Thank you John for your work. I gave you a thank post. Your help is appreciated.

I ran the script again this evening (6PM) using RoboCopy of the BDBB . At 8:30 (about 2 hours after the script finished, both errors were there. I looked a little later (around 30 minutes later, I would guess) and all was normal again.

I am almost certain I have in the past checked to see if the backup service is running when I see these two conditions present. I think I have checked that at least two times. In both cases the backup service was showing "started". On at least one of those occasions I stopped, then restarted the backup service. It did not repair the condition... at least not immediately. It usually just "fixes itself" later. How much later, I don't really know beyond the data I have been reporting as of late. I am thinking it is always repaired when the midnight PC backups are finished, because I have never seen the conditon "in the morning". I really don't know, though, if it repaired itself before the nightly backup started or not.

I guess I could test that as I seem to be able to reproduce the condition at will. I am not sure what that would prove however. The best work around I can think of is to run my daily batch file (script) as close to midnight as possible and have it finish before midnight. That way my backup are available up to 10PM if, for some reason, I would need them.

Alex and John: Do you think it would mess up nightly backups if the script runs into the start time of the backup window? I am thinking, even if the BDBB backup part of the batch file is running when 12 midnight rolls around (that is not likely except maybe on a Sunday night) WHS will just wait a while and start the routine PC backups a bit later. Even thought I open my backup window at midnight, I haved seen the first backup start over an hour later. Thoughts? I think it would not be a problem but I would like both of your opinions if you care to give it.

I will be glad (tomorrow night) to set task manager to kick the batch file off at, say, 10PM and see if the routine PC backups run as scheduled. I could even do the test on a Sunday night. If either of you think this is worthwhile, let me know and I will do it. It just occurred to me I could just set it up to run tomorrow night and all nights through, at least, Sunday. If it messes my PC backups up, I can recover them for the copy on the external drive anyway. If either of you think I am in for big trouble, that I don't see, tell me, but otherwise I am setting task manager for tomorrow night at 10PM.

This situation may be something I can just live with anyway. I am not sure it is a major problem, but I really wonder why the condition is occuring for these lenghts of time and why there is even a delay of any kind in the first place. Very odd... Like you, John, I agree it might be a bug although not a serious one.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

A suggestion.... Repeat the turning on of the backup service AFTER the Shared Folders have been backed up. Or, if not backing up the Shared Folders, repeat it after a 30 second delay. See if that helps...

I definitely avoid running the script (or running BDBB) in any way that would have it overlap with the routine backups. I would worry that some of the files backed up may be "new" and others may be "old" and that a restoration may fail. (I do not think it would hurt the actual backups, only the copies.) My backup window is 3-6AM, I have yet to see a backup continue past 4:40 AM. (The very first ones were manually initiated outside the window.) My script had been scheduled for 7:30 AM; as mentioned earlier I moved it to 8:30 AM recently "to be safer".

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

I agree, it takes no where near 6 hours for the backups, so I am going to change my window now to the same as yours, 3-6AM, just to be safe about the overlap. 10PM to 3AM to run the script should insure there will be no overlap. I am backing up 4 PCs. I suppose if you had 10 PCs it might be possible to go for 6 hours on a Sunday but I think 3 hours should be sufficient based on my history of backup times. Back to you later on the other comments. Thanks.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

I would suggest starting the "Automated Script" at 10 AM, not 10 PM. If you ever decide to drop a "clean" disk drive in there the 10 PM time will result in an overlap with all the Backups AND the Shared Folders...

Plus I like like to have it "pull ready" should I need to grab it on the way out of the house in an emergency. This means getting it written ASAP after the backups complete.

It only takes about 10-12 minutes for mine to run on week days. On Sundays it's longer -- and I generally go out to breakfast that day anyway! AND that is not a time my server is doing much serving anyway; probably just music, and that is not enough for either to interfere with the other.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

John:Thanks for your thoughts on this.

I see the benefits of your recommendation to run my automated script close to the time the nighty PC backus occur. In my particular case, where the "unknown" status of my nightly PC backups seems to randomly pop up for some period of time after the script is complete, I am running my script at 10PM instead of 10AM to minimize amount of time during my working day where the "unknown" backup status could be present. My primary objective in doing so is to reduce the probability I will need to access my PC backups and can't. I don't think I was very clear in trying to explain that in my recent posts here. Sorry.


Last night my script began at 10:00PM and was finished with BDBB backups (using RoboCopy) and share folders (using RoboCopy) at 10:39PM. A "majority" of that time was dedicated to the share folder synchronization. On sundays it will take longer, but I don't currently think it would take the script more than five hours to execute (10PM until 3AM... where my backup window starts now).

Everyone: One final comment... have any of you ever noticed the "unknown" backup status during an hourly balancing? I wonder if that has anything to do with my seeing the unknow status. Just grabbing for straws here. This has me stumped, but I am not sure it is worth much more effort to evaluate. What do you all think?

Edit: I meant to include the fact that my Compters and Backups console screen has indicated "normal" status, i.e. Backup complete, and I have had access to my backups on all four of my home computers all day so far (at least every time I have looked... and I look "often" )
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

An update on my current status:

Friday nights automated script ran fine. I was still using RoboCopy instead of XCOPY to copy the BDBB to an external disk. The script completed in a pretty short amout of time. Including the two share syncs and the BDBB backup it took a total of 31 minutes (from the log). When I checked on Saturday morning everything was fine... no "unknown" statuses for any backups on any of the connected machines. I am not sure when but by 10AM for sure, I had the unknown status for all connected machines. The status continued thoughtout the day and was still present just before the 10PM automated script started. So basically, all day long, my client machine backups were unavaialble to me. Whats worse, is the automated script that started at 10PM took (including the RoboCopy syncs on two of my share folders) a total of five hours and 31 minutes and ran into my 3AM opening of my backup window. I discovered all this this morning, Sunday. It looked like all backups were successful on on connected client machines. And, of course, the unknown status was gone or I would not have been able to tell you the nightly backups went ok. The status is still "Backed Up" for all client machines now so that, at least, seems ok. The health monitor light was yellow and reporting the backups had not occured on two of my four clients. However, when checking the actual list of last night's backups they were there for all machines. It also appeared that the backup/cleanup had run successfully. I did a manual backup/cleanup anyway just to be safe. There were no changes in the list of backups in any machine and I was able to confirm that the backup/cleanup and all backups of clients had worked correctly overnight.

As JohnBick noted RoboCopy is much slower than XCOPY. Perhaps this is because of the parameters applied to each, but I will not take take the time to look at the parameters now. I was using RoboCopy to copy the BDBB bacause I wanted to see if the "unknown" status would be prevented with RoboCopy instead of XCOPY. Now that I know it appears with either of the the two commands, I have switched the script back to XCOPY and changed my scheduled time back to 6PM instead of 10PM. If this conditoin continues (the unknown statuses) after tonight, I will stop the nightly backups of my BDBB buy "remarking out" the BDBB backup command line and run only with the commands in the script that synchronize the two share folders.

I am trying this one more night. Depending on wheather my console displays the "unknown" staus or not I may have to find another way to do the BDBB backup. After I have seen the results late tomorrow just prior to running my 6PM script, and have looked throuhout the day for the presence (or not) of the unknown conditons of my client machines backup, I will get back and report the results here.

If the conditon continues and I (then) will remark out the command line to copy the BDBB, I will monitor for several days to see if the "unknown" backup status reappears. I will report back here with that info as well one way or the other.

George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Update: Sunday night.
The automated script using the XCOPY command for the BDBB backups completed at 9:21PM (ran for 3 hours, 21 Minutes). This is a Sunday so the script takes longer. The Unknown Status of the various client computers was ok all day from the time I saw it first thing this morning. After the script has run the status again says Unknown for all cleint computers. I expect this to be cleared up by the nightly client PC backus tonight.

Edit: Update Monday Morning. It was not cleared up. It still show Unknow Status for all my client computers this moring (Monday).
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

But did the backups run properly?

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

As far as I know, the backups ran ok. Everything went through to completion without errors. I guess the only way to test that would be to restore from the copy on the external drive. I did that once before and reported in this thread that the "round trip" worked. My main concern here with the script XCOPY is the "Unknown" Status of the backups throughtout the day.

Check some of my other post from today (in the PB) and you will see backups failed using WHS BDBB earlier today. Not sure why yet. Just as when I ran backups with the script, the WHS BDBB backups not only failed but also left my backups in the "Unknown" status. I sure manage to get into some messes, don't I?
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

I guess I just take the "unknown" as a sign the backup service is not running and start it if I want to check it. Since the backups seem to start fine anyway I live with it.

I was actually just reading your BDBB comments. You may be on to something there. Be sure to also thet the drives on the other end -- backup source or BDBB target as appropriate. I am not certain where that error is coming from OR which "end" it is referring to. (Further discussion of that belongs in the other thread at this point.)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

But what would you do it you needed to restore a file from the backup when the "Unknown Status" existed. You could not get to your backups to
VIEW them, much less, RESTORE a file from them.

I always look at the status of the Backup Server on the server when I see the Unknown condition. It has ALWAYS been "Backup Service IS Started". Even if I stop and restart the backup service manually the Unknown Condition does not go away. I even ran your special script that only stops and restarts the services (backup and dirve letter assignmnet) that you mentioned. I have that as a batch file on the server's desktop. The batch files runs, reports the stopping and restarting of both services. Even after that, the Unknown Condition is present.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

I just turn on the backup service with the following little BAT script containing the two commands to turn it off and then the two to turn it back on:




I have not seen this behavior.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Well, John and I don't say the sarcastically, I am glad that worked for you. It must be an issue with something other than the backup service, or some other unknow issue in my server, because doing the same thing on my server does not clear the "unknown" condition. That is the first thing I tried after I saw your post. Thanks for the thought, though. I appreciate it.

Unfortantly, it looks like I am running out of ideas to try on this. I fear I will come to the conclusion, since I haven't found out so far what is different about my server vs. others, that I will just have to NOT backup my BDBB. I sure wish that was not true but I have tried every alternative I can think of (almost) and it seems to be headed that way.

I don't need to beat a dead horse, but it requires repeating here, that when I have the Unknown Status in the Computers and Backups Tab, the backup service is already Started according to the server.

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

George, check thru your drives and see which drives have backups on them by using disk management add-in. See if any of them have a failure projected and what are you using for the destination drive. I suspect you have a flaky drive some where.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

Hi erail,
This thread has gotten so long it is impossible to keep up with all that I have done. I did that a few days ago and reported all drives were ok. I ran chkdsk on the 6 of 8 dirves that had backus on them at the time first. Then I did the other two drives. I ran chkdsk on the c: partition and the d: partition yesterday and now am doing a chkdsk on the target drive. So far no problems. All drives as per Disk Management were good and not projecting any failures. That is easy to check again (about the projected failure) so I will do it again now. It can't hurt.

Update: erail, I just checked all 8 drives with Disk Management. This time only 5 of the 8 drives have backup on them (of course one of those that does not is the system drive (drive 0). All of the 8 drives report a status of Healthy and a Failure Predicitons of False.

Thanks for thinking about it. If you have other thoughts I welcome them.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)