Baffled by Inconsistent and Irrational Vista Backup Behavior

[Guest]

OS is Vista Home Premium. In a nutshell, what I'd like to do is to manually
run a full backup for Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos on a monthly
basis. On a daily basis, I'd like to automatically schedule an incremental.
Here are my questions:

1. I don't see anywhere in the tool where you specify the type of backup. Is
a full backup taken when you manually start the backup, and incremental on
automatically scheduled backups?

2. My assumption would have been that a new backup set folder is created for
each full backup, and that the incrementals would be in that backup set
folder. Is that the expected behavior? I have yet to see a new backup set
folder created since I did the original manual backup.

3. Some of the "incrementals" in the backup set are not incrementals at all
- they are full backups and my auxiliary drive ran out of space! Last
modified dates of files haven't been changed since the last full backup, is
the "archive bit" (or whatever the utility uses) getting screwed up here?

4. I ran a test restore of a folder to alternate location, and it seemed to
work OK. When I went to File Explorer I couldn't find the restored folder.
Ironically, I found it with a Search, but I could not see it when I navigated
with F/E.

Once again, I am baffled by this behavior and I am getting nervous that my
data isn't getting properly backed up.

Thanks in advance for any help, Tommy

 

[Jill Zoeller [MSFT]]

Hi Tommy, see my answers below.

1. I don't see anywhere in the tool where you specify the type of backup.
Is
a full backup taken when you manually start the backup, and incremental on
automatically scheduled backups?

The first backup you run is full. Subsequent scheduled backups are
incrementals. However, there are cases where a full backup is triggered. We
have a flowchart to illustrate this at
http://cfsbloggers.members.winisp.net/backup_fullvsincrementall.jpg.

That being said, I don't think there's a way to have two schedules running
concurrently, one for daily and one for monthly. The full/incremental logic
tries to ensure that you do have a periodic full backup. Once you set up
your scheduled backups, you can run through the wizard again (using the
Change Settings option) and there is a check box on one of the pages that
says "Create a new, full backup now in addition to saving settings."

2. My assumption would have been that a new backup set folder is created
for
each full backup, and that the incrementals would be in that backup set
folder. Is that the expected behavior? I have yet to see a new backup set
folder created since I did the original manual backup.

Yes, your assumption is correct.

3. Some of the "incrementals" in the backup set are not incrementals at
all
- they are full backups and my auxiliary drive ran out of space! Last
modified dates of files haven't been changed since the last full backup,
is
the "archive bit" (or whatever the utility uses) getting screwed up here?

Those files changed in some way that's not reflected in Last Modified Date.
See
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...n-windows-vista-are-larger-than-expected.aspx
for details.

4. I ran a test restore of a folder to alternate location, and it seemed
to
work OK. When I went to File Explorer I couldn't find the restored
folder.
Ironically, I found it with a Search, but I could not see it when I
navigated
with F/E.

Hmm, not sure what to tell you with this. Can you reproduce this
consistently?

 

[Guest]

Thanks Jill. The flowchart and documentation explain it. I "forced" a full
backup by "changing" the schedule and checking the "take full backup" box in
the process. The new backup set folder is indeed being created. If you talk
to the developers, one thing I would askis that it would be nice to have a
button for forcing a full backup, without having to "change" the backup
parameters to do it.

When this full backup finishes, I'll try a restore again. Maybe I did
something wrong. I will admit that I'm still trying to get used to the new
file explorer given the changes to the old "Documents and Settings" folder
structure (and the smaller indentations to quickly see the hierchy!).

Thanks once again, Tommy