www.aiscl.co.uk

Hi

I have an ongoing problem backing up to a network drive; that is, backing up system A to an (external) Hard Disk attached to system B

AIS invariably cannot find the previous back up, which is OK in one respect as the mapped drive assignment might change; however even when I point it to the backup manually it doesn't recognise it. For example, in the latest backup today (which is supposed to be session-based) it backed up my entire system...but into the same folder as the previous backup and it continued the same file numbering sequence.

Thus the previous backup went to ....528.zip and the latest backup commenced at ...529.zip; which indicates to me that it had found the previous backup OK. However, once it commenced backing up I noticed that it seemed to be doing a complete rather than incremental backup, nevertheless I let it continue. When the backup was complete I went to Prune backups and only the latest Session was there. Previously, I have been able to access prior sessions. So where have they gone?

I checked the backup settings and nothing has changed from the previous settings i.e it is session based. The backups folder contains 3 sessions, in contiguously numbered files as I mentioned above:

1 full
2 incremental
3 full

..and
.buz
.bdb
.bdb.ads files all of which are dated today

The logs now only mention one backup as well, so whilst the files clearly exist, AIS doesn't know about them.

Thanks
Patrick

Please e-mail the .buz and .log file so that I can set-up a similar job here. Is the destination PC a Windows PC?

Barry

Where do I find the log file? It's not in the backup folder. The destination is a Win XP Pro system with a USB-attached Hard drive

Patrick

The log file is stored in the AISBackup Database folder, this is usually called:

Non-Vista: C:\Program Files\Aquarius IS Consultancy\AISBackup\Database

Vista & Server 2008: C:\ProgramData\Aquarius IS Consultancy\AISBackup\Database

The file is called <job name>.log

Barry

I have examined your log files and found that sometimes the backup works, sometimes it fails because the remote drive cannot be found (you mentioned this) and sometimes it appears the drive is found but you do not have permission to write to the drive (Access Denied). Is the source computer sometimes logged on as a different user account?

I have got to work through each of these findings on a test server to see these situations would cause the database to be reset.

The network external drive option may help in this situation, but download version 2.5 as this has had a couple of updates made for this style of backup. Please ensure you use the ‘Open backup contents from media’ option, this way the backup should not be compromised if the drive goes missing or the current user account does not have permission to write to the remote drive – although I do expect the backup job to bomb when run from an account without access rights.

Check this link for remote networked external drives, actually the networked drive need not be an external drive to use this option.

http://www.aiscl.co.uk/externaldrives.php

I’ll report back when I know more.

Barry

No., the source computer is always the same account, but I've always had problems with Windows networking i.e it loses the plot and I have to re-map the drive. It's to be expected the backup fails when it can't find the drive. The concern is that having re-mapped the drive and then manually finding the backup on the external drive AIS seems not to recognise it as such. BTW I can "open" the backup e.g to restore from it or to manage it, so it has definitely found it OK.

Patrick

Build 308 of AISBackup has been uploaded, this makes extra checks to ensure a network destination drive is available and can be written to:

http://www.aiscl.co.uk/downloadaisbackup.php

Barry

That did the trick! Thanks Barry

...on a separate issue; having checked the files to be backed up it pops a dialog about excluded files asking if you want to display them or continue etc. If you select display you get that view in the same window and then when you Cancel the window closes and you are back at the back up page, but have to re-initiate the backup, re-read the files etc. Can AIS not remember where it was up to, so you can close the log and just keep going?

Thanks
Patrick

Do you mean excluded files or files selected for backup that no longer exist on the PC? If you choose to display these AISBackup must abandon the backup process, that is why it starts again. You can choose to not display this message, however the message does pop-up again if you modify files and folders.

A similar message is also given for reparse point junctions (equivalent to folder shortcuts)

Barry