joaquin Posted February 12, 2007 Report Share Posted February 12, 2007 I see posts going back a couple of years about problems backing up files when using Microsoft Encrypting file system. But I don't see any posts that say this is no longer a problem. Can I reliably back up, thorough verify, and restore large files kept in NTFS + EFS, including Zip files? I use Windows XP Pro with the latest hot fixes and Retrospect Pro 7.5.324 with hot fixes 7.5.9.102. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhamre Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 The short answer is no, in my experience. Under Windows XP, EFS backup works... most of the time. Other times you will get random sharing violations and comparison errors. In my opinion, 90% reliability is not acceptable for supposedly "enterprise class" backup software. Under Vista, Retrospect does not support EFS. Lack of EFS support makes Retrospect essentially useless to me and I have stopped using the product. I reported this issue (#1-7300313) in February 2006 (and was not the first to do so). Two years later there still appears to have been no progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BitPusher Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 In Windows XP Professional SP2. I was one of the people who reported a problem with backing up NTFS EFS files with Retrospect Professional V7.0 and early incarnations of V7.5. I have been running Retrospect V7.5.285 since July 7, 2006 and have not experienced any problems with backing up NTFS EFS files since then, including large .ZIP files and using thorough verification. I even successfully performed a "bare-metal" recovery with the Disaster Recovery CD when my Seagate ST336752LW 15000 rpm LVD SCSI system hard drive went belly-up about 5-months ago. Actually, I did this from a DVD. My DR size was 699 mb which just fit on a CD. I initially burned both the CD and DVD, but used the DVD for recovery and it worked fine. If it wouldn't have worked I would of used the CD instead. Not sure what would have been the result if the image had been over 700MB. I'm really surprised to see that backing up EFS under Vista is not supported. That is the first mention of this that I've seen. I would like to know where the "official" documentation of that fact resides. However, that doesn't affect me since I NEVER plan to go to Vista. No way am I paying $500.00 for a bunch of grief and broken applications. I haven't yet heard of a Vista feature that I would even pay $10.00 for. A pretty interface is worth $0.00 to me. Carl Johnson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eppinizer Posted February 22, 2008 Report Share Posted February 22, 2008 Quote: I'm really surprised to see that backing up EFS under Vista is not supported. That is the first mention of this that I've seen. I would like to know where the "official" documentation of that fact resides. However, that doesn't affect me since I NEVER plan to go to Vista. No way am I paying $500.00 for a bunch of grief and broken applications. I haven't yet heard of a Vista feature that I would even pay $10.00 for. A pretty interface is worth $0.00 to me. Well, As of now EFS for Vista is something we are working on fixing. I don't think that we had ever not supported it officially, but there is now a serious problem that has been identified. With Win2K8 SE coming out, it is making vista more of a priority because of their very similar architecture. Most of the problems we have with Vista show up with Longhorn. Quote: Under Vista, Retrospect does not support EFS. Lack of EFS support makes Retrospect essentially useless to me and I have stopped using the product. I reported this issue (#1-7300313) in February 2006 (and was not the first to do so). Two years later there still appears to have been no progress. You must be talking about XP because Vista hadn't came out 2 years ago, and we didn't support it until 6 months ago. There has been a lot of progress in the past two years, and a lot of Retrospect users have notices it. -jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impala Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 Thanks for the info. I use a MacOS backup server which limits me to the Windows client 7.0.112 EFS backup is definately not working with this client and a MacOS server. I get "error -24007 access denied". You can get around that by creating an EFS recovery agent, import the recovery agent's private key. Then run the retrospect client service with the recovery agent credentials. But this configuration decreases the security of the EFS. NOTE: I only tested this configuration, and didn't put it into production. Hopefully Retrospect X will fix this and other problems with windows clients. If you're just trying to encrypt your files against external offline attack (IE lost/stolen notebook scenario) I think the bitlocker feature in Vista will work better than EFS. Once the system is booted, encryption is transparent. This doesn't protect against online/inside attacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhamre Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 For more on Vista EFS issues, see this thread: Not Backing up encrypted files in Vista. I last exchanged e-mails with EMC regarding XP EFS support in September 2006, when my contact told me that the problem was still not fixed. I agree that EFS is not ideal from a security perspective. I've mostly switched to using TrueCrypt instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted February 24, 2008 Report Share Posted February 24, 2008 Retrospect for Macintosh does not support the backup of EFS and never has. Retrospect for Macintosh can not backup NTFS permissions, Windows Registry, Open files, Services for Macintosh, or EFS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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