Backup Utility - Managing Scheduled Backups

[Winshent]

I want to setup scheduled backups of data on a customers machine to
run every 2 hours. The amount of data to be backed up is approx 20MB
so looking at backing up about 100mb per day. In the long term this is
not practical as the 4Gb file limit will be approached in just over a
month.

I see that all backups go into a catalog.. with the order of backups
being 'Set Number'.. Is it possible to delete a set?

Is it possible to create a catalog file for each day so the files are
named with a date format attached eg 'BackupName_2005-01-31.bkf' ?

I have read on the microsoft site that you can run batches which would
probably be the obvious way to do it. You can create and append to
catalogs. But how would you run script to get the system date?

Ideally i want to have catalogs listed as:
BackupName_2005-01-28.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-29.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-30.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-31.bkf

Then the customer can easily burn old backups onto CD/DVD as he
wishes.

Any ideas or am i asking too much from this utility?

Am also looking at getting some Iomega external hard drives which come
with Iomega's backup software and Norton Ghost. Are these recommended?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The 4GB limit applies only to FAT32. On NTFS it does not apply.

In any case, you don't have to back up to a single monolithic file if your
backup software permits using disks. This option permits you to save to
disk on a hard drive. What results is a folder on the back up hard drive
that contains rows of disk icons. Since none of these files are greater
than about 640MB, you never exceed the file system's maximum file size. The
intitial backup yields a dozen or more files of this size. The incremental
backups that follow are files of various sizes.

You did not specify what backup program you are using, so I cannot comment
on the rest of your questions. I hope you are not attempting this with the
Windows Backup.exe, so I assume it is one of the third party programs.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I want to setup scheduled backups of data on a customers machine to
run every 2 hours. The amount of data to be backed up is approx 20MB
so looking at backing up about 100mb per day. In the long term this is
not practical as the 4Gb file limit will be approached in just over a
month.

I see that all backups go into a catalog.. with the order of backups
being 'Set Number'.. Is it possible to delete a set?

Is it possible to create a catalog file for each day so the files are
named with a date format attached eg 'BackupName_2005-01-31.bkf' ?

I have read on the microsoft site that you can run batches which would
probably be the obvious way to do it. You can create and append to
catalogs. But how would you run script to get the system date?

Ideally i want to have catalogs listed as:
BackupName_2005-01-28.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-29.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-30.bkf
BackupName_2005-01-31.bkf

Then the customer can easily burn old backups onto CD/DVD as he
wishes.

Any ideas or am i asking too much from this utility?

Am also looking at getting some Iomega external hard drives which come
with Iomega's backup software and Norton Ghost. Are these recommended?

There are several ways to implement your backup scheme.

- Use xcopy.exe to back up whole directory trees.
Advantages: Very simple to implement, very easy to retrieve files.
Drawback: No data compresssion.

- Use zip.exe to back up whole directory trees.
Advantages: Very simple to implement, quite easy to retrieve files.

- Use ntbackup.exe.
Advantages: Can back up locked files (using "shadow copy").
Will maintain a catalog (I think).
Drawback: Retrieval is a little harder.

If you use xcopy or zip then you can easily generate your own
catalogs by using standard batch file commands.

 

[GTS]

Here's a batch file I set up for a client's nightly tape backup of a Win 2K
server which places the date and time in the backup name. (I found part of
this code on a Web site a few years ago, that unfortunately I can't credit
here, as I don't remember where.)
It references a backup set I created and saved in ntbackup.exe and saves the
backup with date and time in the name. It should work for you with some
minor revision for XP and, of course, without the word wrap you'll see here.

I don't know if this is your best solution. Note that it will display
ntbackup while it runs and slow down the machine. It works well for my
client where it's scheduled overnight and unattended. There's also the
question of whether your every 2 hours backup has an issues with open files.
For your purposes copying and zipping might be a better solution. You could
adapt the initial code here to use the date and time for filename with a
command line zip utility.


rem DailyBackup.cmd GTS
rem Updated 3:48 PM 5/26/2004 Run by scheduler

for /f "Tokens=1-4 Delims=/ " %%i in ('date /t') do set dt=%%i-%%j-%%k-%%l
for /f "Tokens=1" %%i in ('time /t') do set tm=-%%i
set tm=%tm::=-%
set dtt=%dt%%tm%

C:\WINNT\system32\NTBACKUP.EXE backup "@C:\BackupSets\DailyBackup.bks" /n
"Media created %dtt%" /d "FullBackup created %dtt%" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no
/hcn /m normal /j "Daily Backup on %dtt%" /l:s /um /p "4mm DDS"

cls
exit

 

[GTS]

..bkf is the default exension for ntbackup.exe