Pre/Post run job drive parameter

[Aquarjen]

Please explain how build 361 corrupts everything. Please explain step by step the single file copy is destroying your existing backup so that the problem can be replicated here and repaired. It would help if you could e-mail the <backup>.buz file or use the help/bug report function to send the complete set of job files for this backup.

For testing the batch job updates I cannot see how a new small backup would corrupt any other backup jobs that you have.

It is possible that the backup contents file was not opened from your backup media, this would cause the backup to select all files, for example if another drive with the same name as the external drive was present on the PC then AISBackup may try and load the contents file from the disk without a backup and therefore backup everything. This problem would also have been with build 360.
Barry

I have no time right now but I can say the following:

A. If I install 360 there's not a single file (well almost) selected from C: and D:.

B. When I install 361 and run the same Preview thousands of apparently unchanged files are selected and I've seen a negative number for the total amount.

C. Without running an actual job, all the files needed for your new parameters are not generated and pushing Test produces no results.

D. Completing an obviously compromised backup might mess up my carefully maintained USB drive and I'll loose the ability to restore from it. Even when I unselect all files AIS still might decide to write the whole selection and even if a prune job might work to revert back to the old situation, I still hate to jeopardize an known good history.

E. My backup has filled an 320 GB drive (hence the hint for supporting delta's) and running any substantial job would need me to prune valuable historical data.

F. 360 (not 361) recently crashed with some sort of memory access problem. (Hmm, might have been pre-360)

G. In the past I've had to deal with similar (if not exactly the same) problems with a previous release. I'm not sure what I did then, I think they went away when I resetted the backup job after salvaging what I could from the drive. It must be in the forum somewhere.

Aquarjen.

[Barry]

Have you re-tried build 361 or are your posts based on using build 361 once? I am sure that if the contents file is correctly loaded from the backup media then the job will not select all files for backup. As I said in my previous post: If the disk containing the backup was not 'seen' by AISBackup all files would be selected for backup. If you try the preview under both build 360 and 361 the clearly there is a problem that needs to be resolved, to this end I would like you to install both versions side by side for testing.

In yout point (B) are all the files selected or are some files not selected for backup?

You can install build 361 along side build 360 as follows:

Rename the desktop shortcut to AISBackup 360.

Install AISBackup 361 to a folder called .....\AISBackup361 and rename the new shortcut to 'AISBackup 361'.

Run the preview using 360 and then the preview using 361, are they still different.

I did ask you for the .buz file so at least I can make a similar backup here for testing. Without this file I could never be sure we are making the same kind of backup.

We may have resolved the problem before by Manage Backup / Remove Backup From List (Do not delete the backup - select Keep). Then Tools / Open Job from Backup Media to reinstate the backup.

Barry

[Barry]

I am making a backup of C: and D: using 360 to an external drive called External1.

I have a question about your backup as I do not have the .buz file from you to look for myself:

Is the backup to multiple drives to enable on-site off-site backup with the 'Open backup contents from media' option set (the backup is set to go to multiple disks using different disk volume names) or is the backup to multiple disks with the same disk name to facilitate very large backups to span multiple disks?

TIA

Barry

[Aquarjen]

I am making a backup of C: and D: using 360 to an external drive called External1.

I have a question about your backup as I do not have the .buz file from you to look for myself:

Is the backup to multiple drives to enable on-site off-site backup with the 'Open backup contents from media' option set (the backup is set to go to multiple disks using different disk volume names) or is the backup to multiple disks with the same disk name to facilitate very large backups to span multiple disks?

TIA

Barry

The backup is to three drives with unique volume names, opening contents from media. The errors in 361 were seen with the same external USB drive 360 seemingly had no problems with.

Perhaps important: The destination drives are Truecrypt volumes (partitions).

A. I've created a small job (Windows\Cursors ans Fonts) to an encrypted USB thumb drive under 360, and 361 didn't detect any differences.

B1. Hooked up my USB backup drive and 361 wrongly found about 7000 MB on C:, 7000 on D: and the expected amount on an external data drive (seemingly the correct files too, although I didn't cross check the files).

B2. When I cancel the Remove From Backup browser an the Start/Cancel dialog is still on the screen, I can see the open Job tab-sheet in the background, stating 42.111 (2.829,07 MB). Many of the wronly selected files are WAV, WMA of JPG, so no compression algoritm could squeeze that 7+7+3 GB into less than 3GB.

B3. Now I restarted AIS and redid the same Preview, but now I excluded C: and D: form the backup, leaving only the small workfile drive and accepted the changes knowing I could prevent the job from running in the next step. While the Permanently Exclude dialog is still on the screen I can see in the background: Files to backup: 18.293 (-7.374,99MB). That's more than double the number of files on the remaning drive. Notice the minus sign here. When I go on to the next step, and Preview what I'm about to backup, I see 3.383MB on C: are (still) selected, as are 409MB on D:. Including the (expected to be correct) 3009MB of H, that's way more than 2.8GB, and H: does contain compressable files for the most part. A quick check learns that Windows\Cursors and Fonts are not selected now, but NONE of its files should have been marked for backup, and still many files and folders are.

Remember me mentioning a memory access problem with an older release? Just found that I had made a note of one such occasion and that made me look further:

Creating Folders: Preserving Original Short Name.
Exception: EAccessViolation: Access violation at address 6964654D. Read of address 6964654D
Component: btnPreview

Exception: EAccessViolation: Access violation at address 007A89B8 in module 'AISBACKUP.exe'. Read of address 00000000
Component: fAquariusBackup

This is one I found in a log from a few days ago and must be created either with 360 or with 361:

Creating Folders: Preserving Original Short Name.
Exception: EAccessViolation: Access violation at address 0052DF89 in module 'AISBACKUP.exe'. Read of address 575C3A57
Component: btnPreview

This is one from July, don't know which release (I keep up with releases, so perhaps you can place this):

Exception during restore DebugPos:
Exception: EAccessViolation: Access violation at address 004E9B0F in module 'AISBACKUP.exe'. Read of address 00000000
Component: fAquariusBackup

This and other inconsistant behavour I've noticed suggests to me that on huge jobs some variable(s) might get overwritten.

And while I'm at it, I recently cloned an USB drive with a bootable partition on it. At the completion, AIS, without asking, changed boot.ini on drive C: of the PC to include that (external!) drive. A while later AIS complains that it is confused which drive or partition it has to see as bootdrive (or something of that nature).

Aquarjen.

[Barry]

Sorry about this but I actually forgot s significant update in 361 that would cause this - the bug is actually in pre 361 versions of AISBackup.

Prior to build 361 files were not selected for backup if only the file attribute changed, and te file attribute would change if a file is compressed. Is this a possibility?

If this is the case then the file attribute will be backed up but not the actual data. Perhaps you could try this on one of the three USB drives?

If you like a version of AISBackup can be made for you to test if this is the reason for your files been selected before you actually go ahead with the backup.

Barry

[Aquarjen]

Have you re-tried build 361 or are your posts based on using build 361 once? I am sure that if the contents file is correctly loaded from the backup media then the job will not select all files for backup. As I said in my previous post: If the disk containing the backup was not 'seen' by AISBackup all files would be selected for backup. If you try the preview under both build 360 and 361 the clearly there is a problem that needs to be resolved, to this end I would like you to install both versions side by side for testing.

A. I've uninstalled/installed each release several times. I will install both side by side when I have a minute.

B. The disk is seen (AIS doesn't complain it isn't there) and the LED shows activity and I can restore files from it.

C. The job clearly states "Backup contents Loaded from media" and I've confirmed that's also the case in the settings screen.

C. "All files" are not selected, just a huge amount of them, mostly whole folders (I think, hmmm...). For instance, ALL folders in \Windows that start with '$' are included, all EXCEPT $hf_mig$ are compressed. Neither Cursors and Fonts are compressed, so that would lessen the possibility that it's a attribute related issue.

D. Each and every time I install 361 there is a difference of 15 Gigabyte (checked two drives of the backup set). Probably (100% guessing here) whole folders without any apparent change like de Cursors/Font folders that haven't been changed since I've installed XP in 2008. I've ran a Find from AIS and those folders ARE backed up. Well, according to the database, at least. To check this I've done a restore (with 361) of those two folders to a temp location and I got an exact replica, including the attributes.

E. Each and every time I install 361 and exclude C: and D: in the Remove From Backup Files Screen from C: and D: many files (only less of them)are still marked/counted for backup and each time after the Removal the byte count becomes negative.

F. Just now I discover that the last 361 preview claims to have found 6.7 GB on D: but actually selects only (and correctly) 34 MB. On previous occasions I thought I saw much more files selected, for the whole ~7GB (like C:, where truckloads are selected).

In yout point (B) are all the files selected or are some files not selected for backup?

A1. Looks like that if something is incorrectly selected, only whole folder contents are taken, contents that already is in the database as, for instance Gen 0, is suddenly considered 'changed'. Perhaps the folder is seen as added or renamed?

B1. I did ask you for the .buz file so at least I can make a similar backup here for testing. Without this file I could never be sure we are making the same kind of backup.

A2. In the mail.

We may have resolved the problem before by Manage Backup / Remove Backup From List (Do not delete the backup - select Keep). Then Tools / Open Job from Backup Media to reinstate the backup.

A3. I'm very reluctant to compromise even one external drive as the three drives are in a transient state and until I'm 100% certain everyting is as it should be those drives do not form a set.

B3. There is still the issue of the Access Violations that I have experienced on very large backups with say 100.000-200.000 files or so. Simply reinstating the job again won't solve anything if for instance a string is overwriting a variable somewhere. Each release could behave totally differently depending on the respective locations of the variables, the length of the string, etc. If you could create another, but re-arranged, 361 I could give it a try; it should give different results if you moved some variables around and/or place dummy variables at strategic locations

Aquarjen.

[Barry]

I am going to e-mail you the location of a test version of build 361.

Barry