Hi Bob,
We also have removable hard drives in use here.
(For those who have never seen one, a "removable hard drive" is a hard drive
mounted in a carriage so that it can be pulled out of your PC and replaced
with a different one, without using a screwdriver. It is physically
"removable", but Windows sees it as a fixed hard disk. Windows doesn't
think it is "REMOVABLE MEDIA" in the same sense as a ZIP cartridge, for
example.)
We don't have your problem, because our users normally are booting from
their removable drive. For example, I have one hard drive that has Win95 on
it, and another that has WinNT.
As long as the Windows Networking ID is different on the two drives, we
don't have your problem because ADSM constructs the filespace name using the
Networking ID.
Your problem is harder, because the users are replacing a data drive, not
the boot drive.
Anyway, here is a suggestion; I haven't tried it myself, so I don't know if
this will work or not:
The Win32 PTF 6 client still creates filespace names for REMOVABLE drives (I
mean the REAL removble media, like a ZIP, for example) using the drive
label, like the earlier Win32 clients did, instead of using the UNC name.
For Win95, you can MARK your hard drive to be "REMOVABLE". It's not in
properties, you have to right click on MY COMPUTER, select the DEVICE
MANAGER tab, open the entry for that drive, and mark it as REMOVABLE. I know
you can do this because we had one machine that had its C: drive which was
NOT removable in any sense marked this way by accident!
That might be enough to fool ADSM, or it might not, I don't know.
Now DON"T try this on a boot drive (C:), because there is some software that
won't install on a REMOVABLE drive.
But maybe it would work for your D: or E: drives? If it does, let me know.
I would also like to hear if anybody knows of any bad side effects
associated with doing this!
(And it's not an option for WinNT.)
************************************************************************
Wanda Prather
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu
"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
Scott Adams/Dilbert
************************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Brazner [SMTP:Bob.Brazner AT JCI DOT COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 1999 11:24 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: Follow the moving drive letter
>
> Thanks Trevor, but the problem goes a little deeper than simply renaming
> the filespace in ADSM. The situation is the customer can insert and
> remove the removable harddrive from Windows 95 at will. The customer's
> ADSM backup fires off according to a schedule. Consider day 1 where the
> machine has drives c and d and gets backed up by ADSM as such. Then on
> day 2, the customer inserts the removable drive (which becomes d and the
> old d becomes e). When the backup kicks in, three things will happen:
> 1) ADSM will see the d drive and will back up all the files; 2) It will
> delete the backup versions of yesterday's d files since they will
> "appear" to be deleted on today's d drive; and 3) It will backup the
> full e drive (which wastes a lot of time and network bandwidth because
> nothing has really changed on this drive). Then on day 3, the customer
> removes the removable hard drive. I guess by now you can see what's
> going to happen. It's not pretty. Renaming the filespaces in ADSM
> after the fact is not the solution, because the damage has already been
> done. Besides, this is going on daily and I'm not in a position to
> babysit each and every backup from this customer. So my question is,
> what steps can I take to guarantee my customer's backups considering I'm
> not in control of when his backup runs and when he inserts and removes
> the removable harddrive? Is there a Windows 95 thing I can do to
> prevent the drive letters from dynamically readjusting themselves? Is
> there a way in ADSM I can use the drive label instead of the drive
> letter (as was in v3.1.02)?
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