Very much a newbie at setting this all up - some help please?
I am presently trying server and clients on my local network mainly to get the feel of how it all works before I commit to the rest of this network. Somewhere along the way today I seemed to have botched up the file backing up from 3 clients, it no longer works. The image backups are essentially working fine it seems.
The server is saying that I have “no paths to backup configured” under file backup status, which I assume means I have the naming convention wrong in the clients settings. For the images I have entered the volumes as C;F to backup partitons C and F as images.
I assumed the file settings would be entered the same way. Please could someone confirm for me how I should enter the paths for say the whole partiions G and H for file backup?
I freely admit I am not very good at this - I am an old techie and some of this sort of things spins my head.
I have gotten somewhere today, but I am still a bit confused. I understand writers of the Manual and any help files are doing their best but the explanations mostly do not help me (at least in this regard).
I have given up on trying to set whole partitions to backup files in the client, simply because I cannot see how you can enter a volume letter in any of the available boxes. In looking further afield I realised that the client settings options in the server settings added an extra box to that which is in the client called Default Directories To Backup. When I entered H;G for one computer in that box I got a file backup for those 2 volumes. So so far this part works.
My next problem now though is that with another computer when I enter 3 volumes in the same manner all I get is a files backup of the first one. Now - the difference here is that because of the computer involved I was forced to use the client vers 1.4.11. Is this possibly why I am having this problem???
I would very much appreciate it if someone could explain just what is going on here. For a file backup and in setting it to only backup volumes or root drive letters - where and how should those drive letters be entered ???
Another quirky problem has just come up quite separate from all the above - I had set up a file backup from another computer as a test but had to stop it. Problem now is that even though I have deleted any reference to that backup every now and then it tries to restart that backup ! How can I clean such a thing out of the system ???
I have to say that I am not too happy with any of the documentation i have found regarding manual setup of a client and especially regarding backup setup. I have now managed mostly by trial and error to get backups from 3 computers essentially working correctly (so far in the short time of testing).
I should say that because of the way I have computers partitioned there is no way any default client settings would have worked. This was always going to be a completely unique manual setup.
I have not had any great difficulty setting up image backups, whether via the clients or server settings. Once partitions were entered as say C;F I had no problem getting them to work - except with a XP machine (more on that later).
My biggest problem has been in setting up file backups. As above, I gave up trying to set paths in the client settings simply because whatever I entered to try and identify whole volumes/partitions just did not seem to be excepted! I have settled now on entering these client settings in the server, ticking the box there “Separate Settings For This Client” and changing some of the Permissions to not allow the client to change/affect any paths or backup settings etc… I also then need to go to the local client and add paths for the file partitions in the box “Default Directories to Backup”. Interestingly it does not seem to be necessary to add here the paths/volumes/partitions for any image backups, only the file backups???
As regards the XP machine, I am using client version 1.4.11 which apparently works for others - but does not work for me. The client does communicate with the server, but I just do not get image or file backups to work. In fact if I call for a file back up it actually backs up the partitions set up for image backups, a complete botch up ! I am just about to post a message here under clients with a bit more information.
As regards documentation, a small rant if I may. Nothing I have found has been helpful in understanding the problem I have outlined here. I could not find anything about the client box “Default Directories to Backup”, how to set it up and even why it is there in the first place. Again, I will be shortly posting under Documentation more about this.
I am generally very happy with this program and grateful for the work done by its creators, but I have now spent a LOT of time in trial and error to get parts of it working and to me that kinda spoils the whole experience - and must also damage acceptance of such software. Good communication is paramount.
I have had similar problems with files backups. When I specify just a set of folders to backup, I get these folders plus a lot of others like Exchange database and SQL files. It worked brilliantly on version 1.4 but I’ve had these issues since upgrading to later issues. I plan downgrade to 1.4 again and let you know how I get on.
On the server in the advanced tab set Windows component backup configuration to default=0 or deselect the Exchange components on the client via “Configure components” in the tray icon. Usually you’d want to backup Exchange via Windows component backup, though. Otherwise it won’t reset the database logs per default (need to enable circular logging).
Thanks for the info. I set the default to 0 and can see it’s now only backing up the required files but it still takes almost 4 days to backup 500 GB data using file backup. Image backup of same data takes around 4 hours. I’ll keep looking.