I am running:
Windows 11 Pro version 24H2 build 26100.3476
Duplicate ver 2.1.0.5_stable_2025-03-04
I have made 3 backups to a USB stick. All 3 produced over 1000 warnings, no errors.
What does this mean? Will my backups be restorable? From what I gathered from the logs, file were left out because they were in use, despite the fact that I had no other windows or apps open at the time.
Also, at the end of the backup, a window appears reporting the warnings with “Show” or “Dismiss”, but neither button works.
The log.zip for the third backup is 56MB, so I uploaded it to Google Drive. Here is the link:
so all the relevant backup logs were erased as part of sanitization for privacy.
This form of log is mainly to look at database issues, and we’re not there, yet.
If you mean Job → Show log, it looks like you had 3 that were erased for privacy.
Please post information from there, and maybe About → Show log has some too. Unfortunately the number of warnings in the job log is limit – probably 20 of 1000.
Some are better than none, and if we need more, then a log-file option exists.
Did you ask to backup all of your C: drive? There’s lots there that you can’t access. Some will be in-use by Windows. Some is access-protected against ordinary users.
For “Access … is denied”, you can carefully test (no need to force), e.g. in Explorer.
Both issues can be avoided (somewhat), but first, is this really what you want to do? Duplicati can’t produce an image of C: to put back in its entirety if C: gets destroyed. You’re supposed to pick files. Often you pick your own to put in reinstalled Windows. This works better if files are in popular locations such as Documents, not spread out.
Thinking about restore is something few people do. Backup is just the first step.
Since you got no errors (but lots of warnings), everything you got should be OK, however you can’t just drop everything back in place, especially if you got C:\.
As mentioned, that’s what image backups can frequently do. If the goal is a wide backup using a file-oriented tool, running as an elevated Administrator can get a larger set of files, and adding snapshot-policy can improve backup of files in use.
WindowsService can do all of this too, but none of this is super-easy to configure.
Also, any wide set of files will require some picking of what to restore, but at least there’s a copy around if you can figure out how to properly set up (e.g.) some app which keeps its data in some odd spot. User folders like Documents may be easy.
