I have been using your BDBB backup since very early. My approach is to backup the BDBB onto a removable disk then restore it to another machine after first deleting its backup. The restore machine is a Hyper-V VM but I don't think that matters much. My problem is that the restored database is flagged as needing repair.

Should I restore the registry entries made with the backup?

I have tried restoring from a drive over the network or from a VHDX drive attached to the VM. It looks like the right number of files of the right size are created.

I have also seen the restore finish and the sole client of the restore machine does a backup and that backup is the only one I see. I have to have the client as otherwise I can't open the restored backups.

Maybe this sin't the purpose and I can restore only to the original machine.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Richard

Best guess is the WHS patch levels aren't the same on the two servers. Make sure you've got all Power Packs installed and the WHS box fully updated. You can also follow the manual backup instructions from Microsoft (BDBB just automates those steps) and see if you have a different experience.

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Good advice, thank you. I'll get back if I have any success or more insight.

Richard

I thought I should get back. I went to a new previous VM that I snapshot right after installing and updating. Then I updated both the physical and VM to the same point. The restore seems to work but when I try to mount a backup it fails. Maybe it's always been doing that. Passwords are also the same BTW. It seems pretty simple and I checked that the exact same number of files and bytes were restored, less the registry file and folders.

I suppose it's time to move on (darn right I hear people saying). I'll go to Storage Spaces on W10 and a third party product which for me must:

Run incremental and differential backups
Been able to easily copy the backups and access the copy
Easily mount a backup, full, diff or incr
Reliably restore and boot
Created VHD(x) from a backup (full, diff and incr)
Ideally be able to booting the VHD(x) in a VM
and, of course, redundancy.

I eliminated FreeNAS based on the trouble people get if it won't boot which is WHS v1 all over again.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Richard

I tried doing a copy from one server to the other. Stopped PDL and WHSBACKUP, shared, as read only, the {8086...} folder and copied it to the same on the VM server. Worked exactly as it should so it must be a step in the move over hard disks.

storage spaces can be fickle at times.
I use it as a off site backup for my data fro my new readynas.
Just make sure you have all the updates on a winpc there were improvements on storage spaces.
Then when you setup storage spaces set the pool size way above what you actually have . for example I am using 10tb of drives for storage spaces no redundancy but when I set it up I entered 25tb for pool size.
The reason is you can't change the pool size without starting over from scratch.

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Good advice, thanks.

As an alternative to software backups, try doing a bit by bit (as opposed to sector by sector) clone of the WHS drives. Then in the case of a failure, you have another exact set of data drives to fall back on.

Get yourself something like a $30 Calvary dual hard drive dock from Newegg, fleabay, or Amazon. Make sure to buy a known brand with good Amazon reviews. Then Google and find either a free version of EASUS DiskCopy (at least v2.3 but older than v3.0) or buy the current version of MINITOOL ShadowMaker Pro. Load that into your PC, drop the drive you want to clone and a blank drive into the dock and start the clone. Then repeat for the remaining data drives.

Either of these programs will facilitate bit by bit cloning. The only inconvenience is your server will be down (off) while you perform the cloning process on each drive. Also, do not try to clone using the docks built in clone.

I found that versions of EASUS newer than v3.0 and the dock based clones will not copy a hard drives unique disk ID (a must when cloning a WHS hard drive for the server doesn't work properly). As it turns out ShadowMaker Pro ($29) will also copy the disk ID.

If you'd prefer a current software version (as opposed to running an older version of EASUS) but want to avoid the cost of ShadowMaker Pro, just message MINITOOL's pre-sales support line and ask them if the free version of ShadowMaker also supports transferring the unique disk ID when cloning and will clone bit by bit.

Most likely it will as MINITOOL is the gold standard for disk maintenance software. The result should be a bit for bit copy of all your data that's plug and play.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. The problem with your proposed solution is that I don't want to clone a disk because the database is spread over several disks that it shares with the user's data.

RichardT,
Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant was to clone all your disks while the server was off. Then you'd have direct copies of the databases you have spread over the several disks.

Not sure if that helps or not but good luck none the less....