Vista Backup and Ubuntu Samba

[Eberhard Roloff]

Michael Dunigan wrote:
>                 I am trying to use a share created on an Ubuntu server
> (v8.04.1) as a backup target for my work Vista laptop.  To make things more
> complex, the share maps to a directory in the file system that is on an
> external drive and the file system on the external drive is FAT32.  Sorry, I
> do have reasons for this complex combination, and I understand that this
> might be the reason all is not working.
> 
> When I try to use Vista Complete PC Backup, it gives me an error message
> that I searched down with Google and it told me that I did not have "Full
> Control" of the file space.  The error says that this is a common problem
> with "Samba based" NAS units.  (Error 0x800700B7)
> 
>                 I know that most of this is Microsoft saying that if I had a
> Windows server this would not be a problem, but does anyone have an idea how
> to get this to work.  I have to have the Vista box to do my work, so I would
> like to use the Samba share to back it up.  If the problem is just the
> complexity that I have introduced, I am just looking for confirmation that
> simplifying the setup is what I need to do.  I am hoping that someone out
> there has gotten this to work and can give me some pointers.
> 
>  
Hi,
my recommendation is to return back from complexity to what you need. 
You need to backup your vista data to a Linux machine.

I am in the exact situation, except that I simplified it. My Vista PC 
has two partitions, C;\ for the system D:\ for my data.

The system is backed up regularly, about every 2 monthes. For this I use 
a Linux Boot CD, a directly connected external harddisk and partimage. 
So, if my system fails, within 10 to 15 minutes, I will be back to a 
working machine.

Now, my data needs to be backed up much more regularly, at least once 
daily.

For this I installed rsnapshot on the Linux machine (extremely easy) and 
cwrsync service on the vista machine (even easier). Now, my Linux 
machine automatically backs up my data from the windows machine, either 
hourly or daily or in a daily/weekly/monthly backup scheme.

The good thing: Any backup session is stored on it's own, so I do have a 
multi generation backup, where I can retrieve files very easily, but all 
the backup sessions do not require much more space than one full data 
backup. This is the secret of the automatic _hardlink_ based setup, that 
rsnapshot does.

The drawback: This works ONLY on a Linux partition, not on NTFS (at 
least from Linux, well there is windows software that does about the 
same to NTFS) and absolutely not on FAT16/32.

So it is simple, automagic and easy to operate and install, and: it 
simply works. ;-), but it is different.

kind regards
Eberhard