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I have a 1st generation 1TB Terastation.  I have had it in production for about 4 years now and "knock on wood" havent had any issues.

 

Over the years I periodically have been copying all user folders to an external HDD over my network.  Which has been fine but I really need a better way to backup user folders.

 

I thought I would just use NTBACKUP on a windows computer on my domain that is rarely used and schedule a daily job.  My issue though is that I cant browse the terastation from the explorer window in NTBACKUP...its just greyed out.  I can map a drive and then it will allow me to checkbox it and back it up.  I did a test and was able to back up a sub directory under a user share that was mapped...and restore it perfectly. 

 

My delima is that I have over 100 user shares on the terastation and I dont know if it is even possible to mount that many drives...nor would I even wan the upkeep of that if I could.  Not to mention that I would have to remember to recreate my NTBACKUP every time a new user share was added.

 

I have looked the net over and cant seem to find any information on how to accomplish this.  I do have an IBM 3100 tape library with 800GB tapes and BackupExec 12d...but I cant use that as it wants a backup agent installed on the terastation.  I have read a few things online that users have had success with backupexec even though it reported errors but I never could get far enough along to even have it include the terastation in a backup job...thus my resorting to NTBACKUP, which isnt working either.

 

So in the proverbial nutshell...all I want is to be able to back up my 100+ user shares on a schedule to an external HDD attached to a windows box on my network...or anything of the like that will do the same.

 

As already stated...I have a 1st gen TS (going on 5yrs old now) and it is running the default firmware of 1.03.  I really would rather not update the firmware as all of the user shares are mapped to the my doc folder on all of my users desktops.  So I cant afford to have something go wrong..."bricking" my TS and having no way of users to access/create files.

 

Any input is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

Please give us sometime to look into this issue.

   

No problem...Ive been "googling" for 2 days now and still coming up empty.

 

My initial post rambled a bit and I am sorry for that but I wanted to try and give as much info as I possibly could.  After re-reading my post I think that I should point a few things out that could be misread.

 

1.  The way I have been backing up the shares now is simply using windows explorer to manually drag and drop the folders from the TS to an ext HDD.  I dont do it on any regular basis simply because I'm busy and do it whenever I "think about it".  Which is why I need a daily automated task of some sort.

 

2.  Even though I have a TS3100 tape library...I only have 1 tape drive in it.  So I would rather not even use BackupExec and my TS3100 unless it "is the only way".

 

3.  When I open NTBACKUP on any windows machine on my domain and try and create a backup job...I can browse my network and see all of my devices (TS included), but they are greyed out UNLESS I map a drive on the machine that I am using NTBACKUP from.  Once a drive is mapped I can see the mapped drive outside of the heirarchy of the TS and place the checkbox there and NTBACKUP works.  Its just that Im not sure if I can map 100+ drives on the same machine...that would be an absolute nightmare even if possible from an admin standpoint.

 

So I thank you in advance for any input you can give to get me through.  If nothing can be done I guess I will have to take the TS out of production and build up one of my spare server chasis to run as a windows file server and use the backex agent to grab the shares.

 

Thanks

Unfortunately, this appears to be a NTBACKUP limitation. Don't ask me why but it will only backup to drives (mapped or local) on the workstation. I think I can see why this limitation was put in mainly because the backup program probably didn't want the user/admin accidentally backing up to another machine that might be backing up as well (you probably see where I'm heading with this). Anyway, my only recommendation would be to utilize a program that backs up to a network location that is specified. I think Acronis might do so. Sorry I can't delve into this more but that's my take on it. As far as BackupExec goes I do know that they have issues with NAS devices as well including our current models let alone the older ones. In any event I'm sorry that we don't have a definitive fix for your problem, but feel free to post with any other POVs or suggestions :)

   

Thanks for the replies.

 

I guess I will just have to make a "network place" for each share so I can add the share to an NTBACKUP job.  I just dont really know how many network places one can add.  I was way off on the number shares when I said 100+...its actually 200+.

 

I do appreciate your input and information.  Thanks again.

 

 

Not a problem I'll post if I hear/see anything regarding this :)