Running Ghost when WHS backup is running is probably not a good idea. Ghost 12 is able to start running when WHS backup is running, but it seems that at some point WHS gets upset, even if Ghost is backing up a drive that is not on the WHS backup list.

The same would apply to any program that uses Volume Shadow Services

See also How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works

While trying to create a new logical drive using windows XP, the drive got corrupted and one logical drive got lost.

Until now, I have always used Partition Magic to create new drives and partitions, but with the current set of problems with WHS, I no longer trust it to create NTFS drive. Normally, Partition Magic would have created a large secondary partition, and allow me to create logical drives within that. However, since the latest drive was set up with Acronis, I now have a secondary partition only big enough to hold the existing logical drives.

Windows XP Computer Management will not let me change the size of that partition, so I have no place for it to create a new drive.

I can however, use Acronis to create a couple of new drives and it will then extend the secondary partition size, then I can delete the drives, leaving space so that I can then use XP Computer Management to create and format logical drives there (because this week I fell much safer having XP create and format). However, today, I used XP to delete the logical drives with an intent to recreate them. Something went really bad, and it ended up deleting the second drive in the partition and then the whole physical drive disappeared. Some of it seemed to be accessable from My Computer. Rebooted and used Acronis to try and recover the lost drive, no luck, but not a serious problem right now, since that drive was just part of the WHS rebuild process. But the fact that it happened is disconcerting.

In the middle of all this weeks chaos, it’s nice to see something work correctly. After repartioning drives, and rebooting, Carbonite realizes something serious has happened and goes into recovery mode. This means that automatic backups will not start overwriting existing offsite backups and gives you a chance to fetch restorable copies before letting the automatic process restart.

I asked for deletion of some existing backups by tagging them to delete at next cleanup and then tried to start the Backup Cleanup process, but it only give me the option to cancel. But the bottom info bar does not show that that any process is running.

So I chose Cancel cleanups and then started them and it now starts and shows in the bottom bar.

It would seem this is a minor bug.

While trying to test a backup from Windows Home Server. A logical drive was backed up using Acronis True Image into an empty logical drive on a different physical drive and created a single .tlb file. Then this file was restored into another empty logical drive a. The restored copy was compared against the original and around 100 files were missing, although the rest compared ok.

The strange thing is that the missing files are all in second level sub-directories of the same sub-directory and there some kind of pattern to the missing files. However, it makes no sense in that most of these files are stable and have not changed for some time, nothing was accessing them during the backups and testing a couple of them shows that the original files are readable.

Just to be sure, erased the .tlb and the restored files and did the process again, same results, same missing files.

And one final precaution, ran a chkdsk against the original logical drive and it’s fine.

(Added - this may not be an Acronis problem - but may show an underlying problem with the directory or structures - to be continued….)

Setting up the HP Media Server is the simplest server install I have ever done. Brings back memories of NT server installs which might take hours, or even worse early Netware installs, which might take a day just to format the drive.

Basic install took about 10 minutes, and another 5 minutes to set up the workstation and start backing up.

The only thing that bothers me is that it seems I cannot customize the backup time for different machines. This is kind of limiting, since different machines are used at different times and it’s better to have the backup running when the workstation is not in use.

I walked in to BestBuy today just getting some odds and ends, and surprise, they have one in stock, hidden on a top shelf. No one seems to know anything about it, and it probably only just arrived. Grabbed it while it’s there and I will have to restrain myself from installing it, since I have some priority customer support issues.