Vista backup to Drobo Fails

edited by Earl on Aug-21-2008

I use my Drobo strictly as a backup system.  I back up my Vista Ultimate machine to it every night.  That worked fine for about a month.  When the Drobo was full, with many backup dates, I deleted all of the backup files from the drobo to free up space and let Vista backup run a full backup again.  Vista put a fresh backup onto the drobo, seemingly with no trouble.  Until... the next night... Vista tried to locate the backup to add new and modified files but failed.  The error looked like this:



"An error occurred.  The following information might help you resolve the error:  The latest backup set can not be found.  Make sure it is accessible and it has not been deleted.  Otherwise, create a new full backup.  (0x8100000A)"



Possibly, the RAID format that drobo uses is not recognized correctly by Vista.  I found the "Blog of Alex Arkhipov" which offered these steps:

1. Click “WinKey” on your keyboard.
2. Type “cmd” and hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter. That will bring you to the command prompt in Administrator mode. It you still have UAC enabled, it will ask you for permissions, click “OK”.
3. Navigate to your Vista system folder (i.e. C:\Windows\System32)
4. Type “fsutil resource setautoreset true C:\” assuming that you have your Vista on drive C. 
5. Reboot.

I tried that.  Tomorrow when I wake up, I'll check my computer and see if the backup worked.

Update on Aug-20-2008, the next morning...

My nightly backup failed.  :-(  

I am now starting over again.  I deleted all of my backup files off of the drobo and am making a fresh backup as I type this.  Tonight, we'll see if the nightly backup works this time.  WIll update this tomorrow morning when I see.

Update, Aug-20-2008, evening...

My full backup is complete now.  It took most of the day for the files to get backed up to the drobo.  The USB connection is pretty slow when you have many GB's to back up.

The screenshot above shows that Vista agrees that the last backup was today, 8/20/2008.  The next backup is scheduled for 4 AM tomorrow morning, while I am sleeping.  When I get up tomorrow, I'll check and see if the next backup worked.

I'm confused why below that the "Last backup" was on 8/2/2008.  I'm afraid that I should have clicked the bottom button labeled "Back up computer" instead of the top button that says "Back up files".  If the next scheduled backup fails tomorrow morning, I'll start over by deleting everything off the drobo and click the bottom button.  If this doesn't do it, I'm considering scrapping the Vista backup utility completely and using a different backup program.  

Update, next morning, Aug-21-2008

This morning I didn't see the usual error icon in my task bar letting that told me the automatic backup failed.  Does that mean that it was a success?  

I opened the backup and restore center to see if an automatic backup was made...

Yeah!  Vista finally made an automated backup!

Conclusion

If you have the same problem I had, this is what I would suggest to get Vista to again make automated backups for you:

• Delete your backup files

• Make a new, fresh backup of your computer (or the files you care most about)

• Then follow Alex's tips:

1. Click “WinKey” on your keyboard.
2. Type “cmd” and hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter. That will bring you to the command prompt in Administrator mode. It you still have UAC enabled, it will ask you for permissions, click “OK”.
3. Navigate to your Vista system folder (i.e. C:\Windows\System32)
4. Type “fsutil resource setautoreset true C:\” assuming that you have your Vista on drive C. 
5. Reboot.

 End. 

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