J
JJ
I have a Maxtor OneTouch II (usb and/or firewire) 250gig external hard
drive primarily for backup of my HP m7260n (and/or HP ZD7000 Notebook)
running WIndows XP Media Center Edition 2005(based on XP home) and
2004 (based on XP Pro) respectively.
It came with Dantz Backup software, which when installed is supposed
to allow you to press a physical button on the external drive to
inititate a back up of your whole system.
The HP m7260n replaced another box and has a 300gig drive which makes
the capacity of the Maxtor too small to do a full system backup, but
the one or two times I used this device I had to bypass the Dantz
software and just drag folders I cared about to the external drive
BECAUSE when it comes across a file with a path greater than 255
characters it chokes.
What happens is the backup comes to a screeching halt and I get a
message that backup failed. It doesn't just alert you to a problem(s)
with particular files but abortst the backup process.
It kind of shoots itself in the foot becuase it will add the name of
your computer to the front of the folder tree, so any file with a path
length even approaching 255 is now longer than 255. At least this is
what I think is happening.
Maybe what I need to do is buy some better backup software that can
either
1) doesn't increase my existing path length
2) can handle files greater than 255 including whatever it appends to
the front
3) will at least keep going and backup the rest of my files by passing
the ones it can't handle.
Software which can handle the one button (physical button) feature
would be nice but is not the priority issue.
If there is some better hardware out there, I bought it at Costco, so
I might be able to get my money back even though I threw out the box.
MY PC is an HP with an internal garage door type bay which can hold an
HP external drive of about the same size with a USB plug instead of a
USB cable. These are more expensive.
I'm wondering if the HP manufactured external backup drives have the
same problem with file path lengths and what software they may or may
not come with for backup.
Open to all suggestions.
John "J.J." Jackson
drive primarily for backup of my HP m7260n (and/or HP ZD7000 Notebook)
running WIndows XP Media Center Edition 2005(based on XP home) and
2004 (based on XP Pro) respectively.
It came with Dantz Backup software, which when installed is supposed
to allow you to press a physical button on the external drive to
inititate a back up of your whole system.
The HP m7260n replaced another box and has a 300gig drive which makes
the capacity of the Maxtor too small to do a full system backup, but
the one or two times I used this device I had to bypass the Dantz
software and just drag folders I cared about to the external drive
BECAUSE when it comes across a file with a path greater than 255
characters it chokes.
What happens is the backup comes to a screeching halt and I get a
message that backup failed. It doesn't just alert you to a problem(s)
with particular files but abortst the backup process.
It kind of shoots itself in the foot becuase it will add the name of
your computer to the front of the folder tree, so any file with a path
length even approaching 255 is now longer than 255. At least this is
what I think is happening.
Maybe what I need to do is buy some better backup software that can
either
1) doesn't increase my existing path length
2) can handle files greater than 255 including whatever it appends to
the front
3) will at least keep going and backup the rest of my files by passing
the ones it can't handle.
Software which can handle the one button (physical button) feature
would be nice but is not the priority issue.
If there is some better hardware out there, I bought it at Costco, so
I might be able to get my money back even though I threw out the box.
MY PC is an HP with an internal garage door type bay which can hold an
HP external drive of about the same size with a USB plug instead of a
USB cable. These are more expensive.
I'm wondering if the HP manufactured external backup drives have the
same problem with file path lengths and what software they may or may
not come with for backup.
Open to all suggestions.
John "J.J." Jackson