www.aiscl.co.uk

Hi Barry

My laptop is in trouble so I am having to get my head around aisbkp again.

I am using build 236 on XP Home and am backing up and restoring over a wireless network.

The last backup I made was 26th March, when making that backup I decided to try the pruning feature and asked it to prune to last three sessions. All seemed to go OK.

With the laptop dead I needed to get outlook.pst out of the backup onto another computer (W2K), but there was no sign of it on either the 26 Mar session or the 23 Mar session. Luckily it was on 15th Mar session. I selected it to restore. At first it complained that zip files were missing. Then I reloaded the backup and it restored OK.

First question, why was it not on the last two backup sessions?
Second, why could it not find the zip files?

I might be forgetting the timeline here, actually, because I think it was when I did the main MyDocs restore that it couldn't find the zip files. That really scared me. But as I say I reloaded the backup and all went through OK.

Another thing that was happening, also on another restore I did recently, it said it could not ?create/restore folders with long file names and reeled off a long list of them. However I can see no ill effects yet in my restored stuff.

Yesterday my laptop decided to come back to life, probably temporarily. Of course I instantly backed it up again. Twice.

Again I tried to restore outlook.pst. This time the file was found OK but when I try to restore it it just says restore failed, without any explananation. This on both the new backups. Another .pst file in the same folder restored OK. Outlook.pst is 351MB.

At that stage I was still using v1.9.2 on this win2k computer, so I thought I should change it to v2. I tried to copy aisbi236.exe across but got a bizarre message

"The file aisbi236.exe contains more than one data stream but the destination volume does not support this feature. Some data will not be preserved... Info not preserved includes: :Zone.Identifier:$DATA".

No idea what this means, does it give you any clues? The laptop may be unstable in some way, though I'k writing this on it and it seems OK.

I can't remember what I did next but I found another way of getting it up to v2.

Anyway I gave up trying to restore outlook.pst from the backup and copied it directly across which was fine.

But I am concerned that restoring is not going smoothly. Can you reassure me or suggest what might be happening?

All best, Chris

Hi Chris

Before I answer this question please send us the backup job files via the Help / Bug Report function.

I was a little shocked to see that aisbi236.exe had a second data stream, especially as the file was created and uploaded from a FAT32 drive, which cannot support multiple data streams. I did a Google search for Zone.Identifier:$DATA, it appears that something has attached a Alternate Data Stream to our install file. I suggest as a that if you have not already done so that you run a virus check on the laptop. I often use Trend Micro’s house call:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

I am not saying that your PC has a virus, I am saying that I do not know what this secondary file stream is.

Lavasoft's Adaware SE can scan for Alternate Data Stream's (ADS):

http://www.lavasoft.com/

Outlook.pst can only be backed up is Outlook is not running.

View / Sessions may be used to list the files physically backed up during a backup session.

Barry

Alternate Data Streams:

I just downloaded AISBackup using Internet Explorer to an NTFS drive. Internet Explorer adds the Alternate Data Stream as part of the new security measures in XP Service Pack 2 - Basically it is the secondary file stream that causes the “Are you really sure you want to install AISBackup?" question.

So: nothing to worry about, the message on you PC was displayed because the copy or aisbi236.exe would have lost Microsoft's Alternate Data Stream so AISBackup would have installed without the Microsoft's warning.

BTW: If you create backup jobs and choose to backup NTFS security settings the alternate data streams are preserved (As they should be).

Barry

Thanks for sending the files, but was LifebookC the correct one?

The latest backup sessions on the backup, LifebookC are 26 January, I cannot see any backups from March? The outlook.pst files are > 100MB so designated huge files. There was a problem restarting the backup oof huge files with version 1.9 and version 1.10, but I do not think this is the problem. Indeed there is an outlook.pst file from 21 January on the backup. These files would not be in zip files but the *.AIL files.

If you ever want to verify the actual backup against the backup contents file use the Manage Backup / Validate (test) Backup option.

The version 2.0 version of prune backup sessions asks you to check (tick) which sessions you want to remove, which offers more control then the option in version 1.10.

Barry

Hi Barry,

Hmm, I have no idea why that log was not up to date, yes, it was LifebookC.

Anyway, an easy question you may be able to answer... the LifebookC job does not close down Outlook (as new jobs I have now made to specifically back up important stuff appear to do). Is it possible to persuade it to do so?

I've also belatedly figured out that for Network backups there's no reason not to set huge file size at 500mb. Is that correct?

All the best
Chris

AISBackup will detect that Outlook.exe should be closed if Outlook is running at the time you do:

Manage Backup / Add or Remove Files.... / OK

Barry