The Windows Home Server Enthusiast Community

Updated to version 1.0.2.2 on Sept 25, 2009.
This updated version is primarily a maintenance release with only minor bug fixes and features. The changes include:
- Redesigned method of drive detection for better accuracy
- Really display TrueCrypt encrypted drives (I swear this works now) (Thanks JohnBick!)
- Disable Duplication Options for server with single Storage Hard Drive (Thanks Grey!)
- Disallow backup to non-NTFS formatted drives (needed for 4GB files) (Thanks Matt Pietrek!)
- Properly handle network shares and usernames with spaces (Thanks jamesd42!)
- Do syntax checking of network path format (\\server\share) (Thanks jamesd42!)
- Store Readme in Software\Add-Ins share so user can access it
- Improved error messages

Please see the Wiki for a full writeup of the Add-In. A zip file containing the installer and Readme is available for download here.

Extra thanks to cavediver for all the awesome testing!


Older version 1.0.1.6

I've wrapped up a new version of WHS Backup Database-Backup (BDBB) that includes a couple of bug fixes and two exciting new features. Thank you to erail, cavediver, JohnBick, jmpage2, and Timothy Daleo for your help testing in the Private Beta.

* Correctly shows available space for Server Storage (thanks redjessie!)
* Correctly displays TrueCrypt encrypted drives (thanks JohnBick!)
* Automatically backs up the Client Registry keys necessary to properly link the backups with the Client PCs
* Automatically backs up the entire WHS.reg in case the user wants to manually restore part or all of the registry
* Prompts user to restore the backed up Client Registry keys when restoring the Backup DB
* Supports backup and restore to network locations, including UNC and Samba shares

Please see the Wiki for a full writeup of the Add-In if you're not sure what it does.

A zip file containing the installer and Readme is available for download here.

Thanks Yakusa! The new features are really nice.

Thanks again for a great program!

You aren't going to want to hear (see?) this, Alex....

The "big red X" is back. Same as before. Screen shot follows (with Disk Management in background). The TrueCrypt volume was mounted but does not show in Disk Management -- as usual).

YES, I did a restart. YES there was sufficient space on the drives for storage of another backup.

Obviously I will test a replacement...

Thanks for getting this out for us, Alex. I figured you had something up your sleeve based on a couple of comments you made to others on the forum. The new features look very useful. Off to read the Wiki to get a little more info on it. Thank you!
George

John, please check the event viewer for any errors, I've greatly improved the logging (for my debug purposes anyway).

I read about the update, and decided to give it a try. Install was extremely fast, and the actual backup took less time than I thought it would - I did check both boxes to enable duplication, and the backup (which was about 227GB) went flawlessly while we had dinner.

When I started it, I was surprised to see the health warning about the backup service being stopped, but realized it would have to be in order to have a stationary "target" for the backup.

Looks and works great!

Hallo and thanks for the great Add-In...

I was attracted to this forum just because I followed the traces of this BDBB Add-In. I always did this backup manually till now as I already lost all my Client Backups once due to a system disk crash... so now I was wondering whether it would be possible to reuse the already copied files on my external disk when starting over with your AddIn to avoid that all these big 4gb chunks would need to be copied again?

Can I reuse the same destination folder and the Add-In would eventually recognize that majority of the chunks are already copied over there?

Unfortunately no, there is no capacity for an incremental backup. The problem is that most of the 4GB chunks are updated when Backup Cleanup runs over the weekend.

Hi got this and am loving it. Great work I have one stranage problem though - whilst all works normally through the "desktop" console i.e. if i remote login and then double click the windows server console shortcut on the WHS desktop. But the console on my connected vista machine is completely blue even after re start - any thoughts? THis matters less to me than some because i do most of my WHS work using remote login but it has me stumped - despite starting and restarting the console on the remote computer a number of times I just get a completely blue console screen(after a protracted login by the way)



graham

Hi Graham, have you tried this or rebooting your server? It's not clear to me which you mean when you said you rebooted.

Here are two screen captures. The error details are basically the same each time so I only captured one.

Those aren't mine, are there no BDBB errors?

Nope, that's all I found. I checked the log to see what the last entry was, then tried BDBB then went into the log. Those four errors were new; nothing else.

FYI, I am going to reinstall it. I downloaded it again (looks to be same). Uninstalled on MSS. Restart. Install. Restart. Test.

I don't expect any change but we'll see. I will update this post when complete.

EDIT: The re-installation and restarts did not resolve the problem.