Older versions of BackupAssist

BackupAssist 7.4.7

23 October 2015

File Protection (Rsync)

• 23472 Resolved BackupAssist Rsync authentication failures that occur after firmware and software updates to Rsync servers and NAS devices that included an update to OpenSSH 7.0. Re-run "Register with server" for all jobs to take advantage of the improved OpenSSH 7.0 security.

BackupAssist 7.4.6r1

22 May 2015

• 21594: Fix exception when selecting dates in the "Run now" dialog, caused after applying certain security updates for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 (KB3023222/KB3023223/KB3023224).

BackupAssist 7.4.6

06 August 2014

CMC

• 19180 Fix bug causing next run time for a job to show incorrectly in the future in some circumstances

Server 2012 R2

• 19180 Fix bug causing next run time for a job to show incorrectly in the future in some circumstances

System Protection

• 18793 Improved retention of backup history for iSCSI and Data Container jobs, and other minor fixes and improvements

Installer

• 18428 Re-enable unattended installation using msi
• 18385 Fix missing trial period on some machines
• 19203 Updated EULA

BackupAssist 7.4.5

29 April 2014

Server 2012 R2

• 18063 Provide support for the Hyper-V Config Reporter on 2012 R2
• 17962 Fix UI issue preventing System Protection backup of ReFS volumes
• 18122 Remove false BA728 warnings for Hyper-V backups using System Protection, appearing only after applying MS update KB2919355

BackupAssist 7.4.4

2 April 2014

Central Administration

• 15398 Format activity progress string correctly before step has started executing.
• 15275 Fix word-wrap problem in activity monitor in Central Admin console. Calculate percent progress.
• 15358 Default sort Latest Reports by reverse date order (latest first)

CMC/Web

• 15287 Accurate "Next Run Time" value is included with old reports that are sent to CMC.

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

• 17891 Fix warning popup buttons when EGR is already running
• 17861 Fix appointments restored with altered times (GMC_BA-620)
• 15316 Show job name in EDB extraction dialog.

File Protection (Rsync)

• 17588 Fix Single Instance Store for encrypted Rsync backups
• 11444 Enhancement to Rsync seed process

Image Catalog

• 17730 Fix intermittent error during catalogue creation in system protection backup
• 16168 Fix a rare exception during catalogue step in system protection backup (GMC_BA-0856)

Licensing

• 17874 Fix manual licence activation (GMC_BA-631)

Reports/Notifications

• 7149 Fix issue preventing display of html reports when control characters are output by job scripts.
• 15050 Fix scrollbar button in restore report viewer
• 16967 Fix mangled zip option text
• 16037 Fix blank Rsync destination details backup report

Selections/Exclusions

• 14167 Do not automatically select drive chosen as a destination in System Protection jobs.

SQL Add-on

• 17590 Improve reporting of "database in use" issues during SQL Restore (GMC_BA-0929)

System Protection

• 17459 Fix "bare-metal" detection in Files and Folders selection UI for System Protection backups, when the Locale is set to a different culture than the UI language of the OS.
• 17802 Fix rare null reference exception in system protection backup. (GMC_BA-0968)

System Protection (Ntbackup)

• 15928 Fix rare issue with NTbackup causing backups to be incorrectly updated.

TrueCrypt

• 16489 Fix Truecrypt binaries not copied to network destination (GMC_BA-0864)
• 15219 Report Truecrypt container destination check error in more detail

UI

• 17702 Fix VSS snapshot status in job monitor (GMC_BA-0958, GMC_BA-0950, GMC_BA-0967)
• 17850 Fix email addresses and network paths not exported. (GMC_BA-630)
• 14741 Prevent unnecessary pop up when sending diagnostics from a machine without Windows Server Backup.
• 16410 Hide unavailable restore options
• 15817 Keep existing machine GUID when importing settings.
• 17507 File Protection and File Archiving schedules show "the following morning" hint when backup scheduled to start after midnight.
• 17628 Limit Zip Thread Count to range of control when loading settings.
• 14946 Improve error message about Windows firewall not running
• 15110 Add bigger icons for SQLRestore and LicenseManager, so they look nice on Win2012 Start screen.
• 17022 Don't hide BA console when showing the "License Required" popup
• 13135 Show detailed RecoverAssist Builder error
• 14353 Fix wrongly positioned wbadmin restore button.
• 15363 Fixed Reports not being available after all jobs are removed.
• 15671 Fix exception when double-clicking certain area on BA console restore screen.
• 15391 Fix data container check box status when data container is not available
• 13996 Add button to copy URL on Central Administration Setup dialog.
• 14861 Update trial expiry status every 24 hours

BackupAssist 7.4.3

13 March 2014

Exchange Granular Restore Add–on

• 17561 Fix Exchange Guest detection when running Hyper-V backups on a Server 2012 R2 server

Licensing

• 17626 Fix trial expired issue for first time installs in some rare circumstances

BackupAssist 7.4.2

13 February 2014

Licensing

• 17374 Fixed "trial expired" messages which affected a limited number of machines using some non-ascii characters in OS information.
• 17366 Fixed "trial expired" messages which affected a limited number of older 32 bit operating systems.

BackupAssist 7.4.1

5 February 2014

System Protection

• 17220 Fix important issues potentially causing corruption in backup history for iSCSI and Data Container backups

CMC

• 16856 Allow sending short/private backup report to CMC
• 17240 Fix temporary CMC error "Invalid URI: The format of the URI could not be determined" experienced by some installations

Installer

• 17162 Fix MSI installer to use request privileges when necessary, rather than requiring execution from an elevated command prompt.

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

• 17248 Fix issue causing non-ascii characters from appearing correctly in some html emails after being restored.
• 17189 Fix some connection and impersonation issues due to incorrect Exchange CAS hosts being used in some cases.

Concurrent backups

• 16965 Enable concurrent backup for SQL and Exchange Mailbox Add-ons

Data Container

• 16976 Fix RDX drive not ejecting for data container backups (GMC_BA-594)

iSCSI

• 17020 Fix error restoring old system protection backups from iSCSI destination.

Reports/Notifications

• 17000 Fix reminder notification sent a day earlier.
• 16971 Write VSS Shadow Storage usage to log files before and after System Protection backups.
• 16762 Restore section in backup report summarizing what user can restore using this backup.
• 17047 Add previously missing Recovery section to the backup report of successful System Protection backup to RDX drive.

Restore Console

• 16909 Warn if a backup is running before starting a restore

Server 2012 R2

• 17183 Avoid unnecessary BA728 warnings when backing up Hyper-V using System Protection on Server 2012 R2

UI

• 17024 Fix console crash when attempting to edit or run removed job from Monitor panel
• 17034 Disable "Delete Job" button in job-specific context menu, when a job is running
• 17095 Fix console crash with error "NullReferenceException at CortexIT.VSSWrapper.BackupComponentsSnapshot.! BackupComponentsSnapshot()" (GMC_BA-0914, GMC_BA-610)
• 17098 Fix failed backups on Server 2003, Vista and some Server 2008 machines where PowerShell v1 is installed instead of PowerShell v2 (GMC_BA-0902, GMC_BA-0907, GMC_BA-0906, GMC_BA-0905)

BackupAssist 7.4.0

17 December 2013

NEW: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2. This support includes the backup, restore and recovery of data and VSS applications, and non-CSV Hyper-V environments.

NEW: Restore log file that contains a list of all files processed during a restore and the result for each file.

NEW: Recovery options section for System Protection backup reports. This section explains the BIOS, EFI and Hyper-V guest recovery options for each System Protection backup

Central Administration

• 16484 Fix diagnostic submission from Central Administration when using IE 10

Data Container

• 16296 Provide new Data Container option allowing certain failures in System Protection backups to Buffalo NAS devices to be avoided

Destinations

• 16515 Additional logging for destination check in legacy system protection backup

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

• 16574 Fix the error caused by repeatedly hitting Test button (testing logon credentials for Hyper-V guest hosting Exchange), while the initial test hasn't completed yet.

File Protection (Rsync)

• 15295 Fix restoring a single file with one or more apostrophes in its name.
• 15890 Clean up temporary files after an encrypted Rsync backup is cancelled.

iSCSI

• 16972 Ensure System Protection catalogues are removed when the backup is no longer available on the current backup device

Misc

• 16879 Fix rare error caused by corrupted backup report preventing the job from being selected in the list.
• 16850 Fix rare error in testing Authentication on Hyper-V guests with Exchange

Reports/Notifications

• 16009 Report more specific VSS errors in file protection and archiving backup reports.
• 16091 Fix the bug preventing problems with Hyper-V guests from being reported in File Archiving backups
• 16577 Fix error preventing generation of HTML backup report in some circumstances.
• 15809 Recovery options section for System Protection backup reports.

Restore Console

• 16302 Handle exception when backup is not accessible
• 15874 New option enabling creation of a restore log file containing a list of all files processed during a restore and the result for each file.

Server 2012 R2

• 15924 Support for Windows Server 2012 R2. This support includes the backup, restore and recovery of data and VSS applications, and non-CSV Hyper-V environments.

Service

• 16952 Important fix to enhance the stability of the service, especially with respect to running scheduled jobs

UI

• 16835 Improve documentation describing the Exchange Impersonation required for EGR restoration into live mailboxes.
• 16718 Disable embedded Exchange mailbox backup for System protection (imaging), File protection and File Archiving jobs. Option is still available in "legacy" System Protection (NTbackup) jobs
• 16178 Fix exception that occasionally happens when moving to the Destination screen for System Protection to Local Drive jobs
• 16798 Add text in Mailbox Protection job to highlight the limitation of this type of protection (Exchange 2013 not supported).
• 16958 Prevent jobs from being deleted while the job is running.

VSS

• 16615 Fix false alarm about disabled VSS service.
• 16154 Fix unnecessary error entries in Windows event log.

Zip

• 16899 Adjust the maximum number of threads allowed adaptively in Zip backups

BackupAssist 7.3.1

October 29, 2013

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

• 16136 NEW: Allow EGR for Exchange databases from within backups of Hyper-V guests. Both the Exchange Granular Restore Add-on license and Hyper-V Granular Restore Add-on licence are required.

Central Administration

• 16163 Fix bug preventing diagnostics submission from BACA when running on some older browsers

Licensing

• 16330 Improve information provided for some common activation errors.
• 16184 Prevent activation with incorrect license keys

Reports/Notifications

• 16460 Fix backup report status for File Archiving jobs when one or more files fail to be compressed.

Restore Console

• 15492 UI improvements to make restore progress in Restore Console more informative.

System Protection

• 15873 Hide unnecessary System Protection warning messages

UI

• 14875 Fix minor UI bug with section headers shown in black color instead of blue.
• 16364 Fix an error caused by VSS timeout outside of 5..60 minutes scope in Windows Settings dialog.
• 15494 Make "Customize schedule" and "Select a new schedule" buttons more discoverable in UI.
• 16178 Fix exception that occasionally happens when moving to the Destination screen for System Protection to Local Drive jobs

BackupAssist 7.3.0

September 25, 2013

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

NEW: 16044 Direct Exchange Injection: Restore mail items directly into a live Exchange Server.

Central Administration

• 15908 Improve appearance of Central administration on certain browsers

CMC/Web

• 15685 Improved handling of corrupted web responses due to faulty proxy configuration

Destinations

• 15004 Improvements to authentication of backup connections to NAS.

File Protection (Rsync)

• 15985 Improved recovery in case of error, and include default ServerAliveInterval to help avoid some problems when encryption is enabled (GMC_BA-0568)

Reports/Notifications

• 15331 Detect specific VSS errors from Wbadmin output, allowing users to troubleshoot using specific online knowledgebase articles
• 16073 Enhance VSS applications report section to highlight guest failures\issues
• 14997 Detect incompatible 4kb sector size with System protection backups and issue appropriate error message
• 16000 Hyper-V backup failures due to guests now report the names of the problem guests in the backup report.
• 14116 Add destination details in the report under the "Backup Job" section, and only show the destination check report if it is not successful
• 15705 New option for user to define media usage threshold so that warning is issued when threshold is exceeded.
• 15919 Show backup end time in backup report list

Restore Console

• 11657 Restore from CSV backup fails unless intermediate backup location is present

Scheduling/Schemes

• 9768 Allow user to specify media rotation day for Weekly backups. Calendar only shows rotations when scheduled, not every day. (GMC_BA-0824)

Settings/Logging

• 15897 Fix verification of the Backup User Identity when importing settings.

TrueCrypt

• 10110 Improvement ensures that TrueCrypt container is dismounted after a TrueCrypt backup (GMC_BA-0496)

UI

• 15971 Alert user that Data container will be required for granular restore from RDX backups
• 15379 Tidy up media text for S3Rsync destination
• 13020 New option to allow user to specify BackupAssist temporary working directory, which may be of particular benefit for encrypted rsync backup jobs.
• 12500 Fix rare exception when browsing backup reports
• 15947 Alert user that Data container size cannot be changed after it is created
• 14996 Enhanced "Create a new backup job" UI to highlight the capabilities of each protection type, and add new "Learn about Backup types" content
• 15673 Fix a rare exception when creating a backup job.
• 16111 The VSS timeout setting has been moved to Windows settings in BackupAssist

BackupAssist 7.2.1

August 13, 2013

RecoverAssist

• 15620 Fixed issue with missing DLL when booting 32bit Windows 7 Recovery Environment (GMC_BA-0553)
• 15675 NEW: RecoverAssist now includes an option to add third party diagnostic tools for use within a recovery environment

Reports/Notifications

• 15611 NEW: Backup reports now show the backup start and end time as well as the backup engine type.
• 15263 Fixed situation whereby CMC reports for scheduled backups are not sent to the CMC if the job is run manually prior to the scheduled backup time. (GMC_BA-0812)

Central Administration

• 15536 Fix duplicate machine error when adding a machine with imported BackupAssist settings to Central Administration (GMC_BA-0825)

Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

• 15730 EGR is not supported on Server Core systems. A warning is issued when attempting to launch EGR on Server Core

File Protection

• 15648 Fixed situation whereby BA804 "Skipped alternate data stream for some files - not supported by destination" warning is falsely issued. (GMC_BA-0831)

Installer

• 15766 Fix broken DataPath functionality for using an alternate path to store BackupAssist configuration data

Restore Console

• 15556 Fixed issues when restoring from System protection backups when original backup destination drive letter has changed since the last backup.

SBS Integration

• 15352 Fixed rare exception in System Protection backups on certain SBS 2008 machines (GMC_BA-0813)

UI

• 15736 User can click on URL directly in the popups advising on Exchange Servers support.
• 15704 Restore console now allows for a list of backed up files to be saved on Server core machines (GMC_BA-0839).

VSS

• 10716 Allow user to modify VSS timeout setting from within BackupAssist console
• 15735 Improved how BackupAssist runs in the presence of incompatible VSS providers

BackupAssist 7.2.0

July 22, 2013

NEW: Exchange Granular Restore Add-on

Now in full release (add-on license required)

The Exchange Granular Restore (EGR) console allows you to preview and restore mail items from System Protection, File Protection and File Archiving backups. This means that the same backup you use to protect your Exchange Server can be used to restore individual mail items.

• 15456 Fix to avoid error when opening an .edb file from within a Data container VHD.
• 15627 Fixed rare problem where Exchange backups were not listed when viewing Exchange Granular Restore page
• GMC_BA-0830
• 15603 Fix excessive service memory consumption problem when upgrading catalogues to version 7.1.0 or 7.2.0
• 15503 Exchange mailbox add-on job creation wizard now states which versions of Exchange are supported by the Exchange mailbox add-on

Central Administration

• 14857 NEW: Hyper-V Granular Restore Console and SQL Restore Console can now be launched when running BackupAssist remotely from the Central Administration console .

Data Container

• 15646 Data container is now supported on Server 2008 based operating systems (including SBS 2008) and Vista.
• 15464 Improved performance of System protection backups to Data containers on Linux-based NAS devices.
• 15638 Fix error occurring when exporting settings for Data Container and TrueCrypt-compatible jobs

File Protection

• 14827 Skip and warn about symbolic links in File Protection jobs

Hyper-V

• 15598 Fix detection of SMB3 paths for Hyper-V backups.

System Protection

• 15460 Fixed a catalogue error on certain French machines. (Case: GMC_BA-0819).

GMC_BA-0819

iSCSI

• 13446 Fix to avoid issue whereby backup job would fail because Backup target is missing (Case: GMC_BA-0802).

GMC_BA-0802

• 13106 Remove automatically assigned drive letters after mounting an iSCSI target.

Restore Console

• 15488 New pop up to confirm cancellation of a restore
• 14623 Prevent Restore of mailboxes into Exchange 2013 server
• 15052 Fixed problem whereby Restore Console UI was not updating display of alternate backup location

UI

• 15707 Fixed exception error in UI when re-selecting File protection destination choice as Rsync.
• 15487 Restore reports can now be generated and viewed from within the Backup Console -> Restore section.
• 15299 Fixes to Data container settings UI behaviour

Zip

• 15489 Zip backups kept in secondary local destination using ‘Keep local copies of your backups’ option, are now catalogued and available in the restore console

7.1.1

July 3, 2013 Data container

Fix to avoid a mounting error when restoring a Server 2012 backup from a Data Container on a Linux based NAS with sparse files enabled.

CMC/Web

Enhancements to improve support for proxy servers when sending CMC reports and other web requests

BackupAssist 7.1.0

June 20, 2013

NEW: Exchange Granular Restore (EGR) - BETA

Exchange Granular Restore (EGR) console allows you to preview and then restore mail items from System Protection, File Protection and File Archiving backups. This means the same backup you use to protect your Exchange Server can be used to restore individual mail items.

Note: The BETA period is set to expire on 24th August after which the EGR functionality will cease to function. To continue using EGR, you must upgrade to the latest version of BackupAssist that contains the full version of EGR.

Existing backups will be upgraded to be compatible with EGR

NEW: Improved Server 2012 support

Server 2012 Deduplication

• Support for backup of deduplicated files in Non-optimized mode. Note that the whole file will be copied as deduplication is undone when the file is copied.

Hyper-V replica support

• Support for backup of primary Hyper-V replica virtual machines.

ReFS support

• Support for ReFS formatted drives as a backup source and destination for all backup types
• File Pprotection backups will not use Single Instance Store as this is not supported by ReFS
• System Protection does not support incremental backup of an ReFS formatted drive

Storage spaces

• Support for Storage Spaces as a backup source and destination

SMB 3.0

• Support for SMB 3.0 shares as backup source and destination for all backup types
• System protection to an SMB 3.0 share does not support backup history without the use of the Data Container backup destination option.
• System protection does not support VSS applications with storage on SMB 3.0 shares, and cannot backup open files on an SMB 3.0 share.
• File replication, Zip and Rsync backups support backing up of Open files and Hyper-V guests on an SMB 3.0 share.

CSV support

• Support for VSS applications using Server 2012 CSV storage, with all types of backups and destinations.

NEW: Data container as a backup destination

• System protection backups can now be made to a Data container, except for iSCSI destinations.
• Data Containers enable backup portability, and bring support for backup history for imaging backups to NAS and RDX drives.

NEW: CMC/Web

• Enhanced capabilities to synchronize job info up to the CMC server, using an updated CMC protocol
• Any change in the software that affects the “next run time” for a job will cause CMC to be updated automatically, such as enabling/disabling a job, deregistering or reregistering it with CMC, changing the schedule or deleting it
• This means that CMC users shouldn’t need to perform any unnecessary manual maintenance on the jobs in their CMC portal
• Also includes more streamlined UI that allows user to subscribe a job with CMC during job creation.

Centralized administration

• 14446 Fixed issue whereby computer name was not updating in the Centralized Administration console when a computer is renamed.
• NEW: 14768 Remote restore. BackupAssist Restore console can now be launched from within the Centralized administration console. SQL and Hyper-V Granular restore console not yet supported remotely.
• 14816 New lightweight remote console client installer that does not require any BackupAssist license.

Other enhancements and fixes

UI

• 14690 Backup reports older than 6 months are now archived and not displayed in the reports page.They can be viewed via the new “View archived reports” link in the reports list.
• 15270 Fixed adding and subtracting columns in computers panel in Central Administration console.

Miscellaneous

• 14881 SBS 2011 report integration. Prevent auto-enabling of report integration when it is explicitly disabled by the user
• 15290 Fix intermittent iSCSI System protection backup errors on some machines
• 14807 Fix to prevent TrueCrypt/ VHD container size from being set to ‘0’
• 14269 Fixed inconsistent behaviour of new job wizard with regards to Backup User Identity

Rsync

• 15103 Improved message when Rsync is unable to determine space usage on the destination

Exchange

• 10515 Improved notification regarding supported versions of Outlook. 32bit versions of Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 are supported. 64bit Outlook and Outlook 2013 are not supported
• 14822 Time filters added to restore page.
• 14856 Exchange restore now has 3 options: Entire Exchange database restore, Restore of mailbox backup PST and Exchange Granular restore (BETA)

System protection

• 14202 Fixed System protection backups ‘freezing’ when RDX cartridge runs out of space. Oldest backup is removed before backup retries. Location of oldest backup is now listed in backup report.

Restore

• 15303 Fixed “Differencing error #1” error when restoring from System protection/imaging backup on pre-Windows 8/2012 operating systems
• 15152 Fixed case whereby Restore console sometimes shows staging disk as CSV Hyper-V guests restore target.
• 15216 Fixed restore issue where NTFS permissions were lost when restoring to the root of a volume

TrueCrypt

• 13700 Use all available space setting will now allow for 100MB of free space

SQL add-on

• 14744 Fixed UI exception when attempting to progress past the SQL server selection step without adding an SQL server

Email server support

• 12256 Added specific TLS server support for sending email. Now works with Office 365 and other hosted Exchange solutions.

BackupAssist 7.0.2

April 24, 2013

CentralAdmin

• 14596 Fix incorrect report link in job monitor
• 14668 Ensure licensing information is accurate to within 1 minute when refreshed.
• 14243 Improve reliability of Remote Console
• 14716 Fix possible delay in machines list, introduced in 7.0.1

FileRep

• 13192 Add an error which describes the failure to create TrueCrypt container on network media where the amount of available space cannot be determined (BA4205). Error description has suggestion of how to alter the job in order to avoid the error.

Imaging

• 14202 Imaging to an RDX target no longer freezes if available space is low

RestoreConsole

• 14558 Fix corrupted file in restore of encrypted file protection backup GMC_BA-0783
• 14552 Allow historical restore reports to be viewed

Scheduling/Schemes

• 14640 Fixed Rsync scheme description for Full Archive

SQL Add-on

• 9298 Report warning when no SQL databases are backed up. GMC_BA-355

UI

• 14689 Allow reseller logo to be displayed in the core UI
• 14586 Fix minor UI issue on splash screen
• 14614 Fix minor bug in UI where title text if shifted to the left if long description text is used.

Zip

• 14483 Fix backup file naming in Zip and legacy system protection backups. GMC_BA-0526

BackupAssist 7.0.1

March 28, 2013

CentralAdmin

• Removed double scroll bar on all jobs screen
• Fixed some IE10 specific presentation bugs
• No longer using loading cursor when waiting for user text input
• Fixed minor styling problem
• Ensure session timeout works correctly on all browsers
• Fix some IE8 JavaScript issues
• Prevent activation of Central Administration via HTTPS if certificate is not provided.
• Fix layout issues in Central Administration Setup dialog when HTTPS certificate name is too long.
• Update to latest version of JavaScript framework
• Add new "Comments" field for free text against each machine being monitored
• Fixed problem preventing BACA from see the new name when the remote computer name changes
• Fix bug causing duplicate entries to show in the machines list after some edits.

Destinations

• Update optical disc burning library
• Exchange Mailbox Add-on
• Add the error "Mailbox Protection is not available for Exchange 2013". Show it upon attempts to backup Exchange 2013.

FileRep

• Fix misleading error message when iSCSI destination is full.

Hyper-V GRC

• Update to RealSCSI driver, version 1.1.142

Image Catalog

• Fix BA2524 warning in imaging backups on certain non-English Windows operating systems.

Fix important issue preventing cataloguing for image backups on some pre-Windows 7 systems

Imaging

• Fix important issue preventing CSV backup on 2008 R2 with System Protection

Imaging to an RDX target no longer freezes if available space is low

Installer

• Uninstall correctly deactivates any BA license on the machine.

Licensing

• Fix issue preventing activation in some rare cases

Misc.

• Fix issue preventing use of some valid users as Backup User Identity (previously showing "Backup user account must be a member of local administrators group" error)

Remote Control

• Fix issue causing Remote Console to connect to the local machine instead of the requested remote machine

Reports/Notifications

• Fix issue causing duplicate maintenance notifications to be sent during some daylight savings transitions

Settings/Logging

• Improve logging efficiency, and possibly prevent some service errors

SQL Add-on

• Fixed issue causing a UI crash when attempting to setup or edit SQL add-on job selections
• Fix failed SQL backup when a server is selected for backup multiple times

UI

• Fixed display issue for zip encryption thread count setting option
• Fix minor issue, where long problem description may be partially cut inside the popup dialog.
• Hide not relevant Imaging options in Windows Settings on Windows 2003.
• Upon user attempt to create Recovery media show user-friendly message explaining why it is not possible on the platform where RecoverAssist is not supported.
• Add new hyperlink on Exchange backup screen
• Don't have scrolling in the title page of Welcome Screen.
• Add auto-scrolling for small-resolution monitors when screen doesn't fit.
• Introduce Previous and Next buttons into Report Viewer to make navigation across list of reports more convenient.
• Fix text truncations in the buttons on the initial New Job Wizard page.

BackupAssist 7.0.0

February 25, 2013

New: Central Administration

• Remote management via your browser, available for every BackupAssist V7 install
• Manage multiple machines in a LAN environment
• Https available for your security
• Includes powerful Remote Control tool for remote use of the BackupAssist Console

New: Support for new operating systems and applications

• Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 support
• Full support for the enhanced Windows Backup imaging engine, including the new VHDX standard
• Most BackupAssist features are already supported (Hyper-V CSV support on 2012 not yet available)
• Support for new Server 2012 features is coming soon

SQL Server 2012 support for:

• All job types via VSS backup and restore
• The SQL Add-on

New: Enhanced usability and a fresh new UI

• Intuitive navigation, organized around easy-to-understand backup concepts
• UI features accessible via quick access "tabs" for Backup, Restore and Recover
• Backup tab allows you to create and manage jobs, monitor backups and view backup reports
• Brand new Restore tab helps you to discover backups for your restore scenario, and recommends the best restore tool
• RecoverAssist functionality is available via the new Recover tab
• Additional tabs for the Remote tools like Central Administration, and for access to Settings
• Job types offer just what you need:
• System Protection helps you get maximum protection for your Entire System
• File Protection allows you to replicate your files pretty much anywhere, including to Rsync servers (with the BackupAssist for Rsync Add-on)
• File Archiving jobs are the easiest way to create long term archives, and even to Tape (with the Zip to Tape Add-on)
• And Exchange Mailbox Protection and SQL Server Protection allow you to complete your protection of your most critical applications (with relevant Add-ons)

New: Upgraded VHD support

• VHD mounting functionality is now fully exposed to Windows tools like Disk Management and diskpart
• Includes VHDX support on Server 2012 and Windows 8
• Enhances imaging catalogue generation and the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console

New: Improved VSS Diagnostics

• A powerful set of VSS configuration details are now gathered into diagnostics, allowing a detailed analysis of VSS issues and a faster prognosis by BackupAssist support
• Additionally, diagnostics now include detailed disk, volume and operating system information, now supporting Server 2012 and Windows 8 as well as Server Core and SBS variants

CMC/Web

• 12908 Fix bug occasionally preventing CMC from receiving some reports
• 13967 Fixed communication issue between BackupAssist and CMC resulting in failure to report backup jobs completion.

FileRep

• 13999 Fix failed File Replication and RSync backups when backing up certain folders to NAS.

Help

• 11469 Fixed some broken help links

HyperV

• 10828 Hyper-V VSS nodes in the file-selection control are now listed by their guest name, rather than GUID, together with an indication of whether they're online or offline backups.

Imaging

• 13855 Fix imaging backup involving 2 or more unmounted volumes with the same volume label.
• 14012 Allow Exchange consistency check timeout to be changed in order to avoid template error on SBS machines.

Installer

• 13538 fixed missing company name in BackupAssist's "Programs and Features" entry
• 11683 New DiskUsage command-line tool is included in the installation; it generates a report of media usage for a given directory.
• 11159 fix accidental removal of the uninstall start menu option after doing a repair

Mailbox

• 11446 Improved wording for "Network errors", allowing for potential issues with CAS name resolution

Misc

• 12248 Fixed NullReferenceException which could be raised when editing a backup job.
• 10386 Fixed error where specifying a compressor thread count of more than ten caused a range exception on editing the job.
• 12226 Server restarts no longer reset the media swap day, or the job creation date, for Imaging jobs to USB drives using the 'Daily backup weekly rotating full' scheme.
• 13479 Improved Backup User account permissions check and errors reporting.
• 12233 Text report notification for failed backups is now properly generated.

Ntbackup

• 11092 Fixed Prepare Media dialog for backups into TrueCrypt container.

Reports/Notifications

• 13613 Reports for cancelled jobs now show the cancelled icon (red '-'), rather than the error icon (red 'x'), in keeping with the rest of the application.

Restore Console

• 13279 Improved disconnection handling of iSCSI targets after restores
• 13980 Fixed variables substitution in Backup directory location for backups into TrueCrypt container.
• 13596 Fixed "unknown user name or bad password" error when restoring from some NAS imaging jobs

Rsync

• 12927 Fix for bug preventing backup of share folders when "use full path" in unchecked.

Service/CPU/Mem

• 13716 Improvements to service stability, CPU and memory usage.

SQL Add-on

• 9298 Report warning when no SQL databases are backed up.

TrueCrypt

• 8264 Fix potential download error "Remote name could not be resolved: 'solomon'"

UI

• 13296 fixed broken folder browser on some R2 systems
• 13452 Remove obsolete "Use legacy component" element from Email Server Settings screen
• 13602 Prevent multiple Folder Browser dialogs from being opened simultaneously
• 13738 The 'Check Selections' dialog, which lists specific backup file selections that are missing from the machine's filesystem, now allows multiple selection of list entries and removal from the job with a single operation.
• 10226 Fix BA console crash when cancelling job destination change
• 13994 Introduced Backup User account permissions check at the time of Backup User Identity definition.

VSS

• 12325 Allow BackupAssist to run in the presence of incompatible VSS providers.

BackupAssist 6.4.4

October 24, 2012

Imaging

• 12787 Fix bug preventing imaging backups from starting on some non-English operating systems. The bug also prevented the console from opening in some environments.
• 13222 Fix cluster shared volume (CSV) detection preventing CSV volumes from being backed up since 6.4.3 in some environments.

Mailbox

• 12614 Fix bug causing the backup result to appear as a major warning, and activity monitoring to stall, when the backup actually succeeded on some non-English operating systems.

Misc

• 13366 Fix bugs on some non-English operating systems caused by incorrect handling of some culture settings.

RestoreConsole

• 7908 Last modified dates in BackupAssist Restore Console are adjusted to the local time zone.

SQL Add-on

• 12121 Fix ArgumentOutOfRangeException in SQL Restore when selecting the point in time across multiple time ranges for a database.
• 13334 Improved monitoring of restores and reporting on failure. Also backup each database prior to restoration, and automatically restore to this backup if the restore fails.

UI

• 12308 Fix NullReferenceException in the reports list when changing the filters
• 12510 Fix edge case bugs in Test Connection feature since 6.4.3.
• 10109 Fix the Size and Last modified columns display in Hyper-V file lists.
• 12599 Fix bug when testing connections for encrypted destinations.
• 12713 Fix typo in support warning prompt dialog

BackupAssist 6.4.3

July 12, 2012

Reports

• 12295 Fix empty VSS section in backup report for imaging backup with iSCSI destination.

Restore Console

• 12456 Fix zip restore error in SBS2011.
• 12310 Fix Restore Console crash when restoring imaging backups from iSCSI destination.
• 12483 New button in the restore console to generate a report of the backed up files.

VSS

• 12397 Fix issue where backup jobs stay queued indefinitely in some cases where VSS is encountering errors.

BackupAssist 6.4.2

June 6, 2012

iSCSI

• 12105 Remove duplicate entries from Media Check section of the job report.
• 11748 Fix bug preventing multiple iSCSI restores in the Restore Console.
• NAS
• 12336 Fix long standing issue causing NAS connections to fail during the backup even though the "Test Connection" action succeeds.

Reports/Notifcations

• 11088 Introduce new type of report notification - File Notification, which would save a html report at a user-specified location.

Rsync

• 12302 Allow backslash \ characters in rsync usernames.

UI

• 12334 Hide items for deleted and deactivated jobs from the "previous jobs" list.

BackupAssist 6.4.1

May 3, 2012

Destinations

• 11923 Fix race-condition bug during catalog creation.

HyperV

• 11963 Issue a warning in backup report if staging disk has not been set up.

Mailbox

• 10780 Fix the corrupt spelling of backed up mailbox folders shown when a backup is in progress (for languages other than English).

Misc

• 12094 Fix a bug which prevented changing the schedule in some ZIP to DVD jobs.
• 12110 Fix an exception in the German language version due to a mistranslation of a warning message (Related to Client Access Server and Exchange 2010).
• 12130 Fixed rare startup exception affecting console and jobs on some machines.
• 11222 Prevent installation on pre XP/2003 Operating Systems and display a message advising the user to contact Technical Support in their area.
• 12092 Fix the bug with wrongly reported 0 size of the Imaging backup under "One week daily" scheme.

RecoverAssist

• 12158 Fix a bug preventing RecoverAssist from running on an Italian OS.

RestoreConsole

• 12160 Attempt to restore imaging backup even if VSS snapshot cannot be found in backup destination.

Rsync

• 12175 Fix case where rsync restore from a Linux host would fail if the destination directory had setgid or setuid permissions set.

Settings/Logging

• 12150 Fix bug in loading jobs, which under some circumstances may corrupt the job.

Zip-to-Tape

• 12012 Improve handling of a potentially corrupted tape when appending a backup.
• 12030 Add an error to the restore report if the backup cannot be found when restoring from tape.
• 11701 Show underlying error in backup report if writing MTF to tape fails.

BackupAssist 6.4.0 r1

April 5, 2012

• Critical bug fix to enable the ability to perform backups on Windows XP and 2003

BackupAssist 6.4.0

April 3, 2012

• NEW! Support added for iSCSI as a dedicated backup destination.
• Imaging, file replication, and zip backups all supported
• Up to twice as fast as other backup destinations
• NEW! Recoveries from iSCSI supported with RecoverAssist
• NEW! RecoverAssist - Windows™ recoveries made easy!
• Recover to dissimilar hardware from differing devices
• Easy to add hardware drivers whilst building your own recovery media
• Help repair broken recoveries with useful tools at your fingertips
• Smartly integrated with BackupAssist

HyperV

• 11811 Clean up obsolete files from CSV QuickRestore folder
• 11845 Fix a minor exception in CSV imaging backup
• 11715 Introduce a short random wait before starting a backup involving CSV
• 11669 New file naming scheme for CSV QuickRestore folder
• 11912 Fix a potential unhandled exception in HyperV backups

Licencing

• 11398 Fix a UI glitch during product deactivation

RestoreConsole

• 11624 Fix restore console showing volumes that won't be restored
• 11658 Minor change in restore report to reflect that counter of restored objects also counts restored folders along with restored files

Service/CPU/Mem

• 10324 Implement auto-recovery for the BackupAssist Service
• 11676 Fix bug where the service stops after a few seconds

SQL Add-on

• 11901 Fix misleading backup status when an SQL transactional backup fails

User Interface

• 11691 Fix controls overlap in New Job Wizard when adding Exchange Servers into job

Zip

• 11191 Fix failed zip backup preventing future backups from running

FileRep

• 12014 Don't abort the backup if we get a "privilege not held" error for a single file

Imaging

• 11966 Oracle VSS backup breaks bare-metal recovery

VSS

• 11961 Fix VSS errors being written to Windows Application Log, even though backups were completing successfully

Misc

• 10747 allow dots in server name when typing network destination

BackupAssist 6.3.1

March 8, 2012

Restore Console

• 10125 Fix misleading message about restoring from unprepared or wrong media

Exchange Server

• 11508 Improve mailbox restore UI to allow reading of mailboxes with long names

Zip

• 10075 Fix slight discrepancy in backup size reported in zip compression and media usage reports
• 11414 Fix and log certain restore errors due to missing catalogue when loading backup directly from tape

HyperV

• 11498 Improve restore of CSV components. Show progress during the restore as well as report number of restored files & their total size
• 11522 Fix duplicate non-CSV HyperV guests backups in the staging disk and imaging destination
• 11576 Fix incorrect alternate restore path when restoring embedded Hyper-V CSV backup
• 11612 Remove old backups from CSV staging disk
• 11814 CSV: Allow any drive except the system drive and backup destination to be used as a staging disk
• 11813 Handle and report a potential permission issue when backing up HyperV guests
• 11828 Fix a potential time out error when manually launching an imaging backup

Ntbackup

• 11443 Fix bug affecting TrueCrypt-compatible encryption for NTBackup since 6.2.8.

Reports/Notifications

• 11360 Correct problem in foreign language OS's where compression section of reports were being displayed inappropriately

BackupAssist 6.3.0

February 7, 2012

Mailbox

• 11485 Fix isolated bug which could cause additional mailboxes to be incorrectly backed up if a second Exchange server's Public Folders (only) are selected.
• 11502 Warn user again not specifying CAS for backing up Exchange Server 2010 without installed CAS role.

Misc

• 11494 Fix bug where the TrueCrypt settings where obscured in foreign language.

UI

• 11400 Fix incorrect parsing of numbers on TrueCrypt-compatible destination setup screen.
• 11462 Provide better UI feedback to the user during search for Exchange Server, which may take a while.
• 11300 Fix a bug when bare-metal option may auto-select wrong drives if their drive labels match.

FileRep

• 11347 Important! Fix the problem introduced in 6.2.6, which may break mirror file replication backups.
• 10516 NEW! Add option to set maximum number of hard links to use for single instance store. May help some users who see significant slow-down when they have lots of backups.

HyperV

• 11061 NEW! Support HyperV CSV backup in imaging engine via a local staging disk.

Imaging

• 11421 Fix unhandled exception in Imaging job when BA attempts to detect dynamic volumes.
• 10944 Fix for rare failure of Exchange consistency check.

Mailbox Restore

• 10550 NEW! Add ability to restore mailboxes via Exchange Client Access Server.
• 11165 Important! Fix mailboxes with certain European language characters not being detected in Restore Console.

SBS Integration

• 10372 Fix problem of occasional failure of Imaging job with embedded email backup on SBS 2011.

SQL Add-on

• 10974 Fix scheduled start time bug for SQL near continuous data protection.

VSS

• 11305 Avoid error "This document is missing the BACKUP_COMPONENTS element" in the application event viewer when performing a restore of a backup that did not use VSS.

Zip-to-Tape

• 10166 Fix change in the tape drive selection cannot be saved.
• 11473 Important! Fix issues occurring when two or more identical tape drivers are installed.
• 11415 When copying files from tape, write to the destination folder directly.
• 11420 Fix backup destination check not checking tape label properly.

BackupAssist 6.2.8

December 15, 2011

CMC/Web

• 10843 Attempt to reconnect to the CMC server more frequently upon connection failure: updated to address more failure types

Installer

• 11257 Fix uninstall error message shown during uninstall on some older machines

Misc

• 11253 Modify folder browser to work with Windows 2000
• 11248 Fixed bug when changing interval in transactional SQL settings

TrueCrypt

• 11251 Fix single instance store for destinations with TrueCrypt-compatible encryption.

UI

• 11266 Hide the Hyper-V restore option on systems that don't support it

Zip

• 10795 Limit the number of skipped files allowed in a zip backup.
• 11201 Updated compression library

Zip and NTBackup

• 11167 in media usage report, show previous backups in sorted order.

Zip-to-Tape

• 11089 Fix zip restore not cancelled properly when the Cancel button is pressed.
• 9821 Remove a misleading message in TapeRestoreUI.exe

BackupAssist 6.2.7

November 16, 2011

CMC/Web

• 10843 Attempt to reconnect to the CMC server more frequently upon connection failure.

Imaging

• 11082 Fix rare duplicated items in the backup history section of the imaging backup report.
• 10953 A new checkbox in the Imaging Engine Options UI to allow for creation of "quick" catalogues.
• 11019 Fix for very rare failure during imaging restore due to missing VSS snapshot info in the backup catalog.

Settings/Logging

• 11143 Prevent job files from growing in size when job is often run manually.

SQL Add-on

• 11005 A new parameter for the BA manual launcher to also run the scheduled backup.

UI

• 10730 Fix manual activation and browse folders in Server Core
• 11136 Fix minor text display bug in German version.
• 11074 Automatically increase the size of Register button in Central Monitoring dialog in localized versions as necessary.
• 10514 If Windows Imaging component not installed reposition appropriate help link correctly.
• 11097 Localize "Enable TrueCrypt encryption" checkbox in second step of New Job wizard.
• 10963 Fix minor bug in UI due to which elapsed time did not stop ticking for completed Imaging jobs.

Zip

• 10897 Fix rare handle leak in zip backup.

BackupAssist 6.2.6

October 20, 2011

Zip

• 10794 Fix error BA4023 - One or more files cannot be linked to any existing catalogue.
• 10859 Fix when failure to restore the file to the System Hidden Partition (100MB) may be reported with the wrong error message "Illegal character in path" instead of actual "Access Denied".

Scheduling

• 10414 Fix to preserved customized backup labels if schedule is modified.

Hyper-V

• 10142 Support backup of clustered shared volumes in the zip, file replication and rsync engines.

Imaging

• 10876 Fix rare unhandled exception during VHD mount.

Localization

• 10981 Fix string translation issue in media usage reports for some job types.

UI

• 10126 Fix incorrect controls positioning when Restore Console Progress Window is re-sized.
• 10789 Minor UI fix in the dialog showing selections: show horizontal scrollbar if selections are too long.
• 10905 Fix rare bug causing crash while editing the job selections if BareMetal is selected.

VSS

• 10863 Match *.* filespec against files without an extension.

BackupAssist 6.2.5

September 13, 2011

File Replication

• Fix to allow system state backups to work with TrueCrypt-compatible encryption.
• Fix unhandled exception in file replication engine.

Hyper-V GRC

• Fix bug preventing mounting of some rare guest drives, caused by unusual .avhd files configured with strange parent paths.
• Improve handling and selection from multiple guest partitions. Slow-to-detect volumes will automatically be included in the list for selection.
• Fix common exception caused by clicking on 'locate and mount a VHD' prior to a background task completing.
• Fix bug causing failure message "unmount failed despite returning success"
• CopyAssist functionality is now used to allow copying otherwise inaccessible guest files after mounting.
• Fix bug preventing mounting of some guest drives where the guest has one or more Hyper-V snapshots and the backup is stored on a NAS device.

Imaging

• Detect and warn for bare-metal backup to a dynamic disk
• Fix bug which could prevent the Restore Console from locating the correct backup, when run on non US-culture machines.
• Fix bug on 2008R2 which was sometimes causing exclusions of files and folders to be ignored.
• Correctly handle machines with critical volumes mounted to directory paths
• Fix bug in driver causing problems with WMI during the cataloguing step on some machines, resulting in eg. System Center Virtual Machine Manager connections to local Hyper-V servers to be lost.
• Fixed bug causing bare-metal backup option to be disabled on machines with dynamic system drives
• Write the list of image backups on the backup device to the logs both before and after the backup, so that a comparison may be made.

Installer

• Prevent v6 users from being able to accidentally downgrade from this version. Downgrading requires uninstall and remove settings, then reinstall.

Mailbox

• Allow backing up an Exchange 2010 server via a Client Access Server.
• Fix to ensure mailbox backup catalogue files don't become oversized.
• fix unhandled exception "The process cannot access the file '...Exbackup...log' because it is being used by another process"

Notifications

• When emailing html reports, if an error occurs when generating the plaintext version, the email will still be sent.

Restore Console

• Fix minor issue in encrypted restores from tape, where the progress bar stopped showing progress.
• Fix restore of embedded mailboxes from zip-to-tape backups.
• Fix bug with restoring files to the hidden system partition from zip backups.

Rsync

• Fix unhandled exception (BA1) when backing up Exchange via VSS.
• Fix a bug that could, in some cases, cause a backup to "succeed" with no files backed up when "use full path" option was disabled.

TrueCrypt

• Add option to copy the TrueCrypt binaries to the destination.

UI

• Minor clarification in the SQL Add-on destination screen.
• Fix browse for location bug when performing manual license activation in Server Core.
• Add support in the BackupAssist Restore Console and Hyper-V Granular Restore Console for Server Core and Hyper-V Server (core) systems
• Fix error causing crash when selecting volumes and directories for backup on some computers with BareMetal option ticked.
• Fix occasional crash when selecting volumes and directories to backup. Observed on some Windows 2008R2 Servers with BareMetal option ticked.
• Fix a potential console crash when estimating file selection size.
• Fix grammatical error in UI
• Fix some broken links in Help file.

VSS

• Fix bug preventing display and selection of all MS-SQL instances. Bug may also have affected some other VSS applications.

Zip

• Fix bug preventing proper backup of System State on systems with an EFI System Partition.
• Detect and issue a warning about any corrupted zip backup catalogue.
• Fix restore zip backup from an alternate source. Zip: Report a condition if during backup a file cannot be linked back to the catalogue for a previous backup.
• Handle duplicate items in a zip backup's file catalogue.

BackupAssist 6.2.4

June 28, 2011 SBS

• 9714: NEW - SBS Reporting Integration is now compatible with SBS 2011.

Mailbox

• 9900: Important fix for BA1875 unhandled exception "Value cannot be null" that randomly occurs for some larger mailbox backups.
• 9589: Notify the user when attempting to use Outlook 2003 to back up mailboxes from an Exchange 2010 Server, which is not currently supported.

Zip/Restore

• 9820: Important fix for tape-only bug that could potentially result in corrupted restored files. Errors may or may not be reported, but can include: "broken uncompressed block", "Illegal rep dist code", and "The data is invalid".
• 10006: NEW - Confirm that every file restores correctly using a CRC check.
• 10004: Increase the speed of tape restores by about 5-10%.
• 9819: Fixed error in Restore Console where errors were incorrectly reported on files that were restored successfully. The restore report has also been enhanced.
• 9613: Fixed an error in the unzipping code that would occasionally drop a portion of the restored file, writing zeros instead of the lost chunk of data.
• 9930: Files with Unicode characters in the filename can now be restored without additional steps.
• 9834: Fixed UI glitch causing the progress bar to stop if an error was encountered during the restore process. Restore Console window is also re-sized correctly now.

Imaging

• 9977: To avoid confusion, volumes that aren't NTFS are now shown in the files, folders and applications selections UI, though these volumes are not available for selection.

Install/upgrade

• 10035: Fixed major issue preventing the backup console from opening on upgrade or new install of v6.2.3. Workaround is to install Windows Backup.

Server Core

• 9271: Added support in the Hyper-V Config Reporter for Server Core and Hyper-V Server (core) systems.

Miscellaneous

• 9685: Enhanced diagnostics to include information about disabled components and disk information.

BackupAssist 6.2.3

June 01, 2011 Imaging

• 9833: On upgrade from 6.2.1 and older, avoid enabling bare-metal recovery when it isn't supported (ie. a critical volume is FAT32 formatted)
• 9832: Make the "System volumes (bare-metal recovery)" option unavailable on systems that don't support it (ie. a critical volume is FAT32 formatted)
• 9831: To avoid confusion, volumes that aren't NTFS are now shown in the selections UI, though they are not available for selection.

Logging

• 8933: Fixed bug which may lead to log files continually growing in size, hence affecting performance, and potentially causing the BackupAssist Service to fail.

NTBackup

• 9823: Due to the rare use of ASR for NTBackup jobs, don't use that as the default System Recovery level.
• 9429: Added missing help links into NTBackup options screen.
• User Interface
• 9830: Minor tweak in JobWizard - skip "Recovery Type" tab if it has only one option available, automatically activating the next tab instead.
• 9829: Fixed bug in the New Job Wizard, which could incorrectly display options belonging to different backup method.
• 9804: Minor fix in the File Replication monitoring screen - ensure that the path in the "Processing:" box is left aligned
• 9770: If the System State recovery option is ticked but no other volumes or files are selected, don't show false warning.

Zip/Tape

• 9897: Temporarily include TapeRestore.exe in the BA install directory while the TapeRestoreUI.exe is being fixed
• 9588: Fixed bug causing Zip backups to remote hard drive to fail.

SQL Add-on

• 9319: fix bug causing transactional backups to run at incorrect times from midnight onwards for some setups

BackupAssist 6.2.2

April 28, 2011 General

• Important fix - 9229: Fixed potential process crash or BSOD during the cataloguing step of imaging jobs on some systems. Also fixes the same issue seen when starting the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console on affected systems.
• 9519: New integrated System recovery UI for selecting between ASR (ntbackup only), System State recovery (file replication, zip and 2008 R2 imaging), bare-metal recovery (imaging only) or data only backups.

Mailbox

• 9668: Fixed incorrectly diagnosed "inactivity timeout" issue seen when backing up some large mailboxes for the 2nd or further time in a period.

Rsync

• 9560: Fix for missing mailbox report section when configured in Rsync jobs.

Scheduling

• 7868: Fix issues with setting/displaying time on systems without AM/PM in the time format (e.g. where 24 hours is preferred time format).

Scripting

• 9489: The %STATUS% variable now produces the correct status in post-scripts for ntbackup jobs where one or more files have been skipped.

Upgrader

• 9463: Fix bug causing problems when reinstalling the same version of BackupAssist if the install directory is changed on a reinstall, eg. from "C:\program files (x86)\BackupAssist V6" to "d:\my programs\BackupAssist V6"

Zip-To-Tape

• 9091: Allow the Block size to be overridden for zip-to-tape jobs if needed in advanced cases.

Zip

• 9420: Fix warning message "No full or copy backups are configured" that is incorrectly shown when the job is configured properly.

Hyper-V

• 9521: Fixed bug in the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console preventing the use of the Microsoft Hyper-V API for mounting vhds on some Hyper-V systems.

BackupAssist 6.2.1

March 24, 2011 Installer

• Important fix - 9268: ensure a reboot is requested if the vhd driver is upgraded during the install, fixes several catalogue-related errors (NOTE: not a fix for the BA2 crash during cataloguing)
• 9301: Fix rare problems during product upgrade that potentially require a license reactivation and service restart.
• 9438: EULA is updated including licenses for utilities distributed along side of BackupAssist.

Imaging

• 9322: Fix a UI glitch which caused an incomplete view of imaging backup schedule time.

Mailbox

• Important fix - 9228: fix timeout issues causing incorrect BA1898 errors in mailbox backups.
• Important fix - 9418: fix BA1893 crash when using the latest Exchange MAPI versions (including 6.5.8190, 6.5.8211)
• 9313: Fix possible invalid character in catalogue file name.

NTBackup

• 8650: Fix compressed backup size not being reported correctly in NTBackup tape backup reports.
• Restore Console
• 8887: Fix an intraday imaging backup restore error.
• 9248: Fix bug where mailbox restore fails if Restore Console is launched by the Backup User Identity
• 8914: Fix bug where specifically de-selected mailboxes are still selected for restore.
• 9290: Fix rare problem with CannotLogonUserException during mailbox restore
• 9070: Fix so the "From Backup Location" field updates after changing the backup location.

Tape

• 9294: Fix a bug causing Zip-To-Tape backup to hang on certain tape drives.

TrueCrypt-compatible encryption

• 8916: Fix bug with detection of incompatible TrueCrypt installations.

User Interface

• 9191: Fix glitches in tape append control.

Windows 2000

• 9252: Fix error "Unable to find an entry point named 'GetVolumePathNamesForVolumeName'".

BackupAssist 6.2.0

February 16, 2011 General

Important fix - 8860: Fixed driver causing rare system crashes, including blue-screens, job execution and VM Granular Restore Console process crashes.

Zip

• New - 7198: Allow multiple zip backups to be appended to the same tape
• 8659: Enhance the schedule customization user interface to check whether at least one full backup has been scheduled.
• 8423: Fixed hung tape backup on certain tape drives.

Backup schemes

• New - 7564: "Daily backup weekly rotating" schemes for File Replication, Zip and Imaging jobs to external hard disk/RDX/REV/Optical media/Tape. Full backups daily to the same medium, which are rotated weekly.
• New - 8027: Monthly/quarterly/yearly archive schemes.
• 8064: Add basic support for multiple backups a day for other engines using new variables in the backup path: %HOUR24%, %HOURTT%, %TIME24% and %TIMETT% (for example, for a job running at 3:24PM these variables convert to 15, 3PM, 1524 and 0324PM respectively).
• 8399: Raise the limit on the number of weekly backups in Daily-N-weekly scheme to 53.

External HDD

• New - 8069: Allow multiple external hard disks to be connected at the same time and allow media preparation of these hard drives.

Restore Console

• New - 8112: button to launch a new Copy From Tape utility when tape restore fails using the Restore Console.
• 7887: Fixed bug where Restore Console does not show the correct restored file size if the file is not in the original source location.
• 8688: Fixed bug that would reset the alternate backup location back to the original backup location when entering an alternate restore location.
• 8592: Fix failed image backup restore from changed/renamed backup location.
• 8584: Improve restore speed from Zip backups stored on tape.

Imaging

• 8237: Fixed a null reference exception during the catalogue creation phase following the creation of an image backup.

VSS

• 9114: Fixed unhandled exception that could occur if a VSS component file specification starts with \\?\GlobalRoot\

Mailbox backup and restore

• 8653: Non-critical warnings are no longer displayed in the backup report if a mailbox backup is successful.
• 7079: Downgrade "Table is too large" from error to warning, since an overflow PST is automatically created in this case.
• 8695: Fixed BA4321 error in a large mailbox backup that runs for an extended period of time.
• 8706: Fixed BA4401 error during a large mailbox backup.
• 8728: Fixed bug in 6.1.2 that caused reporting results to be lost for some mailboxes.
• 8697: Fixed normal grouping period mailbox backup being skipped when the all-time grouping period is enabled.
• 8141: Fixed PSTs not being updated properly with old items if the all-time grouping period is enabled.
• 8721: Show a condition in the backup report if exbackup is killed due to inactivity or exit timeout.
• 8651: The "Export other items" step will no longer show up in the activity monitor if it is not required.
• 9058: Fixed bug related to the restoration of public folders when using the Restore Console.

Misc

• 8076: Can now test the Backup User Identity at any time (even if the fields aren't changed).
• 8683: Fixed bug causing "Perform manual export" jobs to fail after an upgrade from v5 to v6.
• 8623: Fixed bug causing File Replications jobs to fail when using the "Daily backup weekly rotating full" scheme.
• 8577: Fix rare NullReferenceException during license Activation/Deactivation.
• 8677: Fix rare NullReferenceException following an Exchange backup.
• 8671: Fixed rare NullReferenceException at BackupAssist.UI.ContentPanels.Job.Overview. JobNameAndSummaryControl.SetJob

Rsync

• 8350: Add a tick symbol to the destination control to show when SSH tunnelling has been configured.
• 8844: Add extra logging for Single Instance Store.
• 7824: Allow restore from local directory.
• 8348: Check for valid IPv4 address when configuring an Rsync server.

User Interface

• 8065: Allow monitoring fields to resize properly so that the currently processing file can be seen (File Replication and Rsync).
• 8685: Fixed an incorrect icon appearing in the legend of Optical disc backup schemes for Zip jobs.

Zip/NTBackup

• 7204: Jobs no longer fail if the secondary location isn't available. A warrning will appear in the backup report instead.

BackupAssist 6.1.2

December 09, 2010 Hyper-V GRC

• Important: 8627 Fix unlikely bug causing a BSOD or hard reboot in certain mounting scenarios on a Hyper-V host
• 8593 fixed bug causing mounting failure error "failed to mount valid VHD Unable to fix the VHD chain for this specified volume, parent not found", occurring for guests with vhd filenames with a capitalised .VHD extension
• 8500 Fixed potential unhandled NullReferenceException when unmounting an image backup in the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console
• 8491 Fixed potential unhandled XmlException when loading the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console

VSS

• Important: 8308 For application backup of SQL Server databases, Exchange databases and Hyper-V VHD files, don't use the last modified date and size to determine whether the files have changed since the last backup. Affects File Replication, Rsync and incremental Zip backups.
• 8351 Ensure the VSS Applications section of the report is only shown if any are backed up

Imaging

• Important: 7948 On 2008 R2, ensure that the bare-metal restore option is available even if VSS applications are backed up, by allowing wbadmin to run the faster full volume backup when entire volumes are selected
• Important: 8462 on 2008R2 ensure that all Exchange storage groups on selected volumes are backed up. Llogs will not be truncated on storage groups that are not backed up.
• 8461 allow individual components of VSS applications to be selected on Vista and 2008.
• 8237 Fix a null reference exception during the catalogue creation phase following an image backup
• 8222 Fix BA2529 error when running image backups on certain Windows 2008 servers with Service Pack 2
• 8522 fix bug with "Select required volumes" button in VSS applications selection.

Mailbox

• Important: 8519 Fix detection of 32-bit Outlook (64-bit Outlook is not supported).
• Important: 8596 Fix detection of Outlook on machines using regional settings where the '.' character is not treated as a decimal point
• Important: 8141 Fix PSTs not being updated properly with old items if all-time folders backup is enabled.
• Important: 8440 Highlight failing mailboxes in the report and ensure warning messages are shown even if there are no error messages
• 8551 Improved handling of "-1 exit code" issues previously resulting in BA4399
• 8557 ensure the "root" exbackup.log from the install directory is included in diagnostics

Rsync

• Important: 8297 fix memory leak in status monitor.
• Important: 8369 fix performance slow-down in v6 compared to v5
• 8566 add option to disable incremental recursion. Can help prevent certain kinds of errors.
• 8549 add option to disable preservation of hard links. Can help prevent certain kinds of errors.
• 7823 allow specification of an alternate backup location in the Restore Console.
• 8336 fix bug preventing backup of .nt_streams folders.
• 8464 fix unhandled exception if the rsync log file is locked when a job starts executing.
• 8367 make rsync.exe terminal services aware so it can run when data execution prevention (DEP) is enabled.

Help file

• 8547 updated the sections for setting mailbox rights for Exchange 2007/2010 and for the advanced Rsync options screen

Notifications

• 7411 Hyphens are now allowed in email addresses, eg. mary-jane@company.com

Service

• 8341 Fix made for continuous message logged by the service since 6.1.0, potentially contributing to a vss issue for imaging jobs

TrueCrypt

• 8235 Fix bug where the media usage report for File Replication jobs using TrueCrypt-compatible encryption was not showing the space saving from the Single Instance Store.

User Interface

• 8101 Fix bug accounting for about a large proportion of reported exceptions, triggered by repetitive click on "Folders and Files" item in the edit job UI. Seen starting from BA v5.
• 8263 Fix Events screen to correctly show the most recent items at the top, and to show 500 items by default

Zip

• 8248 remove all temporary files left behind by file catalogue creation.

BackupAssist 6.1.1

October 29, 2010

• Fixed missing and incorrect system state backup selection UI for File Rep, Zip, Ntbackup and Imaging jobs (case 8123)
• Fixed missing mailbox restore date selection UI in the BackupAssist Restore Console (case 8123)
• Fixed the installation of the Hyper-V Config Reporter shortcut and binaries (case 8306)

BackupAssist 6.1.0

October 21, 2010

New: SBS08 console backup integration with BackupAssist (case 6248)

Rsync:

• Altered wording for the credentials section of the S3Rsync destination (case 6925)
• Allow encrypted rsync backups to be restored from the backup copy of the catalogue (case 7814)
• Fix unhandled exception when "test connection" button is clicked during a backup (case 7752)
• Mailbox: Reduce size of history files for mailbox jobs (case 7835)
• TrueCrypt: Media usage report was not being generated for File Replications jobs using TrueCrypt-compatible encryption (case 7816)
• VSS: fix bug which was preventing VSS working for file replication, zip and rsync engines in Windows XP Home (case 7934)
• Restore: fix permanently disabled Restore button when restoring mailboxes in the BackupAssist Restore Console (case 8130)

Known Issue in 6.1.0:

• Some users have reported a BA2529 error during Imaging backups on 6.0.3, caused by a different underlying issue that we haven’t fixed in 6.1.0. All users that have reported this so far have been using Server 2008 SP2. We’re working on a fix for this now and will release it ASAP.

BackupAssist 6.0.3

October 15, 2010

• Fix BA2524 and BA2523 "volume not found" errors for imaging jobs on 2008 R2 (case 7960)
• Make sure the drive letter used to catalogue image backups isn't already used by a mapped network drive (case 8084)
• Fix missing root path in zip catalogues causing the tree view to be shown incorrectly in the restore console (case 8084)

BackupAssist 6.0.2

September 30, 2010

Hyper-V GRC:

• Important: Various bugs when running on Server 2008, including error “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”
• Ask user before overwriting existing vhd/avhd files during export (case 7741)
• Handle IO problems during export to avoid unhandled exceptions (case 7741)

WinImage:

• Important: fix “No backed up volume detected” bug preventing file catalogue generation on foreign language OS’s (case 7885)
• Important: fix incorrectly diagnosed BA2529 error caused by “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable” error when mounting on some Server 2008 systems (case 7919)
• Add a minor warning if a selected VSS component contains a file that doesn’t exist (case 7759)
• Remove any duplicates from the wbadmin command line to avoid syntax errors (case 7759)
• Fix to ensure file catalogue can be created when backing up to NAS destinations (case 7769)
• Raise a backup condition if an unsupported partition type can’t be catalogued (case 7670)
• Handle case where catalogue can’t be created when the latest version can’t be determined (case 7826)

Rsync:

• Seeding of encrypted rsync backups is failing (case 7749).
• Bug in encrypted rsync restores when the selected path has spaces (case 7739)
• Cleanup running rsync processes if a restore has been cancelled (case 7707)
• Hide some redundant warnings
• Prevent extra directory level from being created when restoring to a new directory (case 7744)
• Fix bug that was preventing restore of rsync backups when the user has used "browse for backups" to load the catalogue (only fixed for non-encrypted backups) (case 7807)

Mailbox backups:

• “Dummy session” issues causing backup to hang or result in -1073741819 exit code
• Avoid showing blank/unknown entries in the monitor and in backup reports (case 7345)
• Improve Outlook 2010 detection on 64bit machines (case 7877)
• Enhanced: Error messages now indicate the folder where problems occur, eg.
• [Folder ‘Spam’] Message failed to backup

Backup:

• Emailed HTML reports aren’t embedding images for some ntbackup jobs
• Report a major warning if a selected VSS writer has no components (case 7673)
• Avoid generating the file catalogue if the backup fails or is cancelled (case 7684)
• Cleanup destinations if a job fails or is cancelled (eg. unmount TrueCrypt volume, disconnect from FTP site) (case 7681)
• Improve detection of installed TrueCrypt (to ensure no conflicts) (case 7546)
• Fix so that ntbackup, file replication, zip and rsync jobs don’t run mailbox jobs when an exchange server has been added even though no mailboxes are selected for backup (case 7852)
• Ntbackup: fix bug preventing parsing of logs on Russian versions of Server 2003 (case 7487)
• Prevent NullReferenceException when saving the catalogue for an embedded mailbox backup (case 7711)

Restore:

• Important: Sharepoint restores enabled(case 7762)
• Delete temporary files after restore (case 7649)
• Restore file attributes in zip restores (case 7677)

Misc:

• Licensing: bug causing keys to be accidentally repeated across separate actions
• Backup user Identity: bug on some foreign OS’s preventing the BUI from being changed even when the service is running as the default Local System account (case 7912)

BackupAssist 6.0.0

September 9, 2010

New: Server 2008 R2 ready, Exchange 2010 ready and SQL 2008 R2 ready.

New: VSS application backup

• Back up Microsoft applications, such as Exchange Server, SQL Server and Hyper-V
• Back up any VSS-aware application that uses standard VSS backup methods.

New: System State backup

• Individual System State backup on Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 2008 and 2008 R2 using File Replication, Zip or Windows Imaging (Server 2008 R2).

New: Restore Console improvements

• File and VSS application restore from any File Replication, Rsync, Zip or Windows Image backup
• System State restore from any File Replication or Zip backup
• Exchange mailbox and public folder restore.

New: Internet backup improvements

• Fully ‘Cloud’ ready: back up to any Rsync cloud provider you choose, including Amazon S3 Rsync, RSync.net, or your own Rsync Server.
• Military-grade AES 256-bit encryption and file name obfuscation for backups stored on any Rsync server
• Exact file backups including NTFS security and attributes.

New: Hyper-V backup and restore capabilities

• Use the new Hyper-V Config Reporter tool to create a HTML report of your Hyper-V Host setup and Guest VM settings
• Export a Guest VM drive volume to a .vhd file so you can easily rebuild a virtual machine
• BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console now works with NAS backups.

New: TrueCrypt-compatible encryption

• File Replication and Ntbackup jobs can now take advantage of our TrueCrypt compatible encryption container, providing industrial strength encryption for these job types
• Supports most backup destinations (excluding tape drive), and provides full backup and seamless restore using the BackupAssist Restore Console

New: Integrated mailbox backups

• Add Exchange mailbox and public folder backups to any BackupAssist job.
• New: Import and export BackupAssist settings
• Save your BackupAssist job and global settings to a file that can be imported on any machine running BackupAssist v6.

New: Zip Engine additions

• Schedule full, differential, incremental, and copy backups using the BackupAssist Zip Engine.
• New:SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2 support in our SQL Addon, both 32bit and 64bit versions supported

BackupAssist 5.4.8

August 10, 2011

Imaging

• 10203 NEW bare-metal recovery backup capability, configurable under "Imaging Options"

Hyper-V GRC

• 9374 Fix unlikely bug causing a BSOD or hard reboot in certain mounting scenarios on a Hyper-V host
• 9370 fixed bug causing mounting failure error "failed to mount valid VHD Unable to fix the VHD chain for this specified volume, parent not found", occurring for guests with vhd filenames with capitalised .VHD extension

Mailbox

• 9354 Downgrade "Table is too large" from error to warning, since an overflow PST is automatically created in this case
• 9382 Show a condition in the backup report if exbackup is killed due to inactivity or exit timeout.
• 9387 fix timeout issues causing incorrect BA1898 errors in mailbox backups.
• 9381 Fix BA4401 error during a large mailbox backup.
• 9375 The "Export other items" step will no longer show up in the activity monitor if it is not required.
• 9369 ensure the "root" exbackup.log from the install directory is included in diagnostics
• 9373 Fix detection of Outlook on machines using regional settings where the '.' character is not treated as a decimal point
• 9366 Highlight failing mailboxes in the report and ensure warning messages are shown even if there are no error messages
• 9367 Fix detection of 32-bit Outlook (64-bit Outlook is not supported).
• 9380 Fix normal grouping period mailbox backup being skipped when all-time folders backup is enabled.
• 9362 Fix bug causing occasional timeouts on some machines
• 9384 Fix bug causing reporting results to be lost for some mailboxes
• 9368 Improved handling of "-1 exit code" issues previously resulting in BA4399
• 9376 Do not show non-critical warnings in the backup report if a mailbox backup is successful.
• 9364 Fix PSTs not being updated properly with old items if all-time folders backup is enabled.
• 9386 Fix some bugs in public folder backup of Exchange 2007
• 9357 avoid blank entries in the report
• 9449 Enhance logging and recovery efforts in case of timeout detection

Misc

• 8743 Fix bug causing "Perform manual export" jobs to fail after an upgrade from v5 to v6
• 9377 Fixed rare NullReferenceException at BackupAssist.UI.ContentPanels.Job.Overview. JobNameAndSummaryControl.SetJob
• 10363 fix "update message" to show the latest v5 build instead of v6
• 9509 The %STATUS% variable now produces the correct status in post-scripts for ntbackup jobs where one or more files have been skipped

Restore

• 9359 Delete temporary catalogue files after restore.
• 9356 Fix bug causing NAS browse to hang

Rsync

• 7527 fix possible null reference exception due to a race condition when cancelling an rsync job
• 8026 fix unhandled exception when "test connection" button is clicked during a backup

VSS

• 8025 fix bug which was preventing VSS working for file replication, zip and rsync engines in Windows XP Home

Zip

• 9365 Fix hung tape backup on certain tape drives.

Zip/Ntbackup

• 9355 don't fail jobs if the secondary location isn't available - instead log a warning

Zip/Tape/Restore

• 10039 Multiple fixes ported from 6.2.4

BackupAssist 5.4.7

August 2, 2010

Important – Service memory fixes:

• Fixed 2 memory issues causing the BackupAssist Service’s memory usage to continually increase when performing backups
• One of these issues is specific to mailbox backups, so mailbox jobs will see the biggest improvement

Important - Mailbox backup fixes:

• Fixed “X.pst not found” issue
• Fixed ArgumentOutOfRangeException bug during mailbox backups when using no grouping period (single pst)
• Fixed Exchange 2010 support on servers without Public Folders (previously getting BA1883 error with “fail one provider” message on these systems)
• Fixed issue causing mailbox retrieval to fail if the number of mailboxes is larger than the default server fetch limit (1000 or 1500 depending on AD version)
• Fixed “false positive” -1073741819 exit code (when a dummy session is required to patch Exchange MAPI)
• Fixed NullReferenceException caused when there is a problem retrieving the mailboxes to backup
• New: upgrade ability for exbackup
• Enhanced: simplified reporting

Important – Zip fix:

• Fixed bug causing the zip process to run slowly on some systems

Misc:

• The Backup User Identity screen now warns users if the BackupAssist Service account has been changed from “system”
• Several minor BackupAssist Restore Console fixes

BackupAssist 5.4.6

May 12, 2010

Mailbox:

• Important: Fix for issue with “ANSI PST using Exchange” problem where pst files may not be updated in some cases, including a recovery UI on initial run of console after upgrade
• New: Full support for Exchange 2010
• NOTE: For Unicode PST backups, 64bit Outlook 2010 is not supported, but 32bit versions of Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 are supported
• NOTE: For ANSI PST backups, you will need to upgrade to the latest version of Exchange 2007 MAPI, and you can do this with the BackupAssist Console (Exchange 2010 is not supported when using MAPI from the Exchange 2003 Management Tools)
• Fix the process’s execution environment so that MAPI loads properly in more scenarios (should avoid MAPI_E_NOT_INITIALIZED errors and possibly even MAPI_E_UNCONFIGURED)
• Multiple mapi configuration errors are now detected and fixed automatically in the mapisvc.inf file (eg. “item not found” and MAPI_E_NOT_FOUND)
• NOTE: in UAC environments this may require temporarily allowing edits to the mapisvc.inf file in the system32 dir (syswow64 on 64bit machines)
• Automatically remove invalid characters when building the .pst path and filename
• New facility to automatically upgrade to the latest version of the Exchange 2007 MAPI client from within BackupAssist
• Diagnose the “ambiguous name” error when Backup User Identity has a mailbox “alias” or “display name” that is similar to another mailbox(es), along with several other common problems
• Several Public Folder backup fixes
• Note: if BA1893 errors are encountered (fatal crash), you will need to upgrade to the latest version of Exchange 2007 MAPI, which you can do with the BackupAssist Console
• Fixed scheduling bug preventing Mailbox jobs from being run manually after midnight (also fixes this for SQL jobs)
• Improved Exchange MAPI version number reporting
• The plain text report is now output using current globalization settings

Rsync:

• Fix UI issue when switching between ssh configuration and rsync options for "rsync daemon over ssh tunnel"
• Fix UI issue after changing the tunnel settings for “rsync daemon over ssh tunnel”
• 6885: Escape parentheses in paths when sending to remote rsync to avoid interpretation by the shell.
• 6914: Fix bug that could prevent SSH tunnel being closed down correctly if user cancelled the "Test Connection" dialogue when using rsync daemon over ssh tunnel.
• 6914: Fix bug which was preventing restore when using rsync daemon over ssh tunnel.
• 6628: Seeding will now work with server core (there's a text box available in addition to the browse button)

Zip:

• 6777: Fix “hanging” issue preventing the backup from ever completing
• 6805: Report a specific condition if a tape drive cannot be set up because the BUI is not an Administrator
• 6718: Fix a specific exception when run out of disk space at the point of writing the central directory
• 6887: Handle scenarios where the VSS snapshot fails, like when 3rd party snapshot utilities are preventing VSS from running
• 7153: Fix tape restores to report failure instead of success, for some tape issues

Imaging:

• 6901: Imaging: fix bug which would cause selection check to fail when backing up volumes with no drive letter assigned.
• 6898: Imaging: disable file/folder and system state selections for NAS destinations on 2008R2. They are not supported by wbadmin.

CMC:

• 6888: Improve the message logged for CMC failures that can be caused by some security software blocking the relevant web requests (was showing “incorrect format” exception)
• Decrease the size of the backup reports sent to CMC, to avoid hitting size limitations on the server
• Hyper-V Granular Restore Console:
• By default only show the most recent backups. The remainder can be searched with a single click
• Added a progress bar during the mounting process
• In the “select partition” form, don’t allow OK to be pressed unless a partition has been selected
• Installer: now supported on systems running .Net Framework v4.0

Other fixes:

• 6802: Drives such as RDX and CD now show up for selection in the FilesAndFolders area
• 6832: Backup catalogue: fix race condition that could potentially cause the incorrect data to be written to the backup catalogue
• 6894: Prevent some vss problems from affecting the backup
• 6843: Fixed null ref in GlobalPrinterList
• 6793: Preventing progress bar from causing exceptions based on value
• 6643: Fixed possible index out of bounds error in NASOptionsControl
• Fix for the Exchange consistency check on Exchange 2003 servers: the “/i” parameter is now included properly on the eseutil command line when checking edb files (this prevents stm files from being checked in conjunction with edb files, which would only ever pass after a clean shutdown)
• Prevent “inner classes aren’t supported” error message from appearing in the log
• The console now allows additional time for the service to start after an install or upgrade

BackupAssist 5.4.5

March 1, 2010

• Fix: Important release for purchasers of the BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Addon ? please update to this version immediately.
• BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Addon: Fix license reading issue affecting machines whose trial has expired, causing the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console to report that the machine is not licensed, even if the BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Addon has been activated.

BackupAssist 5.4.4

February 23, 2010

• New: File replication & rsync: added an option to keep files on the destination that have been deleted on the source.
• New: Added support for calendars other than the Gregorian calendar.
• Fix to the queuing problem causing jobs to run twice.

Rsync fixes:

• Fix so rsync escapes “&” and “;” characters properly
• Fix so rsync continues files where it left off during a retry, eg. after a network glitch
• Fixes to the Hyper-V Granular Restore Console:
• Fix failure where BackupAssist isn’t able to find one or more host files, eg. when the guest snapshot avhd’s are on a different host drive to the snapshot configuration files - Error messages: “Could not find a part of the path” and “Couldn't find the desired file in the selected volume(s).
• Fix so that BackupAssist will automatically “online” vhd disks that are mounted offline for some reason.
• Fixes to the BackupAssist Restore Console:
• Fixed bug in the catalogues generated for restore, where user-modified media labels are not saved in the catalogue, and so appear incorrectly in the restore console.
• Removed “debugging” File open dialog that appears when changing the “Restore ntfs attributes”.
• Fixed unhandled exception preventing report notifications from printing.
• Improved handling of Exchange issues in the Exchange selection screen.
• Fixed bug and enhanced handling of zip engine “IO” exceptions.
• Added a new fallback method for generating the media usage report for Zip-to-Tape jobs, when the previous method fails

BackupAssist 5.4.3

February 3, 2010

• Important release for those running Zip jobs and those using the CMC – please update to this version immediately.
• Zip licensing: Fix license reading issue causing standard Zip jobs to report that the machine is not licensed to run Zip jobs. (Not a problem for those with the Zip-to-Tape Add-on license.)
• Zip jobs: fix exception caused by side-by-side issues on machines haven’t had recent windows updates applied.
• CMC: Fixed CMC issue causing the "next run time" to be shown incorrectly and causing jobs to be incorrectly highlighted as "No report received".
• Exchange Consistency Check: fix exception caused by side-by-side issues on machines that haven’t had recent windows updates applied.
• SQL Transactional Jobs: fix for issue preventing users from editing the schedule for transactional backups if the interval was initially set to a large value in the new job wizard.
• BackupAssist Restore Console:
• Fixed recently introduced bug preventing the restore of backups made without the 'Use full path' option.
• Fixed issue caused when retrying a restore after re-attaching the requested backup drive.
• Improved the handling of not-found backups.

BackupAssist 5.4.2

January 15, 2010

• Fix for the issue that was preventing jobs from being run manually between midnight and 6am, resulting in “Unable to setup job to start” errors
• Mailbox: Fix for the reporting issue causing jobs to be failed if zero folders/items were exported
• Mailbox: Enhanced behaviour for Public Folder backup when the “Always backup these items” advanced option is enabled.

BackupAssist 5.4.1

January 8, 2010

• File replication, rsync and zip: fix a bug introduced in 5.3.3 that broke support for VSS-aware application backup and the Exchange consistency check.
• Rsync: fix bug which could cause jobs to hang when detailed logging was enabled
• Restore console: fix rare exception in the UI at the end of a restore
• Fix to the mailbox export of the "Always backup" items to avoid skipping the selected folders
• The Hyper-V Granular Restore Console now starts up much faster, avoiding "did I start that already?" confusion
• Ntbackup: Fix to allow the selection of NAS shares including an IP address as the folder name (as opposed to a NAS server specified by IP address, which ntbackup does not allow)
• Fix so that if the secondary destination of a Zip or Ntbackup job does not exist, the backup to the primary destination is still executed
• Zip: the maximum number of open files failing to backup has been increased to 100 to match the File Replication limit
• Zip: enhancements to handle a couple of unreproducible unhandled exceptions

BackupAssist 5.4.0

December 31, 2009

• New: Hyper-V Granular Restore Console
• New: SATA support for non-hot-swap SATA controllers - correctly removes the drive after the backup; improved media preparation.
• New: Intra Day - imaging jobs now support scheduling to run multiple times per day.
• New: Blu Ray support
• Blu-Ray drives are now supported on 2008 R2 and Windows 7
• Fixed Blu-Ray "erase" (applies to all rewritables)
• Enhanced: "Run now" functionality now gives immediate feedback if the job was immediately queued or failed to start, eg. due to problems with the Backup User Identity like password expiry.

Enhanced: Imaging

• Added up-front detection of wbadmin, and an inbuilt installer for Windows Server Backup.
• The UI now shows a loading message while it's searching for Hyper-V guests.
• Added a button to automatically select all drives required to backup all Hyper-V guests (not available on Server 2008 R2).
• If any Hyper-V guests require a drive that is currently not selected, they are shown at the top of the guest list.
• Volume selection now warns the user when they select a volume greater than ~2TB (Windows has limited support for these).
• Fixes:
• Trial Expiry: the content of the trial expiry warning email has been fixed to specify the correct number of days remaining rather than specifying "{0} days remaining".
• Server Core and Hyper-V Core machines no longer attempt to call the Windows restore GUI - instead they are prompted to enter wbadmin /? at the console.
• Fixed a common exception while adding Exchange servers. This most often occurred when the BackupAssist machine was not on a domain.
• EBS Addin: fixed broken addin registration and icon exception during Refresh.
• Ntbackup: several minor fixes for rare issues, including a problem preventing backup of directory paths containing "IP addresses".
• File replication: fix potential arithmetic overflow on 64-bit Windows.
• File replication: fix possible memory access violation in file replication code.
• Zip: Fix a zip restore error on certain DAT tape drives.
• Backup: Fix to improve handling of unicode characters in the file catalogue.
• SQL Transactional: fixed bug causing invalid historical reports from showing in the reports list after a service restart.
• Zip: improve error handling during compression and report missed files as skipped.
• Zip: improve robustness of memory handling.
• Improved error handling in restore console.
• Remove invalid options from ntbackup jobs.
• Fixed a couple of rare exceptions in the UI, including one that occurred when in Prepare Media.

BackupAssist 5.3.3

November 25, 2009

• Enable imaging restore to be launched from the BackupAssist console in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.
• Imaging: add support for new features in Windows Server 2008 R2:
• File and folder level selections and exclusions.
• System state backup.
• Rsync: fix bugs in media usage report generation:
• ignore .catalogues directory
• don't cache media usage for the mirror scheme
• File replication: bug fix: if a job had a single file selected and was not using the "use full path" option, then the file would be skipped.
• Fix potential uncaught null reference exception when obtaining FilesNotToBackup from the registry.
• Zip engine now supports NTFS streams greater than 64Kb
• The Zip engine now detects LTO-3 and LTO-4 drives and forces hardware compression. We suggest that customers using these drives set their compression ratio to 'No compression' in the Zip options tab.
• Zip engine will now switch between absolute and logical blocks depending on tape drive support.
• Improved error handling for Zip to Tape
• Mailbox backup now supports mailbox names containing '/' and similar characters
• Improved error handling for mailbox backups
• Restore UI now allows files to be restored with or without restoring the security settings.
• Zip encryption options are now available from the wizard (for zip jobs)
• UI update to monitoring and reporting of mailbox backups (Exbackup only)
• Improved error handling for printing reports and job summaries
• User can no longer edit a job, delete the job from within the edit section, then click the edit the job again from the jobs list view.
• Minor Netsend address fix
• 'Estimate size' no longer fails after encountering very long file paths
• Mailbox: multiple fixes to errors during Public Folder pst backups
• Mailbox: fixes to unhandled exceptions: "Item already exists" and "One or more of the StartInformation parameters have not been set"
• Mailbox: added special handling code for the BA-1073741819 error
• Mailbox: export will now abort correctly if the mailbox list cannot be determined

BackupAssist 5.3.2

October 9th, 2009

• Rsync: Fix for when the "limit maximum data transfer" option is checked, can now set the maximum transfer amount to over 4GB
• Zip: Report detail added, list up to 50 files/folders for which the file open or read fails.
• Zip: Bugfix to handle processors with a large number of cores/cpus [currently a maximum of 10 threads supported]
• Zip-to-tape: Fix bug preventing the job from finishing after encountering certain errors
• Zip: Enhancement to allow .vhd and .bkf files to be compressed
• Zip: Further performance optimization
• Zip to tape: Fix bug that occasionally terminated the backup early in case of certain API issues
• File exclusions: Fix bug causing files to still be included incorrectly for some scenarios
• Rsync: Fix bug so that spaces at the end of server names are now trimmed off
• Fixed: Bug preventing files and folders from loading in the job setup wizard in some rare scenarios
• File replication: fix bug in media usage report that was introduced in 5.3.0 and could cause disk usage of previous backups to be overstated.
• File replication: add option to ignore warnings about skipped reparse points.
• File replication: new condition BA726 which reports a possible hardware fault if Windows returns a cyclic redundancy check error during the backup
• Fixed: SQL Transactional bug preventing creation of SQL Transactional jobs, and also effecting upgraded jobs
• File replication: fix bug which was causing media usage cache files (*.ba files) to be written for jobs with mirror schemes, where the media usage cache is not required.
• Fixed: Imaging bug preventing backup of unmounted volumes, such as the hidden 100Mb partition of Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

BackupAssist 5.3.1

29th September 2009

We’ve optimized the 256-bit AES encryption facility to speed up encryption of your ZIP backups.

BackupAssist 5.3.0

September 23rd 2009

New Zip engine

• The new Zip engine allows backup to be performed directly to a .zip file. Any destination that was available for the NTBackup engine is now available for the Zip engine, including FTP, DVD, REV and Tape*, providing access to these destinations for Vista, 2008 and SBS 2008 machines.
• The Zip engine supports a new Flash drive destination for backing up to multiple, rotating flash drives.
• In conjunction with the new Zip-to-Tape add-on you can now back up to tape drives from Vista, Server 2008 and SBS 2008 machines.
• The Zip engine supports real-time, on-the-fly compression and encryption. No working directory is required.
• Encryption is performed using 256 bit AES.
• Multithreaded compression results in faster backups on multi core machines.
• BackupAssist will automatically set the compression level for each type of file in order to maximize speed and minimize backup size.
• Open file backup provided by the Volume Shadow copy Service.
• Zip backups can be easily restored through the new BackupAssist Restore Console.
• NTFS security attributes are saved. The NTFS security attributes and alternate data streams of directories and files are preserved if the backup is restored using the BackupAssist Restore Console.
• Virtually unlimited number of files supported, in accordance with the ZIP64 format.
• Long paths and Unicode paths supported.
• *requires the optional Zip-to-Tape add on.
• New Exchange backup method
• Mailbox backups on 64bit operating systems are now supported.
• Exchange 2007 is now fully supported.
• Mailboxes can be backed up remotely or locally for Exchange 2007 and 2003 (64 or 32 bit).
• ANSI PST and Unicode PST format files are supported where Outlook 2003/2007 is installed, avoiding the 2GB file size limit.
• Exchange servers can now be backed up across domains.
• Setup and configuration has been improved.
• Improved handling of PST grouping methods.
• Improved handling of edited mail items.
• New BackupAssist Restore Console
• The new BackupAssist restore console provides a convenient method for restoring files and folders from Zip, File Replication and Rsync backups. Access it through the Restore tab in BackupAssist.
• Familiar Explorer style window for browsing the contents of backups.
• Search function that can search all available backups for specific files, filtered by size, date and job name.
• Ability to browse and search backups that are not currently attached to the BackupAssist machine.
• Intelligent grouping of identical files, with access to previous versions backed up files.

Restores quickly and easily from any location, including Tape, FTP and Rsync.

BackupAssist 5.3.0 Improvements

Interface improvements:

• The messages area of the console now provides a link to the latest version of BackupAssist, if the running version is out of date.
• Main jobs list reworked to display more information with a better layout. Also supports sorting by any field.
• Files and Folders screen now loads more quickly. Folder details panel supports sorting.
• Monitor section reworked, improving speed and reliability.
• Magnifying glass buttons have been added to the Monitor to provide access to multiple detail sections e.g. details for each phase of an NTBackup job, or each progress section of a File Replication job.
• Passwords can no longer be scraped by password scraping tools. (Once the screen is closed and reopened the real password is now replaced by a fake).
• Manual schemes will no longer report media checking errors.
• Media usage warnings will only occur at 90% full, rather than 80%.
• Media usage reports should no longer occasionally report 16m Tb.
• If file replication media usage report generation times out, a shortened report is created with a BA297 ("Timeout compiling media usage report") information condition.
• Images in emailed reports should now show correctly when viewed on (Apple) Mac Mail.
• Several additional bug fixes have been made in the UI to prevent exceptions in uncommon situations.

Other improvements

• Windows imaging backup now works on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.
• VSS support has been added for Rsync on XP.
• Fixed a File Replication bug which could sometimes cause the first character of a path to be chopped off when not using "use full path".
• FTP backups are now more robust.
• Set the "terminal services aware" bit on Rsync and SSH executables to allow them to run on terminal services servers without being killed by Data Execution Prevention (DEP).
• Fixed an Rsync bug that caused SSH to time out when syncing large files.
• Removed the test for NTFS support on the destination if it's not required (on a Linux NAS this could result in empty randomly named directories being created and not properly deleted)
• Fixed an Imaging bug that was preventing the media usage report section from being generated.
• Lowered the process priority of 7za compression (during NTBackup jobs) to keep the system responsive.
• Fixed a File replication selections bug which caused directories to be skipped under rare circumstances.
• Fixed a File replication exclusions bug which caused user-defined exclusion patterns to be ignored if they had a starting directory that was on a network share.
• Fixed an Rsync selections bug that would sometimes cause directories to be included in the backup when they had been excluded.
• Sub addressing in Email addresses is now supported.
• Improved service and logging reliability.

BackupAssist 5.2.5

July 13th 2009

• NEW: Ability to backup to Amazon's S3Rsync service using a new destination for Rsync.
• NEW: Added support for backing up Exchange 2003 via its VSS writer. This now works using Imaging, File Replication and Rsync jobs.
• NEW: For Imaging to NAS, there is now scheme "One week daily" providing daily version history, backing up to different paths like \\server\share\Monday, etc. The previous scheme "Daily" has been renamed to "Single daily" to reflect the fact that Windows only retains a single restore point per repository when backing up to NAS.
• Fixed: In previous versions, our VSS implementation caused warnings to be written to the Windows Application Log, even though backups were completing successfully. The error was: "Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process."
• Fixed: When preparing External Hard drive, we accidentally forcibly did an Eject after the medium was prepared. This would mean that it could take a long time to prepare the drive for backup.
• Fixed: When running NTBackup to tape for some DAT72 drives, the bytes used specified in the media usage report was inaccurate. This has now been fixed.
• Enhanced: For Imaging backups to NAS there is now an option to delete old backups before the new backup starts, to overcome the issue where the backup fails to complete with log message "Backup stopped before completing. Cannot create a file when that file already exists."
• Fixed: For Rsync, previously daemon mode would not work if there was a space in the destination path. This has been fixed.
• Fixed: For File Replication, we have fixed a bug that was preventing the media usage report from being generated if the destination disk was > 90% full.
• Fixed: Fixed bug that prevented “enable vss writers” from being disabled in some circumstances for File Replication and Rsync jobs.
• Enhanced: The media usage report for File Replication jobs could sometimes take a long time to generate, e.g. when backing up to a slow NAS. Now a user-configurable time limit has been added, after which the report is generated without a media usage section. The default is 30 minutes.
• Fixed: Error handling for CMC report notifications has been improved, and now retries after all error conditions.
• Fixed: SQL server detection has now been disabled on all 64bit machines, due to further conflicts with the SQL 2007 management tool.

BackupAssist 5.2.4

May 11th 2009

• NEW: Option in the rsync engine to limit the maximum data transfer for a job.
• Enhanced: SQL and Exchange destination directories now allow \\.host at the beginning of a path.
• Enhanced: Browsing for SQL and Exchange destinations now starts on the desktop, allowing the user to browse the network neighbourhood.
• Fixed: File replication engine no longer sets report status to "minor warnings" when only information messages have been reported.
• Fixed: File replication engine: improved speed of "checking previous backups" step.
• Fixed: Rsync engine: fixed permissions problems when backing up to a host running cwRsyncServer.
• Fixed: Rsync engine: increase timeout from 5 minutes to 60 minutes. 5 minutes was too short.
• Fixed: File replication engine: ignore system directories, such as $RECYCLE.BIN and "System Volume Information" if the backup destination is the root directory of a portable drive.
• Fixed: File replication and rsync engines: add "\System Volume Information\*" to the default exclude list for new jobs.
• Fixed: File replication engine: "Privilege not held" error (BA708) after deleting an old backup.
• Fixed: File replication and rsync engines: notify Exchange if the consistency check fails.
• Fixed: Rsync engine: if rsync reports disk full on the destination, report BA706 ("insufficient space to complete backup") insead of the less informative BA3012 ("error in rsync protocol data stream")

BackupAssist 5.2.3

April 30th 2009

Fixed: For jobs that include an Exchange 2007 consistency check, BackupAssist will now send backup report notifications by email.

BackupAssist 5.2.2

April 9th 2009

• NEW: RSync seeding: Allow users to "seed" an rsync server via a local portable drive that can be physically relocated to the rsync server and automatically populated using a generated script.
• NEW: File replication/rsync VSS writer support: Add option to enable VSS writers (i.e. VSS-aware applications) to participate in the backup.
• NEW: WinImage backed up items section: New section in the backup report that shows exactly what VSS applications were backed up.
• NEW: HTTP(S) proxy support: Allow users to override the default .Net internet proxy behaviour to enforce the use of a specific proxy or no proxy during CMC, activation and diagnostics requests.
• Fixed: WinImage bug preventing backup results from being displayed on some foreign language systems due to the inability to parse logs resulting from code page problems.
• Fixed: Replaced the incorrect 7-zip executable previously included with BackupAssist with the correct command line (7za) version.
• Fixed: Several WinImage bugs in the media usage report.
• Fixed: Handle errors that some users were seeing in the call to BackupComplete (VSS).
• Fixed: Rsync: When registering with the server, ensure that .ssh/ and .ssh/authorized_keys have the correct ownership. This should fix problems reported by some users where "register with server" reported success, but "test connection" returned "permission denied".
• Fixed: File replication: fix error where BA would sometimes report that a local drive does not exist.

BackupAssist 5.2.1

March 17th 2009

• Fixed: Imaging engine no longer removes some registry keys after backup, so restores of Exchange can be done without manually re-entering them
• Enhanced: Better logging for FTP issues
• New: UI option for enabling/disabling the FTP "keepalive" requests, which can be enabled to avoid timeouts (or disabled, if you are currently experiencing ftp problems)

File replication engine changes:

• Test whether the destination supports the Hidden and System attributes and do not use them for file comparisons if it doesn't.
• Provide settings for whether the Hidden and System attributes should be preserved.
• Raise warnings if user has requested that the Hidden and System attributes be preserved but the destination does not support them.
• Preserve attributes NotContentIndexed, Offline and Temporary in addition to ReadOnly, Hidden and System
• For media that has a BackupCache, add a DeleteOldBackupsSection to the report.
• When deleting an old backup, delete the media usage info file even if the backup could not be completely deleted
• Improved: directory copying, file copying and hard link creation are now even more reliable and robust
• Fixed: The bug causing a "Linking" error followed by lots of other errors (eventually resulting in the "too many errors" error as well). This was due to a cleanup issue when backing up to a Samba share.

Rsync engine changes:

• Add --no-perms option. Rsync was sometimes (often) thinking a file's permissions had changed when they hadn't. This was breaking the single instance store.
• Treat "connection abort" (cygwin errno 113) as a re-tryable error
• Fixed: re-enable the Port dropdown in the Rsync Server options screen. This was accidentally disabled in 5.2.0
• Fixed: when the destination directory is created during the "Test Connection", it now has the correct permissions assigned
• Improved: The "Register with server" function now ensures that the home directory is owned by the user before continuing (otherwise would fail)
• Improved: Handle UnauthorizedAccessException which can be thrown when requesting certain privileges.
• Improved: Disk management now removes the read-only flag on directories before trying to delete them
• Improved: The readability of VSS errors has been improved in many circumstances
• Improved: Rsync and File Rep - add a warning if we could not find the VSS snapshot for a volume that should have one, then revert to using the volume directly.
• Improved: We now support hard links (i.e. single instance store) on Windows 2000
• Fixed: Report an error if the snapshot doesn't include all volumes required by the exchange writer.
• Fixed: FTPS explicit mode support is now more reliable
• Enhanced: Zip64 compression is again supported for ntbackup jobs. A new Zip64Unzip.exe is included in the install directory to assist with restores.
• Enhanced: The 7zip exe in the install directory has been updated to version 4.65
• Enhanced: Additional logging information is now included if ntbackup jobs can't be run due to an unhandled DesktopRights issue
• Enhanced: Better error handling of paths and VSS
• Improved: If a file copy fails, the partial file is now deleted as expected
• Fixed: The bug allowing possibility of window handle leaks has been corrected

BackupAssist 5.2.0

Feb 16th 2009

• NEW: Exchange 2007 can now be backed up directly from Server 2008 through the imaging engine
• NEW: Hyper-V aware backups. The imaging engine will now allow the user to enable the Hyper-V VSS writer, allowing full backups of running Hyper-V servers
• NEW: Rsync backup to standalone NAS devices is now supported through the 'SSH tunnelling for Rsync Daemon' option. See http://www.backupassist.com/blog/support/qnap-devices-behind-firewalls-rsync-backup-problems/
• Improved: service code has been improved, which should make the service faster and more reliable
• Multiple UI enhancements focusing particularly on Rsync, prepare media and the manual license activation area.
• %STATUS% and %BACKUP_SIZE% now function correctly in the post backup script

BackupAssist 5.1.2

Jan 19th 2009

• Fixed: Drive Imaging on SBS 2008: Exchange logs are now truncated after each full backup
• Fixed: Drive imaging: VSS Full backups are enabled by default – previously was copy backups (which was the wbadmin default).
• Enhanced: Exchange mailbox: now users have the option of backing up notes, contacts, calendar items, etc, into every PST file. Makes the recovery a lot easier. Previous behaviour: only notes, contacts, etc., for the specific date range are exported.
• Enhanced: Exchange mailbox: advanced options now appear under NTBackup options for embedded jobs.
• Enhanced: BackupAssist now proactively handles the scenario where the OS requires FIPS compliant cryptography schemes
• Enhanced: SQL UI loading times and authentication changes have been improved
• Fixed: The "keep number of days old" option for managing backups now works more reliably for File Replication Engine
• Enhanced: There is now a Media Usage Report for Rsync jobs to SSH servers
• Fixed: Several file replication engine bugs have been fixed - win32 error 87 (invalid parameter) is now handled more smoothly, problems when copying file attributes are handled properly, several bugs in the media usage report for mirror schemes have been fixed
• Enhanced: If Iomega REV drivers are detected on a machine running Vista or later OS for File replication jobs, a critical error is reported. These drivers are unnecessary on OS versions that have builtin UDF support, and are inadequate because they don't support hard links
• Enhanced: File replication jobs now attempts to create the destination directory if it does not exist
• Enhanced: Rsync now reports many OS level errors with meaningful descriptions
• Enhanced: It is possible to disable the media usage report for Rsync jobs

BackupAssist 5.1.1

29th Dec 2008

• Fixed: Issue preventing immediate use of the Rsync engine for some users upon upgrade
• Fixed: Exmerge server selections are no longer accidentally hidden (the bug meant that they were only shown after adding or re-adding a server)
• Fixed: Rsync should now handle network selections properly
• Fixed: Divide-by-zero errors no longer prevent the display or sending of reports
• Enhanced: Rsync now always finds the last backup, even when using a seeded destination, improving bandwith utilisation even further

BackupAssist 5.1.0

15th Dec 2008

• NEW: Rsync Engine – bandwidth efficient Internet based backup using Rsync
• Enhanced: Faster, more responsive performance
• Enhanced: Can now double click on folders in the list view of the Files/folders selection in order to drill down
• Enhanced: The selected job edit screen is retained when switching between jobs (eg. calendar, scripts, etc.)
• Enhanced: If multiple Exchange servers are discovered, they can be individually added via new checkboxes (rather than having to add them all at once)
• Fixed: Activation screens behave better in several scenarios

BackupAssist 5.0.6

21st Nov 2008

• Fixed: "Chinese character email report" – issue fixed. Caused by some mail servers interpreting the email as UTF-16 instead of UTF-8.

File replication engine changes:

• NEW: Added thumbs.db as a default file exclusion
• NEW: Allow the user to specify how many skipped files before the backup is aborted
• NEW: Specifically detects and reports network access denied situations
• Fixed: Backing up source files when the backup user doesn’t have NTFS permissions to the files, but does have Backup Operator rights
• Fixed: Backing up to a non-NTFS destination where BackupWrite operations are not supported by the destination
• Fixed: Backing up to FAT32 destinations where alternate data streams are not supported
• Fixed: Applying directory security on the destination where the backup user doesn’t have NTFS permissions on the directories. Now only Backup Operator rights are required.

Other changes:

• Fixed: Removed a bug where ntbackup wasn't being told to use unmanaged mode when backing up to a prepared tape
• Fixed: Bug preventing configuration of sql servers when console user didn't have sufficient rights for an unrelated operation (fetching login domains)

BackupAssist 5.0.5

10th Nov 2008

• Fixed: Issue upgrading from version 4 that was affecting CMC and occasionally causing problems running the service

BackupAssist 5.0.4

21st Oct 2008

• Enhanced: Timeout when checking for already-running Imaging jobs has been increased to 15 seconds and is now user-configurable
• Enhanced: BackupAssist can now recover automatically from several data corruption issues experienced by some users.
• Fixed: Issue causing strange timeout failures when using FTP with Implicit or Explicit SSL

BackupAssist 5.0.3

18th Oct 2008

• Fixed: Startup issue causing service to fail to start after reboot, for users that upgraded to 5.0.2 from 5.0.0.

BackupAssist 5.0.2

Oct 15th 2008

• Fixed: REV issue causing "invalid argument" error when backing up a drive using VSS and the File Replication engine.

BackupAssist 5.0.1

Oct 14th 2008

• Fixed: Migration issue causing confusing information to be shown on the Licensing screen.
• Fixed: File Replication issue causing jobs to fail when backing up a folder or drive with a junction point at the top level.

BackupAssist 5.0.0

Oct 13th 2008

(Major release)

• NEW: File replication engine. BackupAssist can now quickly and efficiently mirror or copy files from one place to another.
• - Single instance store greatly reduces the amount of space required for multiple full backups.
• - Single instance store also greatly reduces the amount of time taken by full backups
• - Mirror mode allows you to easily mirror files from one drive to another
• - Creates exact copies of files including security settings and alternate data streams.
• Improved: Imaging engine for Vista and Server 2008
• Improved: Job execution now supports Elevated Rights (on Vista or Server 2008) where necessary
• Improved: Polling from console to service. This reduces probability of the console encountering an error after running for several days. BackupAssist will now use less processor time while the console is running.

BackupAssist 4.2.2

April 24th 2009

• Fixed: "Chinese character email report" – issue fixed. Caused by some mail servers interpreting the email as UTF-16 instead of UTF-8.

BackupAssist 4.2.1

Oct 13th 2008

• Fixed: Resolved occasional save/load errors in the destination content panel.
• Fixed: Occasional 'weird' characters that sometimes appeared in email reports will no longer appear.
• Improved: Better cleanup of some console resources.
• Fixed: (1) will no longer be appended to job names when saving the overview screen.
• Fixed: FTP test page. Skip button has been replaced with cancel. No longer throws an exception when the page is closed before the test is complete. Test is now cancelled properly when the user hits cancel rather than continuing to run in the background.
• Fixed: Report button on the monitor screen should more reliably activate when a job finishes.
• Fixed: Alternate (now default) email component now works on 64bit machines.
• Improved: Users customized media labels will now show in the report screen.
• Improved: Reports show only the media label, the 'duplicate' backup media field has been removed.
• Fixed: Resolved an error that could cause the remote files and folders tab to become inaccessible on some translated versions.
• Fixed: Full + Incremental scheme. Media rotation now works correctly when the day for the full archive is changed from Monday.
• Fixed: Manual backup scheme. UI has been slightly
• improved. Run now button on the schedule screen is now more reliable.
• Fixed: Recent log files should again be received by support when the user sends diagnostics.
• Fixed: Running through the job wizard at great speeds should no longer cause an error.
• Fixed: BackupAssist advanced open files addon option no longer shows in the open files tab if the OS is 64 bit (since the addon does not support 64 bit).

BackupAssist 4.2.0

Sep 4th 2008

• NEW: Added Windows imaging engine for Vista and Server 2008
• NEW: Validation has been improved across the console. Entry fields should now be more consistent and easier to use
• NEW: Icons for NTBackup are now greyed out when using Vista and up, and Imaging icons greyed out when using 2003 and down
• NEW: Added restore option for Imaging engine, to give easy access to the Windows restore options
• Fixed problem that could cause report conditions not to appear in the summary section on 64 bit machines
• Fixed invalid path characters now removed from entered paths to avoid possible exceptions
• Initial setup wizard, backup user id now confirms authentication only when the identity has changed
• Changing the REV drive letter now properly activates the apply button
• Prepare media step in wizard now updates correctly if the destination setup step is changed
• Default Email component has been swapped. The alternative component is now the default, and the old default component can be accessed by checking the 'use legacy component' option

BackupAssist 4.1.1

Aug 4th 2008

• NEW: The user can define how the job should handle pre-script and post-script errors (when the exit code is non-zero) – ignore the error, report a minor/major warning, or report an error and fail the backup (including aborting the backup if the pre-script fails)
• Enhanced: The estimate size functionality has been improved with progress totals and a cancel option (if trawling over local and/or network drives is slowing down the system)
• Enhanced: The email server settings screen has been updated to be easier to use
• Enhanced: HTML report generation has been speed-optimized, and is now handled by the executor application, so that the service isn’t bogged down when creating HTML for notifications and disk storage. This has also improved the speed of viewing the reports in the UI. This fix may also reduce the incidence of timeout exceptions causing problems with the console for some users.
• Enhanced: The FTP component now uses a regular “keep alive” ping to avoid timeouts causing long transfers to report failure on some ftp servers even if the send worked successfully
• Fixed: Some popups occasionally hid behind the main form, rendering the console useless - this is now fixed
• Fixed: The UI “click twice to enable” bug is now fixed (sometimes needed to click twice in some controls before typing would work)
• Fixed: 64bit detection fixed (were only using this feature to report system info in diagnostics)
• Fixed: Further improvements to media usage diskspace reporting (when outrageous figures were accidentally reported)
• Fixed: Bug where double quotes in media labels would cause ntbackup to fail to start
• Fixed: If a “run now” job is queued by the service, the monitor now tells the user this, rather than reporting that there might be a problem
• Enhanced: Improved the Cleanup Service maintenance option to reset dependencies properly

BackupAssist 4.1.0

June 18 2008

• Enhanced: Installer now works properly on Vista and the other new OS's
• Enhanced: The Activation form now has a Manual button enabling users to choose this option directly if they don't have an Internet connection
• Enhanced: The ASR option is no longer available for users running Windows 2000 (where there is no ASR capability)
• Fixed: NTBackup advanced option Additional Command Line Parameters now working
• Fixed: Annoying domain handling when setting up the Backup User Identity
• Fixed: The SQL restore wizard won't complete if no databases have been selected
• Enhanced: schedules that allow selection of days of the week in a checkbox list now start with the culture-specific first day of the week
• Fixed: Multiple minor validation issues and other UI issues
• Fixed: When network authentication fails, the domain is now retained instead of being reset to the default
• Enhanced: If the console is started when the service isn't running, the user is asked if they want the service to be started
• Enhanced: ntbackup log file handling has been improved such that delays in the file showing up and temporary locks on the file (eg. antivirus software) don't prevent BackupAssist from being able to locate and read the log file
• NEW: All jobs may now be cancelled via the Monitor window during the main engine execution stage. The remaining steps of cancelled jobs are skipped, and the job list shows the job status as Cancelled
• Enhanced: The Exmerge and SQL engines now display more information during the backups via the Monitor window.
• Fixed: SQL backup filenames are no longer formatted using the local sql pseudonyms "." and "(local)", so that restores to the server don't have to be performed from the local server, but pre-existing filenames are still valid for SQL Restore
• Enhanced: If the Exmerge engine fails for a given period, it will no longer try to backup further periods
• NEW: The Exmerge engine offers a number of configurable options, including whether to delete original messages off the server during the export, whether to exclude specific directories from the export, whether or not to attempt to set mailbox rights before the backup, and how to handle setting the optional Domain parameter passed to Exmerge.
• Fixed: The scheduling conflict causing ntbackup jobs to fail if another job finishes during execution has been resolved by forcing ntbackup jobs to only run .one-at-a-time for the entirety of the job, and by executing jobs for other engine types without using DesktopRights.exe
• Fixed: The conventional file copy how uses an entirely new subdirectory of the user-specified working directory in order to avoid accidentally removing user files and/or backing up incidental user files.
• Fixed: NTBackup verify failure messages such as "Difference encountered in alternate file data." are now handled properly.
• Fixed: The should no longer fault when editing email addresses from the dropdown list.
• NEW: Now support sending emails via secure (SSL/TLS) smtp servers such as gmail (smtp.gmail.com) using a secondary mail component.
• Enhanced: Those experiencing issues with the default mail component may find that selecting to use the secondary mail component gives better results.
• Fixed: Configuration file saving has been improved, such that the rare issue where files are corrupted causing the service to fail should no longer occur.
• Fixed: The KnowledgeBase link for failure conditions is once again visible in emailed reports.
• Fixed: Network connections are how handled sensibly when running a job, such that the network path is tested before and after attempting to connect, thus avoiding failures from trying to connect to an already-available connection.
• Enhanced: Failures during RSM functions caused by system changes performed during installation of certain other backup software are now detected and reported specifically.
• NEW: Burning of discs can now be performed using an alternate burning component that can be used if the default component is not giving good results.
• Fixed: In rare cases the scheduler has been known to suddenly halt and hence fail to start scheduled jobs, while the remainder of the functionality was unaffected. The scheduler now includes code to detect this condition and recover silently.
• Fixed: Sometimes temporary files are left behind after a Destination Check. This problem has been fixed.
• Fixed: Out of range figures should no longer end up in the Media Usage Report.
• Fixed: System State only backups are now detected properly during the selection check.
• Fixed: The bug where the Destination Check could fail, but in some circumstances not show what the problem was, has now been fixed.
• Fixed: International characters now show up correctly in script logs.
• Fixed: Bug where large amounts of script output could cause the backup to hang.
• Fixed: System State-only jobs (with no other selections) now pass the selection check on the monitor screen (used to show Error)
• Enhanced: Added logging to assist with debugging errors with the RSM service
• Fixed: Bug where ordinals were showing up incorrectly in the monthly scheduling for maintenance notifications
• Script exit codes (using “exit <num>”) are now taken into account, zero is success, anything else failure
• The RSM service status check now assumes (hopes) unknown failures (like unauthorized access) won’t cause problems with detect

BackupAssist 4.0.16

March 20 2008

• Fixed: Scheduler now executes jobs correctly on the long and short days created by daylight savings changeover
• Fixed: Reports and other configuration data can now include text containing control characters, such as those present in some malicious email subject lines that fail to backup using Exmerge
• Fixed: SQL backup filename format now handles server/instance names containing dash characters
• Fixed: Increased timeout on email server "test ping"
• Fixed: Bug causing jobs that hadn't been run in a while to show in the job list as Cancelled
• Fixed: Input of email addresses now supports adding a new email address by editing an entry from the dropdown list
• Fixed: Issues in adding Net send notifications now resolved
• Fixed: Standalone LicenseManager now works correctly (from Windows Start menu)
• Fixed: Bug when searching for ntbackup in the PATH when it contains an empty entry (XP Home, Vista, Server 2008)
• Enhanced: Logging added to aid debugging issues with cache file deletion, job reporting and scheduling

BackupAssist 4.0.15

February 14 2008 New features/fixes include:

• Fixed: Major printing issue now resolved
• Emailing through an SMTP server that does not respond no longer causes 100% CPU usage
• Fixed: Issue causing service problems during/after job execution has been resolved
• Fixed: Incorrect formatting of "original ntbackup log" from the report
• Fixed: Special characters now come through properly in the subject and address fields for emails
• Fixed: Conventional file copy can now handle long file names.
• Fixed: Bug in notification section of wizard that caused it to incorrectly show a warning about invalid emails.
• Added: BackupAssist now supports Active FTP
• Improved: Printing now handles printer and share naming better
• Improved: Uninstaller has "keep my settings" on by default
• Improved: BackupAssist will now try harder to open RSM sessions
• Improved: Report will only list the first 50 messages that couldn't be exported, to avoid excessively long reports
• Improved: Customize scheme button removed from schemes that don't support it
• Improved: Help link in reports is now much more visible
• Improved: New FTP component added, support for large files improved

BackupAssist 4.0.14

December 27 2007

New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Single build now supports both 32 and 64 bit OS, reducing the size of the download from 15MB to about 9MB.
• NEW: Added 'Copy' button to jobs list to allow jobs to be duplicated.
• NEW: Right clicking on a day in the Calendar allows you to cancel the backup for that day, allowing the user to skip backups on holidays. Right clicking again will allow the user to reactivate the backup.
• NEW: If a future backup is 'run now' and the user elects not to run at the scheduled time as well, that day will be marked in the calendar. Those days can now be reactivated.
• NEW: The Exchange mailbox add-on can export mailboxes of users who are disabled and hidden from the AD
• NEW: The user can explicitly select the language that the NTBackup log is in, so operating systems that run MUI packs over will still work.
• Improved: Handling of queued jobs - the service will automatically queue jobs that depend on NTBackup, and start them when it can. Also detects and handles situations where BackupAssist Executor is killed manually from Task Manager
• Improved: Handling of cancelled jobs
• Improved: Memory usage of service
• Improved: Net disconnects no longer showing in the report
• Improved: Reset service option in Troubleshooting tools is now more thorough and will clear queued jobs.
• Improved: DVD burning component updated and improved.
• Improved: Estimate size function on files and folders has been optimized for faster performance.
• Improved: Improvement to editing of Network path information and the effect on job selections.
• Improved: Report now displays a warning if there are no mailboxes to back up.
• Improved: if Exmerge directory path doesn't exist BackupAssist will attempt to create it.
• Improved: list of Exchange mailboxes messages that can't be exported for BA1791 condition are displayed in backup report.
• Improved: if SQL directory path doesn't exist BackupAssist will attempt to create it.
• Improved: added loading message to jobs list
• Improved: Printing the Calendar will now include the calendar key, job name and server name on the printout
• Improved: network paths added when NTBackup jobs are present will now detect IP addresses and suggest the NETBIOS name as a replacement
• Improved: IP addresses in NTBackup jobs now show up in the report as skipped
• Improved UI: Jobs list, calendar, files and folders tab, contact support section, icon appearance
• Improved: detect for attempts to enter a version 3 key for activation and provide appropriate advice.
• Fixed: Occasionally the backup job would report that it failed with a BA2 condition, when in fact it ran successfully and succeeded.
• Fixed: Occasionally the service would not respond to the UI, requiring a restart.
• Fixed: Bug with activity monitor that sometimes caused monitor to not display correct information.
• Fixed: Refresh button on monitor.
• Fixed: Memory leak in service on some systems.
• Fixed: Executor will no longer crash if using 'Delete as necessary' backup storage option when the Executor can't access the destination (e.g. when a network cable is unplugged)
• Fixed: further fixes made to the refresh button on page one of the SQL wizard. Now disables the refresh button while a refresh is being performed.
• Fixed: Integrated SQL authentication.
• Fixed: Information level events in reports now display the correct icon.
• Fixed: Conditions highlighted in backup reports.
• Fixed: SQL backup destination allows for variables in the destination path
• Fixed: rare issue causing server to crash during backup.
• Fixed: tabbing now works correctly, focus moves sensibly and visual cues for keyboard focus have been added.
• Fixed: Monitor clears when a new job is run
• Fixed: possible exception when adding a network path
• Fixed Screen contents now refresh correctly after using the settings menu to make changes
• Fixed: a bug that caused Network path details to be updated if the user hit cancel on an authorisation failure
• Fixed: calendar appearance for Vista in preparation for imaging engine
• Fixed: problem preventing Netware shares from being backed up. Added the 'This share is on a Netware server' option when editing the network path list. BackupAssist will attempt to detect Netware shares when a network path is added.
• Fixed: 7z compression options now excluded from tape jobs
• Fixed: bug in Exmerge install that caused the final step to sometimes misreport as a failure
• Fixed: bug that caused tape detection to fail on machines with multiple tape drives
• Fixed: bug that sometimes causes popup windows to appear behind other screens
• Fixed: job list last-run-status bug, where the last-run result was occasionally being populated with the result from 2 jobs ago, instead of the last job.
• Fixed: mailbox export jobs - when multiple servers are selected but unchecked (not active) then ignore these selections instead of trying to back them up
• Fixed: Network Disconnect failures now displayed with Information conditions in the report, and the status of that component is now reported as "Successful" rather than "Minor Warnings"
• Fixed: Network Disconnect processing won't try to disconnect from the same item more than once
• Fixed: List items will no longer be duplicated in reports, eg. successful connections, disconnections, destination checks, etc.
• Fixed: The Exchange mailbox add-on used to give the BA1771 error (anti-virus conflict) frequently. Whilst this is correct according to Microsoft documentation, some users experience sporadic and small numbers of messages that can't be exported. The resolution has been to set thresholds - if >50 messages can't be exported, then display the BA1771 error, as it is likely to be caused by this issue. For smaller quantities, between 10 and 50, a minor warning is displayed with the new BA1791 condition, and for under 10 messages, display an Information condition for BA1791.
• Fixed: issue with rev on win2k - automatically shares the Rev drive as \\SERVER\REV$ and directs NTBackup to that share, to work around the fact that NTBackup won't write to the REV drive automatically

BackupAssist 4.0.13

October 25 2007

New features/fixes include:

• NEW: 7-zip compression embedded into the NTBackup Engine, can now be found at the bottom of the NTBackup options screen
• NEW: File names for fixed destinations can now be edited when using schemes other than most recent full by going to the customize schedule screen
• NEW:: SQL restore wizard now includes an option to restore the master database amongst other improvements
• NEW:: Run now interface has been improved
• Fixed a bug in 4.0.12 that prevented users from going back through the 'new job' and 'initial setup' wizards
• Fixed a bug that caused an exception when a user attempted to run a job manually on a day where no backup was scheduled
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly backups to run a day early
• Fixed a bug that was causing the connection type to change even when the user hit cancel on the autotest screen under email server settings.

BackupAssist 4.0.12

September 10 2007 New features/fixes include:

• Enhanced: The Exmerge log parser: the "antivirus" error message is now more specific (previously it was triggering some false positives in some peoples logs); now detecting the 2 gig file limit error message; now detecting a generic information message where Exmerge says it will copy individual messages to avoid duplicates
• Enhanced: Major speed improvements in the user interface: faster loading times and faster response times when displaying current jobs in progress and past job reports
• Enhanced: Major memory usage improvements - the service's usage of memory is now very stable, even when running hundreds of jobs in succession.
• NEW:: Splash screen shows the progress of loading the console
• NEW: Error conditions in the backup report allow for easier diagnosis of backup user identity problems - eg. wrong username / password combination
• NEW:Jobs in the job list are now sorted alphabetically
• Fixed: Some mail servers were truncating the HTML reports and inserting newlines, which can result in the HTML report displaying incorrectly in mail clients.
• Fixed: Bug in transactional sql scheme preventing some coverage if the period spanned midnight
• Enhanced: Minor UI enhancements
• Fixed: Now preventing user from selecting "virtual paths" (like the Recycle Bin and Control Panel) for destination and cache folders
• Fixed: Backup execution sequence has been corrected to - Connect network connections, Run pre-script (utilising and/or fixing connections), Test selections, ..., Run post-script (utilising connections), Disconnect network connections
• Enhanced: configuration data is now stored in UTF-8
• Fixed: Desktop shortcut creation now handles job names that contain invalid characters for filenames

BackupAssist 4.0.11

August 06 2007 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Now includes a job migrater to import BackupAssist v3 jobs into version 4
• NEW: Print button added to the calendar tab.
• NEW: : Unattended execution of backups is now possible using BackupAssistManualLauncher /u (add /u to the default "desktop shortcut" command line)
• Enhanced: SQL restore wizard greatly improved. Now suggests a full backup after restore to prevent issues with recovery forks.
• Enhanced: NTBackup log parsing now catches VSS errors and Exchange Server backup failures (hrESEBackupRead)
• Enhanced: NTBackup engine and restore option now gracefully handles the situation where ntbackup.exe doesn't exist or is in an alternate location in the PATH
• Enhanced: Reports now show the standard error output of script execution (as well as standard output)
• Enhanced: Added the NWeekDaily schemes to the NAS, Local Dir and FTP destinations
• Enhanced: Multiple small improvements to the wording, look and functionality of the UI.
• Enhanced: Improved insert variable screen, variables are now in alphabetical order
• Enhanced: SQL Transactional scheme now cleans up the history folder as it goes, removing size/space overheads
• Enhanced: The emailed HTML report now has a cleaner look that excludes shortcut links that were being blocked by Outlook and other email clients
• Enhanced: The collated report for transactional backups now updates its start date and time so that changes are apparent in the reports list.
• Enhanced: Tape drive detection slightly, to reduce errors where more than one library is available.
• Fixed: Bug causing application to fail when run on older processors (eg. Pentium III)
• Fixed: Exchange authentication now uses the User Principal Name format (user@domain) when the domain is in DNS format (eg. mydomain.com), otherwise domain\user
• Fixed: SQL and Exchange mailbox directory fields now convert mapped network drive letters to their UNC equivalents (mapped drive letters caused backup failure).\
• Fixed: Significant bug in the SQL restore wizard
• Fixed: NTBackup timeout figure in the UI is now adhered to (previously was ignoring the value here and using the default - 1200 seconds)
• Fixed: Maximum NTBackup timeout increased to 10,000 minutes
• Fixed: Installer now prevents installation of the Open Files add-on on 64bit machines, where this is not supported
• Fixed: More help links are now context sensitive
• Fixed: Start menu icon for Launch BackupAssist Console is back
• Fixed: Replication section in the report now correctly represents cd/dvd burn and ftp backups
• Fixed: The "additional information" for errors are now printed separately in the emailed report (these are shown when "hovering" over the Details link when viewed from the console)
• Fixed: BackupAssist no longer reports that selections are missing when the selection was to be excluded anyway.
• Fixed: Weekly maintenance notifications now work correctly.
• Fixed: The Visual C++ 2005 MFC runtime is now installed correctly on 64bit machines, avoiding all "failed to load because the application configuration is incorrect" error messages
• Fixed: Conventional File Copy now cleans up the working directory after the backup
• Fixed: Log messages no longer going to the windows event log, except upon backup completion
• Fixed: Backups where open files are skipped with no Open Files protection in place are now reported correctly
• Fixed: Error condition for skipped files has been changed from BA701 to BA705, removing the clash on BA701 (delete old backups failure)
• Fixed: Deselected SQL server selections are now skipped in the backup

BackupAssist 4.0.10

June 29th 2007 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Network path connection now occurs before the prebackup script runs, and disconnection occurs after the postbackup scripts run, so that the scripts can take advantage of the network connections
• Fixed: Exchange server and mailbox detection has been improved, using the credentials of the Backup User Identity
• Fixed: At backup time, BackupAssist will retrieve the list of mailboxes using CDOEXM as a fallback method if LDAP fails
• Fixed: Trial issue causing problems on some installs
• Fixed: Individual file selections on remote drives will cause the drive to be mapped, even when there are no folders selected on that drive

BackupAssist 4.0.9

June 25th 2007 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Added backup cache management for SQL backups, including new purge after main backup option
• NEW: Added button to File selection screen called 'Check selections...' that allows the user to delete selections that no longer exist
• NEW: Added ability to skip backup estimate to NTBackup options (in the job editing section)
• NEW: Added ability to clone an existing job by right clicking on the job in the main jobs tab
• NEW: added Trouble-shooting tools page which includes options to clean up the service and to reset the RSM dabase
• NEW: Email notifications will now warn the user when the Email features in BackupAssist have not been enabled
• NEW: Added FILE_DATE and FILE_TIME replacement variables that use file- and path-friendly dates and times respectively (eg. "2007-10-31" and "21.55")
• NEW: Added WEEKDAY replacement variable that replaces with the shortened weekday name, eg. "Mon" for Monday
• Improved: Destination checks
• Improved: Console startup time
• Improved: ASR backup configuration
• Fixed: Bug causing some Queued jobs to be handled incorrectly
• Fixed: bug that caused backups to fail when perform inventory option was unchecked (tape only)
• Fixed: The Recovery Storage Group is no longer available for backup in the Exchange tab, since it can't be backed up anyway
• Fixed: Failure to free a tape no longer halts the backup
• Fixed: bug that caused the Exchange section to be added twice to reports
• Fixed: A bug causing the BA100 error in reports (DEV: Index out of range exception in MatchVerifySections)
• Fixed: A bug causing scheduled Exmerge jobs to hog cpu and memory when grouped in a single pst (also affected mailbox backups using Ntbackup engine)
• Fixed: Setting NTBackup exclusions no longer prevents job from executing when access to write to the registry key is denied
• Fixed: SBS performance report detects backups as configured even if SBS backup is disabled after BackupAssist has been running
• Fixed: Invalid trial expiry emails will no longer be sent

Fixed: DVD-RW burning improved, reliability and speed improvements (now performing quick format/erase in place of a full erase)

BackupAssist 4.0.8

June 4th 2007 New features/fixes include:

• Fixed: 64bit installer now linked to 64bit .Net Framework download
• Fixed: bug preventing the console from running on certain computers
• NEW: BackupAssist version number is now displayed in reports
• Fixed: bug causing failure in tape detection

BackupAssist 4.0.7

May 21st 2007 New features/fixes include:

• Fixed: bug preventing scheduling at midnight
• Fixed: bug preventing ntbackup jobs from running after a crash without restarting the service
• NEW: supports .local email domains
• NEW: enhanced FTP media usage report
• NEW: software now handles daylight savings properly
• NEW: setting of NTbackup file exclusions doesn't require administrative rights
• Fixed: bug preventing correct reading of ntbackup log files on dutch installations

BackupAssist 4.0.6

May 10th 2007 New features/fixes include:

Fixed buggy code causing slowdown and high cpu usage in the "copy to network" step, for network backups with local cache enabled eg. NAS

BackupAssist 4.0.5

May 8th 2007 New features/fixes include:

Trial detection fix

Addition of optional email address field on support contact forms (feedback, query, bug, error), and optional submission of diagnostics files

BackupAssist 4.0.4

May 7th 2007

(Major release) First public release of v4.

To get the complete list of new features fo version 4 please click here

BackupAssist 3.5.3

December 28th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• FIXED: Exchange Backup
  Exchange Storage Group detection will now ignore any Recovery Storage Groups present. The Exchange Mailbox Add-on also will not look for mailboxes within Recovery Storage Groups either.

BackupAssist 3.5.2

December 22nd 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Timeout value
  The timeout value in the advanced tab can now be extended beyond the maximum of 1420 minutes. This allows large backups to run over multiple days, if required.
• NEW: Exchange Backup of multiple stores and storage groups
  Individual storage groups and stores can be selected for backup within the Exchange Server information store backup. The Exchange Mailbox add-on now also supports backing up all users from multiple stores and storage groups.
• FIXED: Exchange Mailbox Reporting
  Few small fixes were made to Exchange Mailbox backup report messages that were previously displayed incorrectly.
• FIXED: Foreign Language Exchange Servers
  The Exchange Mailbox Add-on has been altered to fix a small issue with foreign language Exchange Servers.

BackupAssist 3.5.1

December 4th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Enhanced error detection
  For user's of the Exchange Mailbox Add-on, enhanced error detection has been implemented
• NEW: Updated help file
  New articles have been added to the BackupAssist help file which include an an explanation of the limitations of ExMerge and the Journaling feature on Exchange Servers.

BackupAssist 3.5.0

November 8th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Exchange Mailbox backup
  Brick-level and message-level restores.
• NEW: Easy Exchange Information Store selection
  Select your Exchange Information Store using a "checkbox", instead of having to type it in
• NEW: Run backups as LocalSystem user
  New option to run your backups as the LocalSystem user, which works around some problems launching the backup on high-load Terminal Services servers.
• NEW: File deletion / backup management options
  When deleting old backups, we now delete according to the "Modified" date instead of the "Created" date. This is to work around problems with Maxtor NAS devices, which do not store the "Created" date of a file.

BackupAssist 3.4.6

May 10th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Debugging Logging
• Improved information gathering for diagnostics file.
• Fixed: Open files are now being copied correctly when using the Advanced Open Files addon on machines the require a snapshot of multiple drives.

BackupAssist 3.4.5

April 12th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• Fixed: Improved debugging logging for 15120 errors, as well as a small bugfix for incorrect reporting of 15120 errors.
• Fixed: Resolved issue with the Advanced Open Files Addon where some customers reported open system files not being backed up.

BackupAssist 3.4.4

March 7th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Desktop Shortcut
• BackupAssist now allows you to create a desktop shortcut to manually kick-off a backup job at the click of a button. Simply access the Tools tab of the software to create the shortcut, and then double-click the icon created on your desktop to execute a backup whenever required.
• This new feature allows users to create a backup on an 'on-demand' basis without the job being set according to any schedule (provided the job has been suspended from the Description tab).
• Fixed: The pre/post backup script variable for the backup job name and description now allow the use of the '&' character.
• Fixed: 'No unused media' NTBackup error message now correctly parsed within the BackupAssist backup report.

BackupAssist 3.4.3

February 1st 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Environment scripting variables
• BackupAssist now allows you to specify global variables that can be used in pre and post backup scripts.
• BackupAssist environment variables allow users to execute different commands depending on the success or failure of any given backup. Such variables also have a host of other uses such as the ability to send the backup file to a FTP server on completion of the backup process.
• Look at the following tutorial for more information:
• Advanced Scripting in BackupAssist
• NEW: Windows XP Home Detection
• BackupAssist now checks for the presence of the Windows Backup Utility, NTBackup, for users running Windows XP Home, where NTBackup is not installed by default.
• NEW: NTBackup initialization
• BackupAssist now initializes and tests NTBackup as part of the configuration wizard. This is required for new machines, where NTBackup has not been run, in order to create the appropriate media pools for your tape devices.

BackupAssist 3.4.2

January 10th 2006 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: CD/DVD Appending Support
• BackupAssist now supports appending backup files to a single CD/DVD ReWriteable media. This will not work, however, with certain +RW media and we recommend using -RW instead.
• Look at the following tutorial for more information:
• Backing Up to CD/DVD
• Fixed: When using the Advanced Open Files Add-on, the BackupAssist snapshot manager no longer exhibits the issue of not being able to backup the system state on certain Windows 2000 machines.
• Fixed: The old backup file deletion options now scan correctly for the compressed .gzip file extension, rather than .gz so these files are now correctly purged.

BackupAssist 3.4.1

December 22nd 2005 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: 64-bit Windows Support
• BackupAssist now supports the use of the Windows Backup Utility, NTBackup, on 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.
• Fixed: When using the Advanced Open Files Add-on, the BackupAssist snapshot manager no longer attempts to take snapshots of network drives or network paths (UNC).
• Fixed: If NTBackup is terminated (either manually or unexpectedly) during the backup process, the BackupAssist backup report will now correctly record and indicate this termination.

BackupAssist 3.4.0

December 4th 2005 New features/fixes include:

• NEW: Far more enhanced authentication checking
• Defined authentication error codes are used to indicate a specific point of failure and methods to resolve these errors are located within HTML Help. A new section on the website also has a record of each of these error codes and a method for resolution: http://backupassist.com/troubleshooting/
• NEW: Integration with SBS2003 Reporting
• BackupAssist now integrates with the SBS2003 Performance Reports. For more information about this, see here
• NEW: Advanced Open Files Add-on now integrated
• To learn more about the Advanced Open Files Add-on, see here
• NEW: Improved email server setup
• 2 new methods of of email server communication: POP before SMTP and POP before ESMTP
• Autodetection screen for selecting the most appropriate mail server communication method.
• Autodetection screen allows you to test you email server settings from the Wizard and also from the Email Server settings screen within the Navigator.
• NEW: Add-on modules can now be trialed separately before registration.
• NEW: Separate components (advanced open files add-on, etc) can be selected individually for installation during the setup/install process.
• Fixed: BackupAssist no longer scans for log files that are dated in the future
• Fixed: BackupAssist no longer scans for log files that are dated in the past, when the NTBackup logs are not stored within the default directory (eg. C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\ etc, or NetworkUser, or LocalSystem)
• Fixed: When deleting files based on age or free space, files ending in .bkf, .bkf.gz, .bkf.7z, etc. are deleted, as opposed to deleting all files.
• Fixed: Previous installations are detected, so you can no longer install BackupAssist over the top of a pre-existing install. You must either use the upgrader or uninstall/reinstall.
• Fixed: The upgrader is far more robust and user friendly with a new user interface.

BackupAssist 3.3.1

September 20th 2005 New features include:

• Fixed: DVD/CD backup jobs that failed to burn were incorrectly reported as completing normally if Phase Two of the backup process completed successfully.
• Fixed: The backup file deletion options for DVD/CD backup are now activated correctly and retrieved from the correct location.
• Fixed: An issue with certain Windows NT4 machines caused the backup to terminate immediately at the start of each backup.
• Fixed: Minor issue with user input validation for tape retensioning program.
• Fixed: An NTBackup error indicating "Insufficient disk space" is now interpreted correctly.
• NEW: Text label within the SQL server backup tab indicates that the working directory will be completely purged before the backup commences.

BackupAssist 3.3.0

July 22nd 2005 New features include:

• DVD / CD Burning support: users can now backup to CD/DVD burning devices without the need for third party packetwriting software.
• Numerous improvements in the User Interface: settings entered by the user are validated and checked for correct input, more tips are displayed
• Event Logging for each backup: management software products that monitor the event log can be notified of the status of each backup.
• HTML Help restructured and content added.

BackupAssist 3.2.0

June 14th 2005 New features include:

• Fixed: An issue with the directory picker which occurred when backing up to SNAP servers
• Fixed: Backup to REV disk is now reported as unsuccessful if REV disk is write protected
• NEW: Backing up multiple SQL server instances in a single backup job
• NEW: Option of deleting the SQL .bak files after the backup
• NEW: Allowing full logging from NTBackup
• NEW: Fully customisable new backup scheme: Daily + N Weekly, which keeps weekly backups for N weeks, as well as the most recent few days
• NEW: Fully customisable new backup scheme: N Week daily, which keeps daily backups for N weeks
• NEW: Force restart of the Removable Storage Manager service
• NEW: Encryption of backup files using 7 zip
• NEW: More old backup file deletion options for automatically managing your disk space - option to delete files older than X days
• NEW: Option to allow for remote administration: low graphics mode, no splash screen
• NEW: The ability to specify the job name in the subject line of reminder emails using %JOBNAME%

BackupAssist 3.1.0

April 29th 2005 New features include:

• Fixed: Smoother SQL Server backups when backing up remote SQL Servers
• Fixed: An issue with the directory picker which occurred on some NT machines
• NEW: Excluded files - you may specify file types that are not to be backed up
• NEW: Report includes total bytes backed up, total files backed up and total directories backed up
• NEW: Better integrated help - popup tips identifying potentially problematic settings early
• NEW: Support for all languages of NTBackup
• NEW: The ability to specify the job name in the subject line of report emails using %JOBNAME%

BackupAssist 3.0.13

March 22nd 2005 New features include:

• Fixed: naming of the backup file based on date, when rerunning a backup, is named properly
• Fixed: phase two backup filename based on date is correctly named if the backup straddles midnight
• Fixed: Mapping network drive - now correctly maps Linux / SMB drives, not just Windows drives
• NEW: Allows for blank SQL Server password
• NEW: Improved error detection for SQL Server backups; better error reporting
• NEW: Backing up to file - deleting other files based on how much free space you want on your disk before each backup; delete oldest files first
• NEW: Detects file selections of network drives, and alerts the user if the drives aren't mapped in BackupAssist, and allows for automatic mapping

BackupAssist 3.0.12

March 2nd 2005 New features include:

• More comprehensive HTML Help with tutorials and white papers

BackupAssist 3.0.11

February 2nd 2005 New features include:

• User selectable file compression rate - when compressing a backup file using 7-Zip
• Timeout period for backups can be increased up to 1420 minutes now
• N-Week backup scheme - allows for any number of sets of daily tapes - eg. 2 sets of 5 tapes (Mon 1, Tue 1, Wed 1, Thu 1, Fri 1, Mon 2, Tue 2, Wed 2, Thu 2, Fri 2)
• Advanced option to check for correct tape in the drive before backup - based on tape label
• Modified algorithm for performing inventory operations on tape drives. (Bugs in certain tape drive drivers would cause problems in BackupAssist - we have tried modifying the way we use the Removable Storage Manager so that the bugs in the drivers won't affect BackupAssist)

BackupAssist 3.0.10

January 11th 2005 New features include:

• Improved user interface - currently selected backup job is depressed for clearer editing
• Splash screen shows release number
• Windows Server 2003 automatically detected by configuration wizard
• BackupAssist Navigator now has a close button
• The icon for each backup job in the toolbar changes - a tape for tape backups, and a hard drive for file backups
• Automatic checking for invalid backup job names (they cannot include slashes or quotation marks)

BackupAssist 3.0.9

November 126th 2004 New features include:

• Bug fix: the backups in v3.0.8 were incorrectly detected as failing. This has been fixed.

BackupAssist 3.0.8

November 6th 2004 New features include:

• Enhancement: daily backup method (in addition to full, incremental and differential)
• Enhancement: email interface now supports ESMTP protocol with login authentication
• Fixed: report notifications (email or printer) will only take place when checked in the "Notifications" tab
• Fixed: Event log messages are now shown in the event log correctly.

BackupAssist 3.0.7

September 27th 2004 New features include:

• Enhancement: new compression methods (7zip, gzip and bzip2) will handle large backup files. Previously, the zip compression would only work for backup files less than 4 gig in size. The backup report now shows the results of the compression, and the compression ratio achieved.
• Fixed: sending network messages to many non-existant computers used to cause delays; this is now fixed.
• Fixed: when performing a test backup to file, the message displayed on the screen shows the correct information instead of asking you to insert a tape into your tape drive.

BackupAssist 3.0.6

August 26th 2004 New features include:

• Enhancement: You can now backup any combination of files, system state, Exchange Server, and SQL Server. Previously, a backup job must have at least one file to backup; now it is not necessary to select files. This allows you to backup Exchange or SQL Server or the system state by itself.
• Enhancement: Close button on Configuration Wizard allows you to abort installation
• Fixed SQL Server error message when the SQL Server Client Tools are not installed

BackupAssist 3.0.5

July 16th 2004 First public release of v3. A summary of new features are:

• Multiple job scheduling capabilities - schedule multiple jobs. Each job is totally independent for each other - so you can backup different data at different times to different locations, even using a different rotation scheme. Perfect for power users who require multiple backup jobs
• Maintenance email notifications - remind your users to perform maintenance tasks, such as putting in a cleaning tape in the tape drive. Schedule this to recur on a weekly or monthly basis, or at specific times.
• Network message reminder notifications - for clients without a mail server, you can now remind your secretary to change the tape in the tape drive by sending a network (broadcast) message. A popup window will appear on their computer.
• Advanced tweaking of NTbackup parameters - add in your own command line parameters - perfect for power users to customize and fine-tune your settings
• SQL Server backups - perform a live backup of SQL Server, even if the database is currently in use.
• Run any scheduled backup now - if a backup has failed and you wish to rerun it now, you can do so at the click of a button. If you want to run tomorrow's backup (or any future backup) now, also just clik a button.
• File selection size estimate - estimate the size of your backups by totalling the size of your selected files, at the click of a button
• Temporarily suspend backup jobs - useful if your company is going on holiday or if you want to pause backups without deleting the job
• Run a tape retension program after the backup - useful for Travan drives where retensioning is required.
• Improved support for irregular passwords - the username and password of your backup user can now contain reserved characters such as \ and "
• Improved backup to file capabilities:
• Automatic backup compression using ZIP compression technology
• Automatically copy the backup file to a remote location such as a remote server, removable hard drive or DVD
• New and improved user interface, with the BackupAssist Navigator designed to make administration even easier and more intuitive.

BackupAssist 2.3.2

March 23rd 2004 New features include:

• Fixed username / password issue for Estonian and Latvian character sets (locales)

BackupAssist 2.3.1

March 8th 2004 New features include:

• Improved report logging facility
• Clear logs from the event logs and report logs

BackupAssist 2.3.0

February 5th 2004 New features include:

• Report logs can now be sent to the printer, as an alternative for those who don't have email access
• Improved support for timeouts on Windows NT
• Allows for either the Report or Reminder email recipient to be blank
• NEW: BackupAssist Monitor service will monitor the BackupAssist service and restart it automatically when needed.

BackupAssist 2.2.1

January 15th 2004 New features include:

• Checks to see if files and directories are unavailable for backup, and includes a warning message in the backup log if a directory or file cannot be found (eg. a network share that's turned off). This fixes the problem on Windows 2003:
• The saved selection file
• "path\Selection.bks\" cannot be found.
• Fixed email success / error message swap in customize email section.

BackupAssist 2.2.0

December 21st 2003 New features include:

• Improved backup-to-file allows flexible naming of backup files
• 2000/XP/2003: Hidden shares are visible in the file selection window
• NT: Many (more than 10) directories can be selected for backup

BackupAssist 2.1.0

November 24th 2003 New features include:

• New UI makes it easy to backup Exchange Server (online backup using ntbackup)
• If a report email cannot be sent (due to temporary network problems), the service will try resending at 10 minute intervals
• Diagnostic information zip feature makes submitting support requests easier

BackupAssist 2.0.6 (Official release of 2.0)

October 24th 2003 New features include:

• Customizable tape labels (useful for non-English languages)
• Customizable reminder emails
• User selectable backup selection file
• Several minor UI enhancements
• Aware of German ntbackup logs
• Administration Console version: 2.0.190
• BackupAssist service version: 2.0.171
• Interface library verrsion: 2.0.327
• Scheme library version: 2.0.93

BackupAssist 2.0.5 (Release candidate)

October 7th 2003 First public release of version 2.0. New features include:

• Redesigned configuration wizard for easier installation
• Customizable backup mode and method - including append to tape, and differential, incremental backups
• Customizable tape rotation - allowing you to select which days to change the tape
• Advanced calendar view
• Prepare tapes from within BackupAssist
• Direct interface with the Removable Storage Manager
• Improved support for backup timeouts, including user settable timeout periods
• Introduction of multiple email recipients (for report and reminder emails), plus the ability to CC users on failed backups
• Select files and directorys to backup from within the BackupAssist Administration Console
• Automatic mapping of network drives before backup commences
• Improved handling of Windows default desktop rights and permissions
• Administration Console version: 2.0.181
• BackupAssist service version: 2.0.162
• Interface library verrsion: 2.0.315
• Scheme library version: 2.0.75

BackupAssist 1.4.1

August 8th 2003 Final v1.X release. Increased service robustness, fixed service inconsistency when a backup times out, BackupExecutor handles incorrect authentication credentials more elegantly.

Administration Console version: 1.4.127

BackupAssist service version: 1.4.104

Interface library verrsion: 1.4.162

Scheme library version: 1.4.15

BackupAssist 1.4.0

July 23rd 2003 Adjusted identity message under Windows NT, fixed labeling of tapes for post-midnight backups

Administration Console version: 1.4.127

BackupAssist service version: 1.4.94

Interface library verrsion: 1.4.162

Scheme library version: 1.4.15

BackupAssist 1.3.0

July 14th 2003 BackupAssist Service now checks for and kills any instance of NTBackup that's currently running, before initiating a new backup procedure.

Administration Console version: 1.2.123

BackupAssist service version: 1.3.91

Interface library verrsion: 1.3.162

Scheme library version: 1.3.14

BackupAssist 1.2.0

June 26th 2003 Added the facility to send reminder emails only, allowing other backup software to perform the backup

Administration Console version: 1.2.122

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.2.159

Scheme library version: 1.0.14

BackupAssist 1.1.3

June 10th 2003 Minor UI Enhancements

Administration Console version: 1.1.120

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.1.157

Scheme library version: 1.0.14

BackupAssist 1.1.2

May 15th 2003 Improved logging for backups

Administration Console version: 1.1.119

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.1.157

Scheme library version: 1.0.14

BackupAssist 1.1.1

May 7th 2003 Added the Grandfather Father Son scheme, and allow for backups on weekends

Administration Console version: 1.1.119

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.1.157

Scheme library version: 1.0.14

BackupAssist 1.1.0

April 17th 2003 Fixed problem with NT 4.0 command line parameters; added the install late breaking news feature

Administration Console version: 1.1.118

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.1.156

Scheme library version: 1.0.12

BackupAssist 1.0.5

February 8th 2003 Initial release on download.com

Administration Console version: 1.0.116

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.85

Interface library verrsion: 1.0.155

Scheme library version: 1.0.12

BackupAssist 1.0.4

August 28th 2002 Enhanced detection of media pool and tape devices, automatic detection of domain and server name, scripts to run before and after backup, first public release

Administration Console version: 1.0.114

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.84

Interface library verrsion: 1.0.155

Scheme library version: 1.0.12

BackupAssist 1.0.3

August 20th 2002 Grouped registry settings

Administration Console version: 1.0.100

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.72

Interface library verrsion: 1.0.137

Scheme library version: 1.0.12

BackupAssist 1.0.2

August 15th 2002 Fixed identity impersonation issues on 2000 Server

Administration Console version: 1.0.75

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.51

Interface library verrsion: 1.0.120

Scheme library version: 1.0.12

BackupAssist 1.0.0

August 9th 2002 Private beta testing release

Administration Console version: 1.0.72

BackupAssist service version: 1.0.48

Interface library verrsion: 1.0.117

Scheme library version: 1.0.11