Open file not baking up NTFS v FAT32

[jongriffey]

Hi all

 

I have a very simple setup whereby I am backing up my Win XP C drive onto removable USB hard drives - and rotate them daily using Retrospect Professional.

 

I noticed in the log that there are error 1020 sharing vilolations. I always thought that Retrospect was supposed to be able to backup open files.

 

On looking into the matter further I see that open file backup only works on NTFS and not FAT 32.

 

Thus the C drive that is the backup source is FAT 32 and 2 of the USB hard drives are FAT 32 and are giving me the 1020 errors.

 

However for some reason one of the USB drives is NTFS and the backup from the FAT 32 source to this drive seems to work without any 1020 errors at all. Does that sound right? I would have thought that the source would need to be NTFS?

 

If this is correct then it would appear that I just need to reformat the other USB drives as NTFS and that solves the problem.

 

Am I missing something?

[MRIS]

your observation is correct.

 

- it is possible to backup a fat32 drive with "volume shadow copy" (aka open file backup), provided the operating system has access to at least 1 NTFS volume somewhere.

 

This means that if you can arrange to have one NTFS drive connected, that open file will work. That drive doesn't need to be the source or destination, it just needs to be there.

 

so either arrange to have the NTFS drive connected for each backup you take (in addition to or as the USB drive that is the target), or convert all the USB drives to NTFS, or convert the C drive to NTFS.

[jongriffey]

Many thanks.

 

I have now reformatted by USB drives as NTFS and now enjoy "1020 error" free backups.

 

This is really great. After weeks of headaches Retrospect Pro is now doing exactly what I want.