No more hiding in the server room

Backing up Windows PCs on a very small network

The office set up comprise of a few Ubuntu Desktop PCs, and a few Windows PCs and a file server.

Each day a script runs on the Ubuntu machines that dumps databases, gets a list of installed applications, exports SVN and rsyncs a load of files and settings to the file server for backup.

The windows machines are backed up using the built in backup utility.
This produces a .bkf file which means nothing to me.
Can you open it and restore files from it?
What about restoring to another machine or mounting it in another location?

I got bitten when I backed up an XP machine before upgrading to Windows 7 and then found that I couldn't import the .bkf file. Is had kept the original hard drive so it wasn't a disaster but what is the point of having a backup if you cannot restore it?

So how am I supposed to back up Windows machines so that I can easily see the backed up files on the server.

I am tempted to just install Cygwin and Rsync on the Windows machines. I doubt this is the best way to do this.

I really want a solution, scripted or off the shelf that will allow me to backup MySQL databases, SVN repositories, email, files and application settings.

But for now just files, settings and email would be fine.

I have a budget of $0.00 but may be able to increase this if there is a compelling reason to do so.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Holloway on May 5, 2010 at 4:16pm

The server has been upgraded, and everything is running well.

I have had a slight problem in backing up .pst files as they are locked whilst Outlook is running, but fortunately there is a reasonable solution in pfbackup.exe which copies the .pst ready for backup when you close Outlook.

I am still trialling this, but so far so good.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Holloway on June 12, 2010 at 12:05am

A month on and I have been testing the backups are good. Certainly all the files are there and readable.

To prove the set up was sound, I wiped and reinstalled my machine and although it took slightly longer than my custom backup to get up and running again it was still a relatively easy process and the benefit of having the web interface makes BackupPC a much better solution to my custom scripts.

A test restore of email into Outlook on another PC raised another issue though.

When importing an Outlook.pst file into Outlook 2003 I was prompted for a password.
Some searching suggested it is an internal password not related to the original users password used and was required I assume as the current user was different.
I had to use cracking software to get past this and the password that was discovered was certainly not something the user would have typed in.

Is this normal and to be expected?

Also none of the account details were restored, these are apparently stored in the registry.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can provision a sane and sound restore path for a failed Windows desktop PC? All attempts to do this seem to raise yet more problems.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Ayer on June 14, 2010 at 12:16pm

Hi, Richard. Just a quick comment on the Outlook password: it is not a proper password, it is actually just a (fairly weak) hash.

This means that many different possible passwords will unlock the PST file, which is why it is pretty straightforward to crack it. It also means, though, that the user might have entered a sensible password; that's just not the one your cracking software happened to discover.

I've moved a fair number of PST files around between users on test systems, and I've never been prompted unexpectedly for a password....