Gregory N. Latiak
April 12th 03, 03:06 PM
I have recently upgraded my trusty and reliable NT workstation to XP/Pro.
The machine is a Dell 420 with dual processors, ultraSCSI drives, 1gb memory
and a TRAVAN SCSI tape. Now that things are reasonably stable I am
attempting to get back into my regular backup cycle. But it seems that the
new built-in backup utility is broken and I am unable to backup my system.
If I attempt to run the ASR wizard, it disables an option called 'Disable
Volume Shadow Copy' -- but when the backup starts, of course the volume
shadow copy (whatever that is) fails and the backup aborts right at the
start. And of course, there is no mention in any of the online sources about
what 'volume shadow copy is' and how I configure/debug it -- except that it
is of course wonderful. So great, I cannot backup the registry...
DOing a regular full system backup, without saving the registry and config
files, is about 21gb of data. This conveniently spans two or three travan
tapes -- I have a number of existing tapes with backups of my old NT system.
At roughtly $100/tape these are not single use throwaways, except maybe to
microsoft. But when I attempt to do a full system backup, it recognizes that
the first tape is used and asks permission to overwrite the data. Three
hours later it is ready for the second tape, which I insert. But this tape
it refuses to overwrite, scans to the end of the tape and announces that
there is no room on the media, please insert another tape! And so on through
my entire collection of tapes... Having seen this kind of problem before, I
think that I just need to erase the tapes externally and start over. Then I
discover that there is NO TAPE ERASE or RETENTION capability in the builtin
backup utility. The helpfile babbles about a 'backup utility wizard' with a
media management tab -- not in this version... The backup wizard has an
advanced button, but that just takes me through setting options for the
backup run.
So, using the builtin backup utility it appears impossible to backup the
system config information (no more recovery disk tool) and there is no way
to do multi-volume backups, which even the old NT backup could handle. So in
the end, without spending a lot of money on a thrid-party backup utility and
a pile of single use tapes, how am I supposed to backup my system?
--
Gregory Latiak
Technology Strategists, Inc.
http://www.tekstrat.com/
Tel: (416)540-7384
Images http://members.rogers.com/greglatiak/
The machine is a Dell 420 with dual processors, ultraSCSI drives, 1gb memory
and a TRAVAN SCSI tape. Now that things are reasonably stable I am
attempting to get back into my regular backup cycle. But it seems that the
new built-in backup utility is broken and I am unable to backup my system.
If I attempt to run the ASR wizard, it disables an option called 'Disable
Volume Shadow Copy' -- but when the backup starts, of course the volume
shadow copy (whatever that is) fails and the backup aborts right at the
start. And of course, there is no mention in any of the online sources about
what 'volume shadow copy is' and how I configure/debug it -- except that it
is of course wonderful. So great, I cannot backup the registry...
DOing a regular full system backup, without saving the registry and config
files, is about 21gb of data. This conveniently spans two or three travan
tapes -- I have a number of existing tapes with backups of my old NT system.
At roughtly $100/tape these are not single use throwaways, except maybe to
microsoft. But when I attempt to do a full system backup, it recognizes that
the first tape is used and asks permission to overwrite the data. Three
hours later it is ready for the second tape, which I insert. But this tape
it refuses to overwrite, scans to the end of the tape and announces that
there is no room on the media, please insert another tape! And so on through
my entire collection of tapes... Having seen this kind of problem before, I
think that I just need to erase the tapes externally and start over. Then I
discover that there is NO TAPE ERASE or RETENTION capability in the builtin
backup utility. The helpfile babbles about a 'backup utility wizard' with a
media management tab -- not in this version... The backup wizard has an
advanced button, but that just takes me through setting options for the
backup run.
So, using the builtin backup utility it appears impossible to backup the
system config information (no more recovery disk tool) and there is no way
to do multi-volume backups, which even the old NT backup could handle. So in
the end, without spending a lot of money on a thrid-party backup utility and
a pile of single use tapes, how am I supposed to backup my system?
--
Gregory Latiak
Technology Strategists, Inc.
http://www.tekstrat.com/
Tel: (416)540-7384
Images http://members.rogers.com/greglatiak/