[geeks] Windows drive->drive backup

[Phil Stracchino]

Doug McLaren wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 10, 2007 at 05:16:34PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> 
> | What I really need is rsnapshot for Windows because it makes the backup easy
> | to access, and it saves a ton of space.
> 
> rsnapshot is built around hard links.  NTFS supports something that's
> basically the same as hard links, but I'm not sure that anything
> actually uses it.  I seriously doubt it or anything like it will work
> on Windows.
> 
> rsync works on Windows, but there's issues.  I homebrewed a backup
> system similar to rsnapshot that used rsync and SMB file sharing to
> duplicate a WIndows disk onto a *nix system, and it didn't care if
> somebody was logged in, but it had one massive flaw -- it couldn't
> read files that were in use.  For the OS files that's not such a big
> deal, but for things like Outlook files it was, because they were
> always in use if somebody never logged out -- and stuff that really
> needed backing up.
> 
> Windows does offer ways around this problem, but they weren't really
> options for my `do nothing to the Windows box itself' setup.

There is basically one and *only* one way around the open-file problem
on Windows that actually *works*.  That solution is St. Bernard Open
File Manager.

It's not free.  I don't know how much a single-seat license costs.


-- 
        Phil Stracchino                CDK#2
 Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
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