> -----Original Message-----
> From: Foo [mailto:bfoo33 AT yahoo.co DOT uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:21 AM
> To: Kevin Keane; bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
> Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] Windows 2008/2008r2 Server backup
> 
> On Wed, 12 May 2010 06:51:42 +0200, Kevin Keane
> <subscription AT kkeane DOT com>
> wrote:
> 
> > The "system state" in Windows 2008 is really the whole C: drive plus a
> > little extra information (I assume, boot sectors or the like).
> 
> Do you know if they have a replacement for ntbackup or a similar tool that
> does the same thing? I.e. only back up registries and other files that Bacula
> has problems with?

No, they don't. Microsoft basically takes a very sensible position, in my mind: 
"we only provide a basic tool. If you don't like it, you can get third-party 
tools". Think of Windows Backup (or NTBackup) as the backup equivalent of 
Notepad.

Basically, what happened was that NTBackup simply got too convoluted and 
unwieldy over time. It had to be aware of all kinds of special applications 
such as Exchange and SQL Server. It also doesn't support incremental and 
differential backups very well (you have to manually figure out which files to 
restore in which order). I suspect that NTBackup also would have problems with 
the internal changes to Windows, such as the SxS architecture (the root cause 
of the proliferation of junction points).

Windows Backup really is very, very good - a major improvement over NTBackup. 
What looks like a weakness at first (it can only back up whole drives, not 
individual files or directories) is actually its greatest strength. The key is 
understanding that Windows Backup is conceptually closer to Norton Ghost than 
to NTBackup. By the way, that change is something many of the other backup 
vendors are also making.

Because Windows Backup goes down to the sector or block level, it can back up 
basically anything that is on your hard disk - Exchange, SQL Server, virtual 
machines, registries, active directory, junction points, case-sensitive files, 
files with multiple data streams, and all those other pesky things that needed 
special handling in NTBackup. It can also back up only a few changed blocks 
from right in the middle of a large file.




You can still download a read-only version of NTBackup. This is intended to 
read existing .bkf files from earlier versions of Windows, but it cannot create 
.bkf files.

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