BackItUp a FAILURE - Will not restore

[captadv]

Hey,

I created a back up to DVD of a partition. It spans 3 DVD's. On the DVD's are the Nrestore program, 16 CD's worth of data (.dat) and a cfg file. I created the back up in W2000 Server. I tried to restore to a FAT32 partition under W2k...no go. When I say no go, I mean that it appears to have restored - the program tells me that the restore was successful - but I am unable to access the drive.

I then tried creating a partition (FAT32) labelled SOURCE. I copied all the files from the DVD's to that partition. I created another partition called DESTINATION. I booted to a W98 start disk and ran the NRESTORE program. The results were the same. I have tried all kinds of configs...but the results are always the same....it tells me the restore was successful....but the data does not get written.

BTW....I have emailed tech support no less than 5 times and get responses like:

Have you check the recorder to see if it is recording correctly!

I have called tech support (and paid for it) three different times only to try the suggested config and fail. I even called Craig Campbell and left a message. I feel sorry for that guy....he must get overwhelmed with people like me (highly literate - highly frustrated) begging for help.

IF ANYONE CAN HELP ME RECOVER MY DATA, I WILL BE VERY GRATEFUL.

I work for a major nightclub in NYC and will send a collection of dance CD's to the person who offers up the solution....

Best Regards,

David

[cfitz]

Are you trying to restore the system files and data from the backup, or just data? I would try rebuilding your box from scratch, installing 2000 from the Microsoft CD. Once you have 2000 rebuilt install the same version of Nero you used to back up your files. Then run BackItUp from 2000 via the usual start->program files method. Restore to a temporary folder, and (if that works) copy just the data files (i.e. no system files) out of the temporary folder and into the locations they should be.

Also try restoring to an NTFS partition instead of the FAT32 partition. For both this and the above suggestion, you should already have the partition to which you are restoring formatted with a working filesystem before beginning to restore. In other words, don't rely on BackItUp to create the empty filesystem.

If none of these suggestions work, try downloading the latest version of Nero and BackItUp if you haven't already.

Good luck,

cfitz

[captadv]

Hey,

Thanks for the speedy reply. I have done EXACTLY what you have suggested to no avail. I have tried to restore DATA only....on a pre-formatted partition...with the latest-greatest.

I cannot imagine this happening. And....no help from AHEAD.....

Someoe wanna help? Or at least tell me they have the same or similar problem?

Thanks,

David

[cfitz]

Do you see the .nco files on the DVDs themselves? If so, try copying a few directly to your hard drive through Windows explorer, then double-click them. If you have BackItUp already installed, then it should automatically pop up a dialog asking where you wish to save the uncompressed file. Pick a spot and save it, then check to see if the file was successfully uncompressed.

cfitz

[cfitz]

For example, here is what I see on a one of the CDs (should be the same for DVDs) of a Nero BackItUp set:



When I double-click the highlighted file, BackItUp displays the following dialog asking where I wish to save the restored, uncompressed file:



Note that by default it attempts to save it in the same folder with the same name that it was originally backed up from.

If this works, you at least have a method, however inconvenient, to restore your files.

cfitz

[captadv]

I do NOT have those files...al I have are:

.dat files that represent a CD each
NRESTORE.CFG
NRESTORE.EXE
and
.msg files

that represent different languages....

[cfitz]

Can you post the actual directory listings? What version of BackItUp did you use to create the backup, and what settings did you use?

cfitz

[cfitz]

Also, what exactly were you backing up in the first place? Files on your hard drive, or actual physical CDs, or something else?

cfitz

[cfitz]

Okay, I see the problem with my line of questions. You made a drive backup rather than a file backup. I'll check and see if I can duplicate your problem.

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

cfitz, you should be getting a salary from Ahead.

or at the very least a free Nero 6 license + Pioneer A07XL

and yeah, i can kiss those chances of becoming the #2 poster byebye

[cfitz]

Well, captadv, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I was able to duplicate your problem. The bad news is that I was able to duplicate your problem.

I created a small drive backup of a FAT disc on a CD-RW using BackItUp 1.2.0.1. BackItUp wrote the nrestore.exe version 1.03, nrestore.cfg, the language .msg files and the actual backup data .dat file. I then installed a clean hard drive in a spare computer, fdisk'ed it to create a FAT-32 partition, then booted into DOS with CD-ROM support. I was able to run nrestore.exe, select the restore files on the CD-RW as the source and the clean drive as the destination. I then pressed "restore" and nrestore immediately popped up a message saying the restore was successful. Of course, down in the corner the status message said "last written block = -1". Not a good sign of things to come...

Of course, when I rebooted I confirmed, as you already described, that nrestore didn't actually do anything.

Another pile of crap piece of software from Ahead. Boy have they fallen from the heights they once occupied. And this instance is truly inexcusable. It is one thing to release a buggy non-critical program like Nero Media Player, but it is something else entirely to release a backup program, which people rely on to safeguard their valuable data, with any bugs let alone bugs as basic and severe as this. HELLO!! AHEAD??? Couldn't you even test this program just once before you set it loose on the unsuspecting public?!? It is obvious that you didn't or you would have found this problem.

How utterly irresponsible of Ahead. Craig Campbell, I'd like you to respond to this and put some engineers on the job to help captadv. You owe it to him and all users of BackItUp.

Having said that, I want to add a comment for you also, captadv. I was hoping to have a solution for you before I said this, but it looks increasingly like the only way you will be able to recover this data is for Ahead to get off their duffs and fix their program, so I will say it now. Always, always, always test backups and their restoration procedures before you need them. I'm sure you know this now, but maybe your bad experience can help someone else.

Sorry I don't have any better news for you.

cfitz

[cfitz]

P.S. I wrote an email to Craig Campbell at Techsupport4@nero.com asking him to read this thread and respond. If you haven't also already done so, I suggest that you do too.

cfitz

[captadv]

Hey,

thanks for all the effort...one note though....my restore did not immediately say successful. It took at least 2 hours of transerring data before it said that. I would be happy if AHEAD would just find any other way to decompress and decipher my data....I'd even pay the freight. As for Craig...I phoned him today and left a message....I hope he gets back to me.

Best Regards,

David

[TCAS]

Cfitz;

Wellcome back, your valuable advise and contribution have been missing here for a while. It is nice to see come back.

[cfitz]

It took at least 2 hours of transerring data before it said that.

The disc I backed up only had 50 MBytes of data on it, so it wouldn't take very long. I suppose "immediately" is a relative term.

I would be happy if AHEAD would just find any other way to decompress and decipher my data

Yes, that is what I was thinking. If they can create the .dat file from the BackItUp Windows interface, they should be able to give you a utility to simply decompress it in Windows and just dump the contents to normal folder, skipping the complications of restoring a whole partition or disc.

As for Craig...I phoned him today and left a message....I hope he gets back to me.

I wish you luck, and please let us know how things work out. If I think of anything else, I will post it here.

cfitz

[cfitz]

Wellcome back

Hi TCAS. Thanks for the welcome and the kind words.

cfitz

[cfitz]

David,

I was finally able to successfully restore a backup. I began by first enabling booting from my CD drive, then inserting the first (and in my case, only) CD into the drive and turning on the computer. This caused the computer to boot into the DR-DOS OS BackItUp burns onto the CD to make it bootable (and presumably also the DVD).

The nrestore.exe program starts up automatically. As before, if the drive to be restored isn't already formatted, nrestore.exe can't do anything with it. So I tried exiting nrestore.exe without attempting to restore anything (use the arrow keys before selecting a source drive) and running DR-DOS's fdisk. With it I was able to create a primary partition in FAT-32 (choice 3) on the drive to be restored. FAT-32 was the newest, bestest filesystem choice DR-DOS's fdisk has.

After creating the partition, I executed nrestore.exe again, and this time it allowed me to restore to the newly created partition. I still had the same problem that although it said the restore was successful, I couldn't read anything on the drive. When I checked the drive properties in disc manager it was listed as a RAW drive with no filesystem identified.

I booted back into DR-DOS with the BackItUp recovery CD and noticed that from DR-DOS I could see folders and files (in 8.3 format) on the newly restored drive. This got me thinking that perhaps I could copy those files to another good drive on the machine using DR-DOS. But before I did that I decided to try a backup and restore of a FAT-32 drive (all my drives are NTFS, and that is what I had been working with up until this point).

After reformatting my test drive and putting some test data on it I backed up the drive with backitup and then deleted the partition. Now I was back to square one, except this time instead of trying to use the BackItUp recovery CD, I formatted the drive to be recovered with NTFS from Windows 2000. Then I booted into the BackItUp recovery CD and attempted the restore again.

I was able to restore, and this time when I rebooted I found that the restored drive was listed as an NTFS drive and the folders and files were recovered and accessible.

Apparently when I tried to restore the NTFS volume using the recovery CD's tools, nrestore created a hybrid volume that was half FAT-32, half NTFS, and readable by nothing except DR-DOS.

Anyway, if you haven't already tried this exact series of steps, I recommend that you do:

1. Wipe your system clean and install a fresh copy of Windows 2000.

2. Install, if you don't already have one, an empty drive onto which you will attempt recovery of your data.

3. Create one primary partition on that drive and format that partition with NTFS (I am assuming your original drive that you backed up was also formatted with NTFS since the symptoms seem to match that scenario).

4. Make your DVD drive bootable by editing your BIOS settings.

5. Put the backup DVD you made with BackItUp into the DVD and boot the system. Nrestore will start automatically after DR-DOS loads.

6. Restore to the empty drive you have prepared.

7. Boot back into Windows 2000 and see if the restored drive is visible.

8. Copy folders and files to where you really want them.

If this doesn't work, then try booting again with the BackItUp DVD, exit nrestore immediately, and see if the restored files are visible from DR-DOS and report back.

For best chances of success you might want to ensure that the disc to which you will restore your data is configured exactly the same as it was when you backed it up. This might mean, if the above steps don't work, that you have to prepare multiple partitions on it. For example, if the original drive had a 10 GByte partition in FAT-32 and a 20 GByte partition in NTFS, even if you only backed up and want to restore what was on the 20 GByte partition, you may need to prepare the restoration drive with both partitions in their respective sizes and formats prior to using nrestore.

Please let me know how it turns out.

cfitz

P.S. By the way, I also found a bug in BackItUp at the creation end. One of the reasons I was having trouble earlier is that BackItUp reported that it successfully backed up my first test drive when in fact it did not. It only wrote the boot programs, the nrestore program, and an empty .dat file to the CD. Don't ask me why, and don't ask me why it considers that to be a "successful" backup.

[captadv]

cfitz,

First let me thank you for all your efforts...AHEAD should be so lucky as to have an engineer of your quality.

As for the restore....it didn't work. I started with a clean W2KP install. I added a HD and formatted it NTFS. I booted from the backup disks...ran NRESTORE....and restored to the NTFS disk partition that I pre-created and formatted. It told me that the restore was successful and it took about 2 hours to do. When I booted into W2K and checked the drive, it said:

"This drive is not formatted - Do you want to format it now?"

Any other suggestions would be helpful.

Still no word from AHEAD....disappointing.

Thanks Again,

captadv

[cfitz]

Rats! Still no luck, huh? Does DR-DOS see anything on the "restored" drive? Boot from the restore DVDs again and then immediately exit from the auto-started nrestore. Run fdisk from the DR-DOS prompt and tell me what it says about the "restored" drive. And then see if you can change to the "restored" drive in DR-DOS and get a directory listing.

Also, what does Windows 2000 disk manager say about the properties and format of the "restored" drive?

cfitz

P.S. If worse comes to worse and you decide to give up, I am willing to take a look at the DVDs myself if you are willing to snail-mail them to me. Of course, I can't offer any guarantees, and you should only consider mailing them, with the attendant possibility of loss or damage in the mail, once you have decided that you will have to write them off as a loss. Or you could try burning copies of them and sending the copies.

[captadv]

cfitz,

Thanks again!! Could you forward me your address to xxxxx@xxxxxx.xom

Thanks,

David

[dodecahedron]

cfitz, you should be getting a salary from Ahead.

or at the very least a free Nero 6 license + Pioneer A07XL

i repeat my demand !

[cfitz]

cfitz,

Thanks again!! Could you forward me your address to xxxx@xxxxxx.com.

Thanks,

David

I have sent you an email. You might want to edit your post now to remove your email address. You never know where spammers are lurking.

cfitz

[cfitz]

i repeat my demand !

sigh.... If only polyhedrons had the power they truly deserve.

cfitz

[CCampbell]

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I was on the road all last week and was not able to connect to the internet to get Emails or visit the forums.

I will test this issue today and tomorrow and get back to you with my findings.

Regards,

Craig

[cfitz]

Thanks Craig. I'm glad you are looking into this.

cfitz