11 replies to this topic

[roland6543]

What I want to do, has been posted before, but after a lot of reading I'm still not sure of the best approach. Please bear with me as I am a relative noob:

I want to back up my shared folders to a non-pooled internal hard drive(s) in WHS v1. I dont intend to remove the non-pooled hard, its just for redundancy purposes. The built in server backup tool is not capable of dividing up my share folders so that they can fit on my non-pooled drives because my videos folder exceeds the capacity of my largest non-pooled drive.

I have used SyncToy successfully on Windows 7 and XP, and it seems logical, considering my positive experiences with these OS's, to install it on the WHS, then to set up a task to automate "echo's" to the non-pooled drive.

What makes me nervous is that there are lots of postings on the www where users have indicated that SyncToy resulted in data corruption. Was that only with SyncToy 2.0 Beta or prior to PP1? Was the problem fixed? Was it because users Source/Destination folders in SyncToy were pointing to D: etc., instead of \\Server\folders?

Another factor was I had WHS running on a test system, streaming videos to my HTPC, and after a period of usage streaming became impossibly slow (always buffering despite a gigabit connection). At that time, I had used SyncToy on WHS. Of course SyncToy is only one of a few things that could have caused my problem, but since I have sooooo much data, I'm sure that you understand my nervousness.

So, I re-setup my entire WHS system (many days of copying and moving files), and before I commit to a backup routine to a non-pooled hard drive, I would like to know.... Is SyncToy 2.1 safe to use? Must it be pointed to \\Server\folders? Should I just stick with duplication, and not back up the folders? Is there a better way?

Perhaps some users can share there positive/negative experiences in doing what I am trying to do? Thanks guys.

[Ian]

If your backup is in the machine then I think I would stick with duplication. I prefer my backup external to the machine then if is all goes t*ts up, I still have a copy!

[roland6543]

@ian
Thanks. I understand your point about keeping your drive external. What do you use to back up to the external hdd?

[Ian]

I'm on WHS 2011 and use Acronis.
When I was on WHS1 I used the server backup.

[spile]

I created a small batch file that resides on the server and can be used to backup a share:

@echo off
"C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.1\SyncToyCmd" -R "Music Backup"

I also used an automated script that did a backup when the external drive was plugged in...


if exist F:\Music goto backup
goto notexists

:backup
if exist c:\backup.flg goto end
echo. > c:\backup.flg
"C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.1\SyncToyCmd" -R "Music Backup"
goto end

:notexists
if exist c:\backup.flg del c:\backup.flg

[roland6543]

@spile

"C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.1\SyncToyCmd" -R "Music Backup"

When you used SyncToy 2.1, did you ever have reason to believe that it caused any problems with the integrity of your shared folders on the server? You know how it creates its own file in the source and destination directory - did that ever cause problems when duplication was on?

[Wurstfinger]

I am using synctoy for 2 years now. No problems.

[roland6543]

I am using synctoy for 2 years now. No problems.

Is Synctoy running on the server? Do you use duplication?

[Wurstfinger]

Is Synctoy running on the server? Do you use duplication?

Yes to both.
I replicate some shares to an external disk. And Synctoy runs on another server too that pulls some other folders to it's internal disks.

[roland6543]

@Wurstfinger
Thanks. That sounds very positive.

[roland6543]

Whats the most reliable solution (least risk of failure and/or corruption)? WHS built in folder duplication vs SyncToy echo to a non-pooled drive?

[spile]

The corruption issue was for a very early and long since forgotten (by most of us!) version.