Question about ntbackup

[Roman Serbski]

Hi list-

I have a question regarding ntbackup functionality in Windows XP. I
configured ntbackup to run during user logs in into domain. It copies the
content of My Documents, Desktop and Outlook folders on a shared drive.
My problem is - the backup file just keeps growing although I selected
differential backup. Let's say the total size of user documents is 3GB. I
select differential backup so it runs full backup the first time, but after
couple of days the bkf file is already ~10GB and keeps growing. I think it
runs full backup every time. I thought this was because of pst files so I
excluded Outlook folder but it didn't help.

Could you please share what could be wrong with my setup or what is the best
practice to work with ntbackup? What I basically need is to copy My
Documents/Desktop on a shared drive and rotate it on a weekly basis.

Thank you very much.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Hi list-

I have a question regarding ntbackup functionality in Windows XP. I
configured ntbackup to run during user logs in into domain. It copies the
content of My Documents, Desktop and Outlook folders on a shared drive.
My problem is - the backup file just keeps growing although I selected
differential backup. Let's say the total size of user documents is 3GB. I
select differential backup so it runs full backup the first time, but
after couple of days the bkf file is already ~10GB and keeps growing. I
think it runs full backup every time. I thought this was because of pst
files so I excluded Outlook folder but it didn't help.

Could you please share what could be wrong with my setup or what is the
best practice to work with ntbackup? What I basically need is to copy My
Documents/Desktop on a shared drive and rotate it on a weekly basis.

I am not overly familiar with ntbackup, but if it performs a true
differential backup then your backup is behaving how would expect it to.
This utility is designed to backup to different media for each backup
generation. I infer from your post that you are backing up to the same
media each time.

When you perform the intial full backup, all the files are backed up and
they are then flagged as archived. Performing a differential backup then
only backs up the files that have been created or changed. But differential
does not flag the backed files as archived, thus they will continue to be
backed up every time a diffential backup is performed. The theory is that
to do a restore only the original full backup and the latest differential
need be restored.

To do what you want: you need to perform incremental backups, This does the
same as differential but flags the files as archived. Normally to restore
such a backup requires the restore of the original and then the restoration
of each and every incremental backup in sequence.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi list-

I have a question regarding ntbackup functionality in Windows XP. I
configured ntbackup to run during user logs in into domain. It copies the
content of My Documents, Desktop and Outlook folders on a shared drive.
My problem is - the backup file just keeps growing although I selected
differential backup. Let's say the total size of user documents is 3GB. I
select differential backup so it runs full backup the first time, but
after couple of days the bkf file is already ~10GB and keeps growing. I
think it runs full backup every time. I thought this was because of pst
files so I excluded Outlook folder but it didn't help.

Could you please share what could be wrong with my setup or what is the
best practice to work with ntbackup? What I basically need is to copy My
Documents/Desktop on a shared drive and rotate it on a weekly basis.

Thank you very much.

Ntbackup has its use when you need to back up Windows system
files. In your case I do not think that it is the best tool to use. I
recommend
that you replace ntbackup.exe with these commands:

xcopy /s /d /c /y "%UserProfile%\My Documents" "\\SomeServer\SomeShare\My
Documents\"
xcopy /s /d /c /y "%UserProfile%\Desktop" "\\SomeServer\SomeShare\Desktop\"
xcopy /s /d /c /y "%UserProfile%\*.pst" "\\SomeServer\SomeShare"

Using xcopy instead of ntbackup has several advantages:
- You can see what's being backed up.
- You end up with individual files and folders that you can
easily retrieve.
- You won't get an ever growing .bkf file.