User's Guide
Backing up your files
Restoring your files

Author
Peter Bennett

My Other Projects
Jampal mp3 library & Jukebox
Tag Backup
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Backup List

Enter a list of file names or directories that you want to back up. You can enter a number of different formats.

• Directory name with specific file name, e.g. c:\program files\quicken\data.qdf
• Directory name with wildcard in file name, e.g. c:\docs\*.doc
• To also back up all matching files in subdirectories, add /S at the end, e.g. c:\docs\* /s
• To exclude a set of files use the same format as any of the above with /X at the end, e.g. c:\docs\*.bak /s /x. This is only useful if there is another line that selects files in the same directory, and you want certain ones excluded.
• To back up hidden directories include /H at the end. This is only useful if there are hidden subdirectories under the path specified and you have specified /S. Normally hidden subdirectories are skipped. Note that hidden files are never skipped.

You can enter directories and files in the network form (e.g. \\server\share\directory\file). Files entered this way can later be restored to the network share or to a local disk.

If you have file names in a character set that is not supported in the font that is used in the window, use the File, Font menu to select another font. On Windows systems the font "Arial Unicode MS" will support most character sets. The Font option only changes the font in components that display file names. (Selection input, restore list, Progress file name, Progress messages). To get back to the default font, select font "Dialog".

Entry Format

With Windows files can be entered with forward or reverse slashes. c:\program files\quicken\data.qdf can also be entered as c:/program files/quicken/data.qdf.

With all operating systems, regardless of what directory separator you are using, if using ap option (/S, /X etc.) you must always leave a space after the file name before the slash.

Other Operating Systems

With other operating systems than Windows you can either user forward slash or the operating system's own directory separator if it is different. In Linux or Unix you must use forward slash as the directory separator.

Wild cards use the Windows specifiers (* matches 0 or more characters and ? matches one character). This is true for all operating systems.

If you have file names or directory names that have a space at the start or end, enclose the file name in quotes("). Even if the file name has an embedded " this will work. For example if the file name is /files/stupid /abc"def (space as last character of directory name stupid) specify it as "/files/stupid /abc"def".

Directory wild card

Option /D can be entered on any line. This changes the meaning of the file specification. The part of the file specification after the last reverse slash now specifies a directory name. This implies backup or exclusion of matching directories and everything they contain. For example:

• Exclude all directories called temp (and their contents) under the directory structure c:\project: c:\project\temp /D/X/S
• Exclude all directories (and their contents) whose names start with "temp" under the directory structure c:\project: c:\project\temp* /D/X/S
• Include all user document directories and everything under them: C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents /D/S
• Include all "Release" directories under "projects" and everything under them: c:\projects\release* /D/S
• Exclude "obj" files from the previous set of "release" directories mentioned above: c:\projects\*.obj /S/X

Format of wild card

The wild card specification is the same as is used in windows "dir" command. * represents zero or more characters, ? represents a single character.

Examples

• To back up all files in the docs directory use c:\docs\*
• To back up all files in the docs directory and all subdirectories use c:\docs\*/s
• To back up all text files in the data directory use c:\data\*.txt
• To exclude all files with extension bak in the progs directory c:\progs\*.bak/x
• To back up all files except object files in a source directory and subdirectories use two lines, c:\source\*/s and c:\source\*.obj/s/x

Exclusions take priority. This means that if a file or directory is excluded with a /X option, it will not be backed up even if it is selected by one or more other lines. If you have excluded all files called *.obj or all directories called temp under a particular path, you cannot cause one of them to be included by specifying it in another line.

You can create or update the list in a text editor and paste it into here if you prefer.

Backup Type

The first backup must be full. Subsequent backups will default to incremental, unless you check the Full button. When you do a full backup it creates a new backup set, and stores a file on your hard drive with a record of the backup set. This is stored in the directory where you save your backup list. Incremental backups update the backup set. When performing an incremental backup it backs up all files selected that have not yet been backed up in this set or have a different date or size from the last version backed up in this set.

Please do not overwrite your previous backup with the next full backup. If you do that and there is a failure during that backup, you will then have no backup at all. Always have at least two locations for storing backups and alternate between them.

Incremental Backup on new disk

Normally the program puts incremental backups of the same disk as the prior backup of this set. It will keep prompting you until you give it the same one. It you wish to start a new disk or directory before the previous one is full you can select this check box and the program will ask for a new disk. This could be useful if you have sent the previous disk somewhere else, if it is at a remote site, or if you experienced an error writing to it (see description of "Eject CD" button below).

Eject CD

This button was designed for solving a problem with CD or DVD packet writing software. Under certain conditions packet writing software can display a message box that it is unable to write to the CD. Meantime your backup is still going on and the data from it is being discarded. If you select this check box you will receive an opportunity at the end of the backup process to roll back the backup so that the backup set is not updated and you can perform the incremental on another disk or retry it on that same disk after rebooting your machine. This button can be used any time you suspect that there may be a problem with your output media. This option does not cause the computer to eject the CD or DVD, it prompts you to do that.

Backup Dest

Here you type in the path of a disk and directory where your backup will be stored. The directory must be empty, nothing other than this backup set may be stored in there. If it is a removable disk, you can just specify for example a:\. If it is a hard drive you should give a directory name. If you are using a high capacity removable disk (e.g. CD R/W) and you may want to store more than just this backup set, specify a directory name, e.g. r:\backup. You could also store backup sets from several machines on a CD R/W by creating different directories. If you are writing to DVD I recommend that you use a different DVD for each machine. I have found problems when using packet writing on one DVD from two machines. It seems that DVDs formatted on one machine sometimes give errors if you write them on another machine.

If the directory does not exist it will be created.

Last Backup Dates

Displays the last time backups were done with this backup set.

Start Backup

Before a backup starts the backup set must be saved. If this has not been done you will be prompted.

If you have selected the "Encrypt Backup" option, and you have not selected the "Remember password" option, you will be prompted for a password when you start the backup. You will have an option at that time to remember the password. This will save it in the backup set and turn on the "remember password" option on the options page. Whether or not you request to remember the password, the same password is used throughout a single backup option. even if it extends to more than one disk. Different passwords may be used on subsequent incremental backups. You will have to keep track of all the passwords used because you will need them to restore files. I recommend using the same password for incremental backups as for the fuill backup. Also if you change the "Encrypt Backup" setting between the full backup and one of the incrementals you will have some backups encrypted and some not. I do not recommend doing this.

During backup a history file is stored in the same directory as the backup set. The history file is updated with each incremental backup. It has the same name as the full backup file, i.e. yymmbb00.PB2. The history file is used during a restore. If the history file is not available at restore time it can be recreated from the backup disk. The history file is not encrypted.

The backup process prompts for mounting of additional disks as required. if you insert a disk that has already been used for this set it is rejected and another disk is requested. If backing up to hard drive you will only get prompted if the hard drive should become full, or if a limit is reached (see "Options Tab" below).

If you have a failure on trying to write the first disk of an incremental backup, you can force it to start on a new disk with the "Incremental Backup on new disk" option. Reset this afterward to avoid every incremental backup going to a new disk.

If there is a disk failure during backup you will have to start the backup again. If it is an incremental you will have to start the incremental again.

After the backup is complete, you can see a list of files that were backed up by selecting the "Restore" tab. The list will include files that were backup up in this run as well as in previous runs. Files backed up during this run are at the end of the list.

During a backup, if a file cannot be read, a message box will display. If the file is open, close the file and click "yes" to retry, and the file will be backed up. If the file or directory is actually missing and you cannot do anything about it, click "no" and it will continue to back up everything else.

You can select the "Unattended" option on the Options tab to prevent the program from reporting errors. If you use this, "no" will be the assumed response to error messages. The error messages are still stored in the edit control on the progress page as well as in the log file. If you are doing unattended encrypted backups you will have to use the "Remember Password" option to prevent the password prompt from holding up the run.

Click "Start Backup" to begin a backup. If the disk is already mounted it will begin, otherwise it will prompt for a disk. For a full backup it will prompt for Disk 1. You can insert a disk or enter a new directory name. When doing a full backup if there are any files in the directory they will be deleted. Before deleting files it will prompt with a message so that you can cancel if necessary. If you have selected an encrypted backup and you have not selected the "Remember Password" option you will be propmted for a password at the start of the backup.

The progress page will display.

This displays the status of the run and also displays a list of any messages that were displayed.

Interrupt Button

Clicking this stops the backup and asks whether you would like to continue. You can continue as if you had not interrupted or else cancel the run.

Options Tab

This tab provides some advanced options for backups.

Case Sensitive File System

This should default to the correct value. For windows systems it should be unchecked, as the file system is not case sensitive. For Unix / Linux it should be checked as the file system is case sensitive. If you change the setting you are forced to start a new full backup. The setting affects the way Peter's Backup searches for wildcard file names and how it treats duplicate files that are found. For example if it is unchecked and a backup file specification is (*.cpp) then files that end with CPP, cpp, cPP, Cpp, etc. will be backed up. If it is unchecked and the backup set contains files abc.doc and ABC.doc, then only the latest one of the two would be restored on a full restore that included both.

Maximum Usage Per Output Directory

You can limit the amount that is written to each output disk or directory. This is useful if you want to write the backup in chunks that can be later copied to CD's. Specify this as number of bytes.

Leave Free Space Per Disk

This will force the program to prompt for a new disk or directory when the free space is down to a certain amount. use this if you need to reserve some free space on your backup media for some purpose or if some problem with your operating system or media prevents you from filling up a disk to 100%. Specify this as number of bytes.

Maximum Backup File Size

Some file systems cannot store a file larger than 2 GB or 4 GB. In case you are backing up a large number of files your backup file may exceed this size. To avoid problems the program by default starts a new backup file when the backup file reaches a size of 2 GB minus 2 MB (2145435648 bytes). This should work with all file systems.

If you are doing a really huge backup, it will start a new file every time it gets to this size. A backup set cannot have more than 1035 files. (This refers to the files that are created by the program, it can have many more than this number of actual files backed up). If you have the NTFS file system or an appropriate Unix / Linux file system you can adjust the maximum backup file size to a larger value. This will allow you to do bigger backups by putting more into each backup file. This is done on the "Options" tab. Be aware that if you have a file system that does not support such big files your backup could fail if you do this.

You can also set the maximum file size smaller if desired (for example if you want to store your backup files on CDs and you are not using packet writing software). However for this purpose it would probably be better to use the "Maximum Usage per Output Directory" setting.

"Encrypt Backup" Check Box

Encrypt the backup if you want to keep the contents of your backup media private. You will need to supply a password for each full or incremental backup. You can change this option from one backup to another (e.g. encrypt the full but not the incrementals).

Encryption is done with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) which is US Government approved. If you forget your password there is no way of restoring your data. There are no back doors.

You can use a password of any length, the longer the better. Preferably do not use an English word. The only way that somebody can break the encryption is by guessing the password. If somebody uses a dictionary and tries all the words you do not want them getting into your data.

Passwords are case sensitive and may contain any characters including spaces. Every character is used and the password must be entered exactly the same way when decrypting. Even leading and trailing spaces are significant.

"Remember Encryption Password" Check Box

If this is selected you will be prompted to enter your encryption password. The password is itself encrypted and stored with the backup set (pb1 file). This stored password is used for future backup and restore operations. When restoring, if the stored password is incorrect, you will be prompted to enter a password. If restoring a non-encrypted backup, the password will be ignored.

This is for convenience when making backups, so that you do not need to enter the password every time. The password is encrypted using your user id. Anybody who logs onto your computer with your user id can restore using the stored password. If somebody copies your pb1 file to another computer and sets up a user id with your name, they may be able to restore your backups. If your computer hard drive can be accessed by people you do not trust, do not select this option. You will have to enter the password when you perform a backup.

When you unselect this option the stored password is cleared.

"Unattended" Check Box

If you select this the backup will not stop when a file cannot be read. It will assume a "no" response and continue. A message will be written in the log file when this happens.

The state of all of these parameters is saved in the backup set (PB1 file), so the next time you use that backup set it will be remembered.

Command line parameters

The program can be started from a command prompt, an icon or a scheduler with command line parameters, as follows:

path\pbackup path\filename.pb1

path\pbackup /backup path\filename.pb1

The first format opens the window and opens the backup page, ready for you to click the "start backup" button. The second format also starts the backup process. As long as there are no errors or prompts requiring a response, the backup will complete and close the window. You can look at the pbackup.log file to see if it ran correctly. The pbackup.log is in the same directory as the pb1 file.

Scheduled backup

If you want to schedule a backup for every night or every week, you can do it as follows. You will need to leave your computer turned on and the backup media mounted.

First open or create your backup set. Click on the "Progress" tab and select the "Unattended" check box. Save the backup set. Do not select the "Direct CD" option because this prompts for a response during backup. Open the Windows Control Panel and open "Scheduled Tasks". Use the wizard to setup a scheduled task. Use the advanced properties or the properties menu to set up the command line as described in "Command line parameters" above. Select the frequency and times of your runs.

When using typical Windows file and directory names that include spaces in the names, such as the default installation path of Peter's Backup at "C:\Program Files\Peters Backup\", it will be necessary to place the path and file names within quotes when using the scheduler. However, any command line options, such as /backup, must be outside the quotes. So when setting up the Windows XP Scheduler the Run command might look like this:

"path\PBackup_j.exe" /backup "path\filename.pb1"

Here's a typical example from an actual installation on Windows XP:

"C:\Program Files\Peters Backup\PBackup_j.exe" /backup "C:\Program Files\Peters Backup\Backup-1.pb1"

The first scheduled backup will be a full backup and subsequent ones will be incremental. When you want to do a new full backup you will have to open the backup set, change the destination to a new directory or clear out the directory. Change the radio button to "full" and save the backup set.

On Unix or Linux you can use cron to schedule a regular run of the program. However the program requires access to a display screen. The user must be logged on and the graphical display must be set up (e.g. DISPLAY variable must be set up). A future version may support a non-GUI option.

Scheduled full and incremental backups

You may want to do a full backup every Sunday and an incremental other days of the week. Please do not overwrite your previous incremental with the next full backup. If you do that and there is a failure during that backup, you will then have no backup at all. Always have at least two locations for storing backups and alternate between them.

Here is how to do it. Create your backup set and select the "full" radio button, and the "unattended" option. Set your destination directory as d:\backups\current. Save this in c:\docs\current\fullbackup.pb1. copy c:\docs\current\fullbackup.pb1 to c:\docs\current\backup.pb1. and create the d:\backups\current directory. Create a batch file like this, using notepad or a text editor, and save it as c:\docs\newfull.bat:

"C:\Program Files\Peters Backup\u_date" "+set date=%%Y%%m%%d_%%H%%M%%S">temp.bat
call temp
mkdir c:\docs\%date%
mkdir d:\backups\%date%
move d:\backups\current\* d:\backups\%date%
move c:\docs\current\backup.pb1 c:\docs\%date%
copy c:\docs\current\fullbackup.pb1 c:\docs\current\backup.pb1

What this does is, every Sunday it archives your backup to a new directory which is named according to the date and time, and initiates a new full backup by copying the saved full backup set. Please adjust the directory names and file names to match your environment.

You will have to go in and delete old archived backups from time to time so that they do not fill up your disk. Alternatively you could devise a batch file to do that for you.

At any time you may want to update your backup file specifications, for example to include new directories. If you do that you should open c:\docs\current\fullbackup.pb1 and c:\docs\current\backup.pb1 and make the change to both.

The u_date program is a Windows implementation of part of the UNIX date program. To see how to use it run u_date -h. It can be very useful in batch files to name files or directories according to the date or time.

Messages

These messages appear in a message box, and also in the pbackup.log file, which is in the same directory as the backup set.

Invalid Directory - name. This means you have an invalid specification in the backup list. Click "Abort" to cancel the backup run. Otherwise you can go into Windows Explorer and create the directory, then click "Retry". Otherwise, click "Ignore" which means it will go on and do the rest of the backup. Note that if the "Unattended" check box was selected, the program will report the error but will not stop for a response.

Unable to open file name. This normally means that you have a file open. In that case, close the file and click "Retry". The file will be backed up. In some cases it may mean that a file was deleted. In that case click "Ignore", and the file will be skipped. If you see this message and decide that there is a major problem, click "Abort" and the backup is cancelled. If it is an incremental backup the backup set is left in the same state as before you started. Note that if the "Unattended" check box was selected, the program will report the error but will not stop for a response.

Eject CD. Is everything OK? You should first eject the CD and make sure no error message was displayed. If All is OK, click YES. If an error occurred click NO. If you click NO the backup is rolled back and deleted from the backup disk, thus allowing you to start over. The reason for this messy procedure is that if some versions of DirectCD encounter an error writing to the disk they display a message box that there was an error, delete the data from the disk, but tell the backup program that everything is fine. Note that if the "Unattended" check box was selected, the program will still stop at this point and wait for a response. Therefore you want to make sure you do not select "Direct CD" for an unattended backup.

Backup File Name

Backup file names have the form yymmbbii.PB2. The full backup has one file name, and each incremental backup has another file name.

• yymm: date when the full backup was done.
• bb: Sequence number from 00 to 99, and a0 to zz of full backups on one day. If you do more than 1035 backups on a day you must store the history file of the 1036th backup in a different directory to avoid a name clash. If you fail to do this you will get an error message.
• ii: Sequence number of backup files in a set. Goes from 00 to 99 and a0 to zz. You cannot have more than 1035 files in one backup set. There is a new file for each incremental, a new file for each new disk, and a new file each time you reach the maximum file size.