takeout zips or picking photos by hand. See the Google Photos guide.

What if the NAS goes to sleep during a transfer? Blober resumes from where it stopped, so you do not start over. The same applies when the connection drops.

Can I back up to a NAS and a second cloud at the same time? Run two workflows: one to the NAS, one to a cheap object-storage provider like Backblaze B2. Together they give you the local and offsite copies of a 3-2-1 setup.