Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro - a must have tool for techs

[fabs]

Well,
I do not hve the issue so for on my end. This will not be that easy to fix.

@sapphirescales : what's your process ? Just plugging source drive to target machine and make a transfer or is that something else ?

 

[sapphirescales]

what's your process ? Just plugging source drive to target machine and make a transfer

Pretty much. I extracted the old SSD, put it in my dock, ran Fabs on my personal computer, back up data from the client's SSD that I have in the dock.

 

[fabs]

Pretty much. I extracted the old SSD, put it in my dock, ran Fabs on my personal computer, back up data from the client's SSD that I have in the dock.

Would you mind testing some development build ?

 

[sapphirescales]

Would you mind testing some development build ?

Sure. I'll image the client's SSD so I can make a copy of it and do some test runs.

 

[fabs]

Sure. I'll image the client's SSD so I can make a copy of it and do some test runs.

Thanks. Link sent

 

[Porthos]

I extracted the old SSD, put it in my dock

Was the old computer bootable and was it shut down fully? (fast start)
Was Chrome running as a background task? Edge has the same "feature"

 

[sapphirescales]

Was the old computer bootable and was it shut down fully? (fast start)

It was bootable. I assume fast startup was enabled since that's the default setting.

Was Chrome running as a background task? Edge has the same "feature"

No idea. Whatever the default is, I assume. This is a computer I haven't seen before so I haven't had a chance to disable Fast Startup and all the other BS.

 

[fabs]

It looks like I've found what's going on with failed files that do not appear in log : this was triggered if copied file was "in use". There was an instruction in code that said to increment failed files counter. Since this instruction was irrelevant in this part of the code, I have just removed it and voila.

 

[HCHTech]

Since this instruction was irrelevant in this part of the code, I have just removed it and voila.

Nice find. How programmers keep all of what must be hundreds of decision branches in a mature program straight in your head enough to fix problems like this is just mind-boggling to me. As a non-programmer who has dabbled enough to know he needs to remain a non-programmer, I have mad respect for you!

 

[fincoder]

- Pro only: there could be issues loading Software and System registry hives from hooked drives.

Did a couple of transfers yesterday with the new version, I can confirm that issue appears to be resolved. Thanks.

 

[fabs]

Still working around the @sapphirescales reported issue. We narrowed this to target drive's file system. When copying to NTFS drive, the program works as expected but when dealing with exFAT, results can be quite funky, especially with long file paths (exFAT does not seem to play that well with this).
Next release will show a message prompt about exFAT and FAT32 risks of size and date warnings on copied files appearing in the log. This will also be mentionned at the top of job log if user chooses to continue anyway with such file system. Sorry exFAT users, that means one more click for you! For people using command line automation fo their backups, there will be no stop about this, it will just appear in the log just to not disturb your workflow.

 

[HCHTech]

I'm sorry to report a problem, @fabs . We got the last version released in May, and today, it is asking for a password when we first run the application - it seems to be coming up as a trial version. We don't have a password that we have set before. I tried my account password for the website, no dice. I also opened the ini file and noticed that the order number and email address fields were blank - entering those and resaving the ini file did not help. There is also a password field in the ini file, so I tried copying that and pasting it into the 'Please enter password' field, but that also did not work.

If I click on the "Key" icon on the password screen, there is a choice to clear the startup password, which I tried. There is also a choice to 'Update license information', so I did that as well, putting in my order reference code and email address. None of this has helped.

Finally, I tried redownloading the newest version from the website, but it has the same behavior - asking for a password.

Is there a way to reset things? I know my subscription is good until October...

 

[fabs]

@HCHTech : Someone must have set a startup password at a time. This is a feature for the ones who leave a Fab's copy on end user computer. Tech will be able to run it using that password while iuser will not be able to run it or get the license.
The password reset procedure is described in user's manual at page 45.
Here's the password removal process:
1- Launch registry editor "regedit" as administrator.
2- Depending on operating system, program's password is stored under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Fabs AutoBackup" (64 bit) or "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Fabs AutoBackup" (32 bit). In any case, please backup this key (export it) first, then delete it.
3- Close registry editor.
4- Open your "autobackup.ini" configuration file using a text editor (Windows Notepad for example)
5- Under "[CONFIG]" section, delete "Password" value.
6- Under "[ORDER-AUTOBACKUP7PRO.EXE]" section, delete "EncryptedCustomerEmailAddress" and "EncryptedOrderID" values.
7- Save changes
8- Start the program. You will have to enter your license information to reactivate it and get it fully functional.

Note: you will have to do the registry thing before running Fab's again on any other machine it has been started and asked for a password.

 

[HCHTech]

Someone must have set a startup password at a time.

No one will admit it, but this is what must have happened. Thanks for the instructions - we're all good now!

 

[fabs]

Hello,
Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro and Fab's AutoBackup 7 Home & Office 7.14.1.6610 have just been released.

Here is the change log for both versions:

Fixed:
- The "failed to copy" files counter could increase while there was no error or warning in the log. This was due to an irrelevant in-use file check in this part of the code. It was a false-positive and there was no data loss.
- When dealing with source and target drives with different file system allocation unit sizes, there could be false positive warning messages about size mismatch. The program now focuses on logic used space and not on drive used space.
- A issue has been identified with exFAT/FAT32 drives when used for backup storage: if source drive is NTFS, then there is a few hours time stamps difference between source and destination for copied files and folders. NTFS Time stamps are based on UTC (Universal Time Code) while exFAT and FAT32 use local system time instead. User is now warned if using such a drive to store data. This also appears in backup job log if user chooses to continue anyway with exFAT/FAT32 drive for data storage. Recommended file system for data storage is NTFS.
- Pro only: Fab's AutoBackup Pro is a portable software but it comes packaged into a single executable file that looks and feels like an installer. By default, files were extracted to "C:\Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro" folder but user could change this to extract files to any external device or a network share. Many used to keep default path and just clicked "Next" button. Because of this, people expected to see a desktop shortcut since they "installed" the program on their computer. From now, user will have to specify a path before files can be extracted.

Grab it from your orders history's details on the shop's website at https://archive.fpnet.fr/account.php (ordered before May 1st 2022) or https://store.fpnet.fr/en/order-history for newer orders. You can also use the bundled updater tool (click the "Download Fab's AutoBackup 7.X" link within the program and get the updated files).

 

[fabs]

Hello,
Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro and Fab's AutoBackup 7 Home & Office 7.14.1.6613 have just been released.

Here is the change log for both versions:

Fixed:
- Another useless folder is now excluded from Mozilla software family profiles backup/transfer.
- The script that should apply user's wallpaper at logon was not saved in the right format (.vbs instead of .cmd).

Grab it from your orders history's details on the shop's website at https://archive.fpnet.fr/account.php (ordered before May 1st 2022) or https://store.fpnet.fr/en/order-history for newer orders. You can also use the bundled updater tool (click the "Download Fab's AutoBackup 7.X" link within the program and get the updated files).

 

[HCHTech]

I had a Win10 backup/restore to Win11 this past weekend. The user had different backgrounds on each of their 2 monitors. The new Win11 computer also had two monitors, but the desktop background was not restored, even though the checkbox was selected during the backup. This isn't a critical function for me, but thought I would report it anyway in case it was pointing to some new incompatibility. Thanks!

 

[fabs]

I had a Win10 backup/restore to Win11 this past weekend. The user had different backgrounds on each of their 2 monitors. The new Win11 computer also had two monitors, but the desktop background was not restored, even though the checkbox was selected during the backup. This isn't a critical function for me, but thought I would report it anyway in case it was pointing to some new incompatibility. Thanks!

This is something interesting to test. I have never tested with this kind of configuration.

 

[fabs]

Hello,
Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro and Fab's AutoBackup 7 Home & Office 7.15.0.6668 have just been released.

Here is the change log for both versions:

Added:
- Putty settings are now handled.
- Translations for memory units such as bytes, KB, MB, GB, TB that were only displayed in English.

Fixed:
- It was possible to enable "Next button" when setting a backup path looking like "\backup_folder" instead of "X:\Backup_folder", uncheck and check back a user profile name. Indeed, backup job could not work in this case.
- It was possible to enable "Next" button when setting an empty backup path, uncheck and check back a user profile name. This leaded to an exception error.
- Personal folders items were not rearranged correctly on program's interface when there was more than 5 rows diplayed.
- Cosmetic change: sizes over 1TB were displayed in GB.

Grab it from your orders history's details on the shop's website at https://archive.fpnet.fr/account.php (ordered before May 1st 2022) or https://store.fpnet.fr/en/order-history for newer orders. You can also use the bundled updater tool (click the "Download Fab's AutoBackup 7.X" link within the program and get the updated files).

 

[britechguy]

Fabs Restore Question . . .

First, I'll admit I'm being lazy before digging in to documentation.

Yesterday I did a restore on to a machine that I thought I'd unlinked from OneDrive before having done so; I hadn't. When I unlinked it this morning some files had become "cloud only" so those are lost (kinda-sorta) if one does not want to use OneDrive, and this client doesn't.

Now that I have unlinked the device from OneDrive, is it possible to re-run a Fabs restore and have it gracefully ignore any files already present and just restore any that are no longer present locally?

I also backed things up by hand, too, so if push comes to shove I can use a straight Windows copy command, but if Fabs can be told to gracefully handle this situation where it would skip anything already present, I'd rather do that.