[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Bill Hudacek wrote:
I for one am very interested in this. All approaches I've used,
coded, seen on the 'net or just heard about failed to be able to
access files "in use".
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I just found an excellent (and free) imaging and backup application for
XP called Driveimage XML that will create a vendor-neutral image of a
machine WHILE ITS IN USE. The problem where Windows won't let you touch
files that are in use, this application skates past by taking advantage
of a feature built into XP called VSS - Volume Shadow Copy Service.
Hi,
Our solution to the locked files problem is to use NTBackup, Windows
XP's built in backup utility.
Like the application you have introduced us to, NTBackup uses the shadow
copy of locked files that Windows maintains in order to incorporate
those files in to it's backup sets.
In our case we configure our XP clients to run NTBackup from Windows
Scheduler weekly, save those sets in to a shared directory, and then
pull them down via BackupPC using SMB.
The NTBackup approach isn't ideal:
- Any user with administrator access to the client can delete the
scheduled job causing backups not to occur.
- BackupPC doesn't know to alert us to problems with the backup sets,
for instance if they haven't been updated.
- The XP client needs to be switched on at the time when the job is
scheduled to run, or at least configured to wake-up.
We only use NTBackup to backup the system state data (registry) and
other locked files such as Outlook's PST file, while pulling down the
rest of the data via BackupPC in the usual manner.
This is because files included in an NTBackup backup set don't benefit
from BackupPC's highly efficient storage schema, because they are all
lumped together.
If we wanted to be able to do bare metal restores on Windows we would
need to configure NTBackup to do a full system image instead, but I
guess our storage requirements would then increase.
Any comments on this approach?
Yes, it would be wonderful if the shadow copy of locked files were
directly accessible through the SMB or Rsync protocols.
Can I assume the SMB protocol doesn't already allow for this, perhaps
through the administrator shares?
Andy
Hi Andy
Your solution and my solution are identical. Use the windows app to
make a backup and then use backuppc to sweep the backup-up. Not very
efficient for all the reasons you detailed.
Well, at least I'm not on crack. You might look at that driveimage XML
thing. You can do bare-metal restores with it if you like. Beyond that
if you like.
Scott
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