I noticed some files throwing errors when using VSS on Windows 7. Here is a portion of the example I’m working with:
Warnings: [
Error reported while accessing file: C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup\ => (5) Access is denied: [\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy13\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup\*],
Error reported while accessing file: C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup\ => (5) Access is denied: [\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy13\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup\*],
Failed to process metadata for "C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6\", storing empty metadata => (5) Access is denied: [\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy13\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6],
Error reported while accessing file: C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6\ => (5) Access is denied:
It occured to me that these should be in the Windows registry key that defines files to exclude from backup.
(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup)
Is there a way to direct Duplicati to use this list as a standard exclusion list?
I’m not sure if there is a difference between when VSS snapshots are enabled versus when they are not.
I don’t know that Duplicati can use the Windows exclusion list (but if I’m wrong, I’m sure somebody will let me know).
I’m not sure that VSS snapshots will resolve the error you’re showing - it looks to me more like a permissions issue than file contention. But I could be wrong, so if you decided to test your scenario with VSS please let me know how it works out.
Doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m using VSS or not, these are Windows directories/files that the system account doesn’t have rights to. I believe these are only shown when using verbose mode, but I like to know what hasn’t gotten backed up. (I install backup and storage professionally)
I think the way that most backup products deal with this is to open files using a backup mode or flag.
robocopy has the /b flag, for instance, which implements this.
I think that the following is the correct link to that info.
I use Duplicati to back up just the data I generate. I do not back up Program files, operating system files, etc. As far as I know, Duplicati does not support bare metal restores so doing a full system recovery isn’t possible even if you back up the full C: drive.
For DR purposes I do image level backups using Macrium Reflect.
That is correct, though the paranoid among us might argue a fully system backup is necessary to make sure all the files user drop in random folders on the system are backed up. (Note that anybody could find them after being restored…)
So yes - a system IMAGING tool such as Macrim Reflect, AOMEI Backupper, CloneZilla, Acronis True Image, DriveImage XML, etc is a better way to go if you want to be able to do a bare-bones restore.
Not currently, but we recently added a “default exclusion list” that includes some temp folders. I guess we could easily add the filenames from the registry to this list.
You can make a backup of the entire disk (except for the files that are deeply protected), but you cannot restore them in a meaningful way.
Even if you were able to back up all files, they would need to be restored in a way that retains the on-disk layout. Since Duplicati works on the file level (as opposed to the disk block-level) this is not possible. Hence you will not be able to boot a disk that is restored with Duplicati.
I wasn’t expecting to be able to do a windows restore. And you make a good point, that Duplicati is designed for data protection only, not Windows files protection.
Thanks!
