backitup question

[kylesb]

Does the "compression" option work when imaging a drive using the "drive backup" feature?

When I select this option, the program oddly accesses the floppy and then reports "backup process failed".

I am using an OEM version of Nero Express"

Description : Nero Burning ROM
Version : 6, 6, 0, 13
Company : Ahead Software AG
Version Check : Ok

Description : Nero StartSmart
Version : 2, 0, 0, 20
Company : Ahead Software AG

Description : Nero BackItUp Application
Version : 1, 2, 0, 50
Company : Ahead Software AG

[CCampbell]

Yes, the compression option does work when doing a Drive Backup. But it should not be hanging up after looking at the floppy drive. And that would have nothing to do with the compression feature, as I suspect you'll find out if you disable compression and find this still occurs.

You should upgrade to Nero 6.6.0.18 when you get the chance.

What happens if you put an Empty formmatted floppy in the A: drive, does it then continue with the backup?

Regards,

Craig

[kylesb]

Thanks for the response Craig.

I wish to begin by taking a momemnt to thank you for your presence and support.

I tried your suggestion, a blank floppy in the A drive, and I still get the same error "Backup Process Failed". If I use no compression, the backup will proceed with DVD or CD selected as the target.

I am pretty sure I had success using compression at one time (I did one drive image just to test out backitup to a dVD+RW), but after installing all the other programs I want/need (this is a new install of win2k) I encountered this error. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Nero with no luck, same error.

Any ideas? It sure seems odd the program is accessing the floppy drive to begin this process, is that normal?

Edit: A bit more info to consume. My HD is partitioned as follows:

1st partition: FAT32 8 Gig
2nd Partition: 20 Gig Extended Partition with 1 10 Gig NTFS (compression enabled) logical drive and 10 Gig free space
3rd Partition: 10 Gig FAT32 partition

Backitup WILL work with compression enabled on the 10 Gig logical drive in the Extended partition (only 170 meg of data on this drive), but no workie on the 1st or 3rd primary partitions. As a further test, I copied 1.5Gig of data to the logical drive in the extended partition, and a drive backup with compression enabled worked again on this partition. Partition 3 is essentially a copy of partition 1 (I did a drive backup of partition 1 to a DVDR+ then restored it to partition 3 as a test, but the backup was done w/o compression enabled, which is why it succeeded). Backitup will not work with compression enabled on partitions 1 and 3 or an entire HD backup, I get the basic less than helpful info "backup process failed" error with these scenarios.

[CCampbell]

It should not be looking at the Floppy disc at all if your doing a Drive backup.

I'll have to add this to my List of Tests. Maybe we're having trouble with Fat32 boot partitions.

I'll get back to you with my findings. I've got a lot on my table after the 5 days out of office, so I'll get back to you ASAP.

Regards,

Craig

[CCampbell]

Hi Kyle,

Sorry for the delay, but I had to set up a Windows 98 system with FAT32 partitions.

And for me it's backing up the FAT32 partition without any problems. It did indeed look at the Floppy drive first, which I found was strange, but then continued with the backup of hte FAT32 paritition. And I have the compression enabled, and set to the Highest compression possible.

So I'm not able to duplicate your issue on this system.

I then ran the test with a HD that was parititioned as you have it. 1st partition 10GB FAT32; Second Partition 20GB NTFS; and Third Partition 20GB FAT32. And still I'm able to backup the FAT32 paritions without problems.

Regards,

Craig

[kylesb]

Do you suppose it makes any difference I am using windows 2000? I note you used a win98 setup.

In addition, the system was actually restored from a backitup backup, b/c a faulty power connector to the HD caused some major corruption, so I started over, repartitioned and reformatted, and restored the system from a backitup DVD backup (the only one where compression worked). Thereafter, the next attempt to backup anything resulted in the compression problem, and the nebulous error "backup process failed".

Just for grins, I'm gonna install win2k again in the 3rd partition and try it from there, will report back on the results.

[CCampbell]

Hi Kyile,

At this point, any factor good be a key issue. I will also test on my end with a W2K system and see what I get.

I'll get back to you as well with my result.

Regards,

Craig

[kylesb]

I have an analysis that may be correct.

My system suffered a HD corruption problem due to a faulty PS power cable some time back, and I had removed all partitions and created new partitions. In doing so, I did not recreate the partitions with the exact same size as the original setup.

I used a Backitup DVD drive backup (am not certain if it was a drive backup or a partition backup) to restore the system, and doing this caused a mismatch in the actual partition sizes versus the fat sizes. The system works just fine, but the partition size and the FAT sizes don't properly correspond. I found this out using Ranish Partition Manager, which reports a problem with the partition (namely partition 1). I suspect this same problem existed with partition 3, but I cannot confirm such as I reformatted partition 3 to install a second copy of win2k (for test purposes). The second win2k OS was able to use Backitup with compression to backup partition 3 (as you may recall, compression would not work on partition 3 earlier), but not partition 1. Then I tried the same with my original OS install, and sure enough, partition 3 could be backed up using Backitup drive imaging with compression enabled. So I took a step back and tried to figure out why compression now worked on partition 3, and it occured to me that reformatting partition 3 (I did a quick reformat to blank the drive before installing a second win2k on the partition) fixed/resolved the mismatch between the partition size and the size of the FAT.

More detailed error messages from Backitup might have made this situation more readily diagnosed. Further, it strikes me that the Backitup restore program would be more complete if it identified such inconsistencies when it performs a restore and perhaps rebuild the FAT and/or resize the FAT (whichever is appropriate) to correspond with the actual size of the partition. Maybe I've inadvertently discovered a serious shortcoming in how the Backitup restore process works.

Any comments Craig?

[CCampbell]

Yes, I suspect you may have found the issue.

I'll have to do some testing on my end to cofirm this, but it is very likely. And this is an issue we need to look into improving in our software if it turns out to be the case.

Regards,

Craig

[kylesb]

Craig:

FWIW, using the computer management program with win2k my C drive is repoted to be a 7.8 gig partition (I think I partitioned it as an 8 gig drive), yet if I right click the drive icon in explorer, the drive is reported to be a 4.8 gig capacity drive (I note my original partitioning approach where my backitup drive backup was created had the C drive partitioned as a 5 gig drive). This info pretty much confirms the usable capacity of the partition does not match the actual partition size and that restoring a drive image backup to a larger partition will reduce the partitions usable capacity to the size of the image backup.

Now the only remaining challenge is to choose the simplest approach to recover the 3 gig of capacity lost during the image restore without losing my setup. I'm thinking a file backup of the drive, reformat, then restore should do the trick. Or maybe I might try Ghost since I have a copy and see what it does with this situation.

Edit: Use of Ghost did resolve this issue and recovered the missing 3 gig capacity. I did a Ghost backup, reformatted the partition, then restored the Ghost image to the newly formatted partition. Looks like the fellas at Ahead have a bit of work to do to bring Backitup up to snuff with Ghost in handling a restore to a partition larger than the original backed up partition. I am interested to learn when such updates are completed as I liked the Backitup interface, job programming capability, and ability to run from within Windows.

[kylesb]

And, to top it all off, after performing a reformat of partition 1 and reinstalling with a ghost image backup, Backitup give me an error to the effect that compression cannot be used to back up partition 1 because the file system is not recognized, lmao.

I tried an fdisk /mbr to no avail.