BackupAssist Classic v15

BackupAssist Classic v15.0.2

Maintenance released March 31st, 2026

This is an important maintenance release for users running Cloud Backups on version 15.0.0 and 15.0.1, including fixes to keep data usage in cloud buckets/containers as low as possible.

Important: we highly recommend enabling the automatic rate limiting functionality in your cloud jobs if you haven't already done so. You can enable this by setting the "Maximum number of requests per second" to 300 for both GET and PUT in the "Cloud options" tab. This feature will make backups more resilient and speed them up as well, by smoothing out the requests and avoiding throttling issues from the provider.

Cloud Backup – cleanup step

  • Garbage collection (deletion of unused data chunks from the container) has been completely reworked with fixes and major performance improvements, especially for immutable backups.
  • Major fix to avoid a bug where large data deletions/changes could cause garbage collection to stop working on an ongoing basis, increasing the storage requirements in the cloud provider.
  • The “Perform cleanup” step of the backup where garbage collection happens is now limited to run for no more than one quarter of the backup length for large backup jobs.
  • Users can skip out of “Perform cleanup” if there is a need to run other jobs, or to reboot the machine for maintenance.
  • NOTE: if your job was affected by the garbage collection bug above, the first few backups may run a longer cleanup step than usual, in order to remove extraneous unused data from the backup container.

Cloud Backup – performance

  • The performance of Cloud Backups to S3-compatible destinations hosted on relatively low-powered hardware has been improved dramatically (eg. QNAP QuObjects)
    • Note that our Cloud Immutability feature has not yet been confirmed as supported on NAS-device-hosted S3-compatible systems.
  • The performance of immutable backups has also been further improved, and immutable backups no longer create the additional short-lived object chunks that were introduced in 15.0.1

Discovery and recovery – all backups

  • A discovered catalog for any backup type will now retain the discover-from location (and access details) as the default for the respective backup.
    • This is a change from previous Classic versions where after discovering a backup catalog from a new location, the discovered catalog would still use the original location as the default.
  • Importantly, this change allows recovery from Cloud Backups in all cases where the access keys or container names have changed, eg. if the container has been copied.
    • Note that the backups must be rediscovered to take advantage of the fix.
    • Also note that recovery from replicated containers for immutable backups is not yet implemented.
  • Restore and recovery is now supported for Wasabi Covert Copy Buckets.

Other fixes

  • Fixed a rare crash issue in after Cloud Backup completion or cancellation.
  • Fixed a rare issue where Cloud Backups could fail with a “Stream was not readable” error.
  • Fixed an issue which prevented System backups to the MEGA S4 cloud provider.
  • Fixed an issue for file backups to local/NAS (File Protection) that caused backups to fail without retries on some kinds of “invalid handle” error.
  • Fixed manual CryptoSafeGuard scan jobs for mapped network drives (SMB shares mapped as drive letters)
  • Fixed a bug where user-defined limits for time or percentage on Test Restore jobs for File Archiving are ignored.
  • Fixed handling of further invalid syntax paths where file or folder names begin or end with space or period “.” characters, for backups to cloud (Cloud Backup), non-system backups (File Protection), and File Archiving jobs.

BackupAssist Classic v15.0.1

Maintenance released February 17th, 2026

Cloud Backup

  • Detect and suggest the use of immutable option for Cloud Backups when the container has immutability configured
  • Immutability - fix bug which doesn't extend the lock as needed on data for files that haven't changed
  • Fixed performance issue where for some jobs the incremental backup ignores the existence of previous backups during processing (though data is not reuploaded if it already exists)
  • Add support for Impossible Cloud and other providers that do not support the get-acl-bucket command
  • Add support for iDrive E2 non-immutable containers with "Default Encryption" enabled
  • Allow periods (full stops) within AWS bucket names
  • Add support for QNAP QuObjects and other providers that do not support the ListObjectVersions API
  • Fixed an issue for immutable jobs to Azure where incremental backups can fail with error: “BA7000 Cloud backup incorrect password” due to unexpected data in the response from Azure
  • Fixed a restore issue for iDrive E2 immutable backups when all objects are in “deleted” state (previously unexpected error response)

Other fixes

  • Prevented unnecessary extra files from being generated in the Windows MachineKeys directory
  • Fixed a rare issue where the console UI can hang when it remains opened for a few days
  • Fixed a rare hang when running a Test Restore job
  • Fixed a rare issue where file restore can fail for some specific files with error “Path not found in backup"

VM Instant Boot

  • Fixed processing for backups on mapped network paths
  • Added cancellation support for the "Create Instant Boot" function in the VM Instant Boot UI
  • Improved some minor issues in the UI

Other UI changes

  • Fixed broken default and "Start time" sorting on the Reports page
  • Improvements to the left hand navigation in the UI, more consistency with capitalisation
  • Improve UI flow consistency in the New backup and New test restore sequences
  • Fixed some inconsistencies in the selections UI behavior, including regarding the use of checkboxes, VSS warning display, and the VSS mode options
  • The temporary encrypted volume created by a running System Protection job is now hidden from the selection screen
  • Fixed bug where the last completed job result is sometimes not shown for a job in the "Last 5 backups" item at the bottom of the Job list / Overview

BackupAssist Classic v15.0.0

Released November 6th, 2025

NEW Cloud Immutability

  • Immutable backups in the cloud (WORM).
  • The best offsite backup protection from accidental and malicious corruption.
  • Backups are locked for the user-specified retention period and then removed.
  • BackupAssist manages the cloud object retention period, so no additional cloud storage cost will be incurred by enabling immutability.
  • Seamless discovery and restore from backups, even when the cloud bucket/container data appears to have been corrupted.
  • Supports:
    • Object Lock on AWS S3 and S3-compatible providers.
    • Immutable Storage on Azure.

NEW All New user experience

  • Intuitive first-time user experience
  • Streamlined operation for existing users
  • Improved feature discovery and navigation
  • Simplified job creation

NEW VM Instant Boot UI

  • Quickly get your backed-up system up and running as a Hyper-V guest, using this new UI to create and manage the boot files that are needed.
  • The virtual disks created by the VM Instant Boot UI application can be immediately attached to a new Hyper-V guest and started. This process with will not affect the underlying backup, keeping its integrity intact.
  • Works with both local system / volume backups as well as downloaded system backups from a cloud storage.

Improved Cloud stability and performance

  • Automatic request rate management enabled by default for new cloud jobs
  • Reduce rates based on provider requests and errors
  • Increase rates again when conditions are suitable
  • User-configurable limits on request rates
  • Improved stability and consistent performance

Improved Advanced imaging engine

  • Added cancellation support to the NTFS optimization backup stage (0% on incremental backup)
  • Fixed a bug in the low-level NTFS optimization routine where NTFS errors on a volume caused it to hang at 0%.
  • Fixed a hang in the low-level NTFS optimization routine which can happen when the destination is not reachable

Cloud Backup:

  • Fixed backup of files that were being skipped due to having a zero-size backup stream (skipped file warnings)

  • Provider S3 API requests are identified as “app/CortexIT-<info>”

Other enhancements:

  • Backups: Fixed regression which prevented concurrent job execution (zip) or multiple different jobs from being backed up/restored simultaneously
  • Restores: Streamlined entry of the encryption password during restores
  • Scanning: Updated the 7zip library to fix bugs and improve detection routines
  • Settings Export/Import: fixed issues related to exporting and importing encrypted jobs
  • UI: Improved product differentiation for BackupAssist Desktop vs Classic
  • UI: Added “days of week” to run backups into the job creation wizard
  • Licensing: Fixed missing license expiry warnings for BackupAssist Desktop (via product key)
  • Licensing: Improved workstation OS detection routines to handle some OS corruptions

Feature removal:

  • WebDAV (not recommended) is no longer available by default
  • Deprecated cloud seeding functionality and the “quick” job wizard
  • Deprecated Exchange Granular Restore (EOL)