FAQ

BackupAssist is designed to back up to tape, hard drive, REV™ drive, QuickStor, CD/DVD, BlueRAY, FTP, NAS and file. Please be aware that due to the lack of support for tape devices in the up coming Windows Longhorn we are no longer planning to provide support for autoloaders in BackupAssist v4.x.x.

BackupAssist uses Windows Backup (also known as NTBackup) to perform low-level backup operations. Windows Backup is included with the Windows operating systems.

BackupAssist integrates with Windows Backup to provide a comprehensive backup system for your organization.

It provides scheduling, monitoring and supervisory services, as well as implementing a media rotation system and other services explained below:

No need to write scripts or batch files saving you time, effort, and reducing the possibility of errors.

Implement an industry-standard backup scheme automatically using BackupAssist. We put the hard work in, so you won't have to devise a media rotation strategy yourself.

If a backup fails, you'll know about it. The backup status emails mean that you have the results of each backup delivered to your inbox, so you can at once see if anything went wrong with the backup. Scheduled jobs may be used to schedule a backup, but if it fails you are often given no warning at all.

Minimise human error. The sending of reminder emails to your secretary / office assistant will minimise the chances of human error in your backup strategy.

Open file backup automatically using BackupAssist. For more details, see the question and answer on open files below.

Standard Windows backup format. BackupAssist uses Windows Backup utility to perform the backups, so your media will be in the standard backup format. No proprietary software is needed to use the media.

Simply restore data from the backup media using the Windows Backup program, as you would do if the backups were performed manually. No special processes are required.

Please note: restoration should be performed by qualified technical personnel.

Generally, no. Products such as ArcServe and BackupExec™ will take control of your backup devices, which means that they cannot be used by other software such as Windows Backup or BackupAssist.

However, our experience has shown that once the other software is uninstalled from your system, BackupAssist will work fine.

Yes. The last step in the configuration wizard allows you to prepare tapes for use with Windows Backup (and you can also do this any time after installation using the BackupAssist administration console).

Note that you only need to prepare each tape once. Once it's been prepared, then it will be fine for use.

Yes - absolutely. We provide the facility to run programs before and after the backup - they're called the Pre-backup script and Post-backup script. You can set them up in the Advanced section of the BackupAssist Administration Console.

There's not much that a system administrator should do, as the idea of BackupAssist is to make the backup process an automatic, self-managing process. However, it is necessary that the system administrator check the emailed backup reports to ensure that the backup is performed successfully each night.

Go to the Settings tab in the Administration Console. There you can add drives to map for the backup operation. You can also choose to import the currently mapped drives - this will add all the currently mapped drives into the list.

Note: to ensure that a mapped drive can be backed up, you must add it to the list.

There are two categories of schemes available: pre-defined and custom.

Pre-defined schemes will perform full daily backups. Depending on the number of tapes you have, you can choose to do daily backups (5 tapes), or to include weekly tapes, and archived tapes. Our intermediate scheme uses 10 tapes, our professional scheme uses 14 (plus one for every year) and the Grandfather Father Son scheme uses 20.

Custom schemes can be used if you need to perform incremental or differential backups, and append to tape. You have the flexibility of designing your own backup schedule and rotation strategy.

Yes. For our pre-defined schemes, simply check the boxes Include Saturdays and Include Sundays. Our custom scheme allows you to design your rules for Saturdays and Sundays as well.

You can choose. Starting with version 2.0, you can choose to customize your backup scheduling and media rotation to match your needs.

The pre-defined media rotation schemes provided with BackupAssist will perform full backups every day. They're the most secure form of backup, and we recommend this when setting up a new backup strategy. (See the next question for why this is the case.)

For advanced users, you can select what type of backup to perform on any given day of the week (full, incremental or differential) and whether to append or overwrite the media. If you already have a backup system and are upgrading to enjoy the benefits of BackupAssist, then this would be the recommended path.

The idea of a backup is being able to restore all your data whilst minimizing the possibility of data loss. When restoring from incremental or differential backups, you'll often require multiple tapes or disks as some backups will store only differences in files since the last backup. For example to restore Wednesday's data, you may require Monday's tape, together with Tuesday and Wednesday's tape. If Tuesday's tape is missing or destroyed, you'll be missing some data.

With full backups, each backup contains all necessary data, so you can do a complete restore from any tape or disk.

We believe that Mondays offer a small advantage over Friday because most organizations close over the weekends and most computer servers are not stored in fireproof rooms, but tapes not in use are usually stored in a fireproof safe. Friday tapes are then exposed to slightly more risk because they're left to the possibility of fire or theft over the weekend.

Thus, it makes sense that the weekly, monthly and yearly tapes not be exposed to this increased risk- so Mondays (instead of Fridays) were chosen.

Yes. There are a number of bugs in Windows 2000 Backup that may prevent backups to standalone tape drives from working when called from scheduled jobs. The bug is documented in knowledge base 267574. BackupAssist is designed to work around this bug.

The level of open file support (OFS) provided in BackupAssist v4 varies based on operating system:

Full support - complete backup of open files, including all locked files, maintaining data consistency.

Basic support - open files locked with a shared lock or no lock are copied and backed up after the main backup. Files with an exclusive lock cannot be copied or backed up. Exclusively locked files are typically SQL Server or Exchange data files. Exchange Server backup is standard with BackupAssist. SQL Server can be backed up using our optional SQL Add-on module.