>> The issue is that most people have their Outlook pst files as their 
>> most valuable posession, and to backup the pst files you need to quit 
>> Outlook 
> 
> Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's 
> pretty easy.

OOC, how do you actually do this?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> The issue is that most people have their Outlook pst files as their 
>>> most valuable posession, and to backup the pst files you need to quit 
>>> Outlook 
>>
>> Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's 
>> pretty easy.
> 
> OOC, how do you actually do this?

The only trick is that vshadow will make a shadow copy, and then delete it 
when your script exits. So this sets up some environment variables and calls

vshadow -nw -p -script=XYZ.bat -exec=PDQ.bat c:

That creates a shadow copy of C:, writes  bunch of environment variables 
into XYZ.bat that describes where it put the shadow copy, then runs PDQ.bat.

In this case, the script that invokes vshadow is the PDQ script, so after it 
invokes vshadow, it sources the temporary script to set the environment 
variables[1] and deletes it and goes to the end of the script. At the 
beginning, it tests if we're in the callback (looking at CALLBACK_SCRIPT) 
and goes to IS_CALLBACK if so. (This obviously would have been more clear as 
two scripts, but I never really expected to write a tutorial about it.)

If it's running as the callback, it sources the generated script full of 
environment variables, calls vshadow again to connect SHADOW_ID_1 to B:. It 
then runs robocopy to back up \users\darren to m:\darren with robocopy.

When robocopy finishes, it falls off the end of the script, which returns to 
the first callback, which sources the environment variables into *that* 
script and jumps to EOF, which then invokes vshadow to delete the shadow 
copy (which also unhooks B: from anything).

Kind of convoluted, but as you might guess, I'm not the original author. 
Looking at it again, I realize what one really wants is to just stick :EOF 
after the first invocation and be done, and let the return delete the shadow 
copy.

[1] MS clearly hasn't caught on to the whole "environment variables get 
passed in memory" concept yet.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'backup darren.bat.txt' (3 KB)

> Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's 
> pretty easy.

OK will check your later post in more detail on how to do this - could be 
very useful.

>> - not many people here like having Outlook turned off for 30 mins while 
>> several Gbs of files are copied to the server each day.
>
> What, they don't go to sleep?

Nearly everyone here takes their laptop home with them each night, and I 
don't know how many of them would leave their laptop on every night "just" 
to do backups.  Besides, home internet is usually very limited upstream, 
it's going to take a while.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's 
>> pretty easy.
> 
> OK will check your later post in more detail on how to do this - could 
> be very useful.

Yah.

>> What, they don't go to sleep?
> 
> Nearly everyone here takes their laptop home with them each night, and I 
> don't know how many of them would leave their laptop on every night 
> "just" to do backups.  

So have a script they start before they turn it off at night that does the 
backup then shuts down the machine.

Or tell them that if they break the computer, they lose all the work they 
did since last time they left it at work. Their choice. :-)

> Besides, home internet is usually very limited 
> upstream, it's going to take a while.

You only have to move changed files. How much are they going to change when 
they take it home after work and before sleep?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

> So have a script they start before they turn it off at night that does the 
> backup then shuts down the machine.

That's a good idea.

> You only have to move changed files. How much are they going to change 
> when they take it home after work and before sleep?

I imagine they are only going to change a few emails, but some people have 
sevreal multi-GB pst files for Outlook which I guess would need to be sent 
to the server even if they are 99% the same?

Anyway, it seems as if the volume copy solution will work.  I was playing 
about today and seems as if even a few PST files making up 10 GB will copy 
within a few minutes to our server here - while Outlook was running with 
them open.

Post a reply to this message

>>> Not true. Just make a shadow copy, and back up the shadow copy. It's 
>>> pretty easy.
>>
>> OOC, how do you actually do this?
> 
> The only trick is that vshadow will make a shadow copy, and then delete 
> it when your script exits. [...]

So vshadow is the tool for working with Shadow Copy?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530725%28VS.85%29.aspx

OK, I've never heard of this tool before. Time to start reading...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> So have a script they start before they turn it off at night that does 
>> the backup then shuts down the machine.
> 
> That's a good idea.

BTDT. :-)

>> You only have to move changed files. How much are they going to change 
>> when they take it home after work and before sleep?
> 
> I imagine they are only going to change a few emails, but some people 
> have sevreal multi-GB pst files for Outlook which I guess would need to 
> be sent to the server even if they are 99% the same?

Uhhh. Probably, yeah. I'm not sure if you're using Exchange why you'd be 
storing the definitive version of .pst files on the laptop. Why not store 
them on the exchange server?

The unix rsync utility has the capability of doing a checksum of the 
destination file and of the beginning of the source file and only copying 
the end if those two checksums are the same.  If Outlook mostly appends, you 
might want to consider something like this.

> Anyway, it seems as if the volume copy solution will work. 

I'm glad. It's a bit of a bugger to track down vshadow.exe, but it sounds 
like you got it going. The /Z option to robocopy is handy too.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> So vshadow is the tool for working with Shadow Copy?

Well, it's the command-line utility for it. Most people code the API calls 
into their program, but if you just want shell scripts, you can use the 
sample command-line utility out of the resource kit, which is called vshadow.

It's a bit annoying to find the executables, but it is free. I suspect you 
need different versions for different OSes.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> Uhhh. Probably, yeah. I'm not sure if you're using Exchange why you'd be
> storing the definitive version of .pst files on the laptop. Why not
> store them on the exchange server?
> 

And if using $something_else, just use IMAP and you'll have copies of
mails at the server.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

>> So vshadow is the tool for working with Shadow Copy?
> 
> Well, it's the command-line utility for it. Most people code the API 
> calls into their program, but if you just want shell scripts, you can 
> use the sample command-line utility out of the resource kit, which is 
> called vshadow.
> 
> It's a bit annoying to find the executables, but it is free. I suspect 
> you need different versions for different OSes.

Right. So what you're saying is that when you use a real backup product, 
it probably uses VSS to do its work without stopping people using their 
stuff? (But you can also use vshadow if you have nothing better...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message