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

[britechguy]

@fincoder: Thanks. What you've said is what I presumed, but I've also learned that what makes logical sense doesn't necessarily carry over to actual real-world actions.

One of my favorite quotations (unattributed, as I've never been able to find a citation for who said it first):
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.

 

[britechguy]

Well, I'm having some "interesting" behaviors this morning when trying to restore on the machine that's using OneDrive, and I don't know if it's an issue with that, or with Fabs, or perhaps a combination of the two. Fabs keeps "black screening" over itself, with no information offered, then going back to the deep grey overlay where you can see the underlying Fabs window, doing this cyclically, but with no status information being shown about what's happening.

I have to leave to see a client in about 45 minutes, and will just let it run for the time I'm gone and see if it finishes. The mouse icon goes from pointer to hourglass when the black screen comes up, but even when it's going back to the deep grey overlay I'm not getting the usual "back and forth progress bar with info about what's happening.

Addendum: After seeming to get completely stuck on the Edge Chromium profile (in the middle of which the black screening occurred) after about 10 minutes of that it completed. Now it's doing Desktop, My Documents, My Pictures, etc. but they seem to be mooving awfully fast. During the "blackout period" task manager showed Fabs as getting quite a significant slice of CPU time, so it wasn't dead.

Addendum 2 (a bit over 4 hours later): Fabs is crawling along. The size of the total files to copy is 87.7 GB and the copied size is currently only 408 MB. Getting scads of amber warning messages that "Copied file's size does not match original file."

 

[britechguy]

I gave up with the machine this morning, and I am now inclined to believe that my external backup drive might be failing. I'm going to try again with a different backup drive that's currently being backed up to by Fabs.

I backed up all of the data from the machine I'm typing from and am in the process of restoring it to my new laptop. I did get an interesting warning, and a kinda warranted one, but I'm not quite sure what the end result will be. I'll see in the morning.

The source machine has a 1TB SSD, and the total data copied amounted to 512.3 GB. The target machine has only a 512GB SSD, but, it's also set up such that all of my classic user libraries are no longer on the physical C: drive, but in OneDrive, which has way more than enough capacity to handle 512.3 GB. But, when I started Fabs and it did its initial check, I got a warning that there was 105GB of data in excess of the capacity that was available on C: (which is true, strictly speaking). I gave Fabs the go-ahead to continue restoring, figuring that during that process OneDrive will end up handling virtually all that data and no issue should occur. That's certainly what I hope happens, anyway.

 

[Porthos]

I got a warning that there was 105GB of data in excess of the capacity that was available on C: (which is true, strictly speaking). I gave Fabs the go-ahead to continue restoring, figuring that during that process OneDrive will end up handling virtually all that data and no issue should occur. That's certainly what I hope happens, anyway.

The one drive does not instantly upload the files. The new computer has to have the free space for all of the files initially.

 

[britechguy]

The one drive does not instantly upload the files. The new computer has to have the free space for all of the files initially.

I knew the former. But the Fabs backup process took 6 hours, and I expected the restore to take at least as long. I'd hope that OneDrive would be "shoveling out" files to cloud storage while all this is going on and the space freed up by said shoveling would be available as "the temporary local resting place" for files being brought in by Fabs.

That being said, there was a OneDrive disconnect burp overnight, so things did not go tidily, but that's not the fault of Fabs. From what I could see (and I'll check the documentation) it's possible to re-run Fabs and have it skip over existing files. I may have to try that, but it seems it was old files I kept under Public where the issue started, so I may not bother.

 

[Porthos]

Personally, I do not back up one drive files with Fabs. The files in there will auto-restore when the new computer gets logged into Onedrive.
The biggest issue now is when I set up a new computer with 11 and the user who does not have 365 is since onedrive is on by default with 11, and the user has more than 5 gigs of data in the 3 folders that are linked in one drive by default, Desktop, documents, and pictures, I have to verify with the client on their intentions about ever getting 365 or paying for extra onedrive storage separately.

For the ones who are not, I have to unlink the pc from one drive and uninstall it before the Fabs restore to avoid the nags about purchasing more space.

 

[britechguy]

@Porthos

But my situation is not that one. On the source machine, OneDrive and M365 were not in use, and there was a hair over 512 GB of data backed up from local storage.

On the target machine, M365 and OneDrive are in use, with the corresponding 1 TB of space, and with all "what had been local folders" for Documents, Music, Pictures, etc., mapped to OneDrive.

What I would expect, when restoring from Fabs, and which is what did appear to happen, is that the stuff that was backed up from the local libraries on the source machine would be restored to the equivalent on the target machine, but where those equivalents are all mapped to OneDrive by Windows 11. There's not really insufficient space unless literally everything must land locally, and nothing can be synced to OneDrive in the cloud during the restoration process. This does not seem to be the case, as when I checked this morning quite a bit had already been synced to OneDrive and the process is continuing as we speak.

But that warning, which I understand, was strictly about space available on the local C: drive, which is insufficient. But that's not where the data is actually being placed other than as a waystation, and it doesn't appear that OneDrive and Fabs restore are not working at the same time, with OneDrive shoveling into the cloud what Fabs is shoveling on to the local drive. I don't think the pace is the same, byte for byte, but it need not be if OneDrive upload is "fast enough" to allow enough local space to exist for what's coming in based on what's already "gone up."

 

[Porthos]

There's not really insufficient space unless literally everything must land locally

It lands locally first and then is uploaded to one drive and you have to set up the cloud-only function in settings to then remove files from your new local system to one drive only.. @fabs might be able to clarify.
I do not have a Win 11 non-VM install to post screenshots of needed settings.

 

[britechguy]

It lands locally first and then is uploaded to one drive

And, let me tell you, that initial uploading is at a very, very, very leisurely pace indeed. Since whenever the Fabs finished (which was in the early AM hours) to now I'm showing only 80 GB of my 1 TB used. The creep from the 1% to the current 7% has been glacially slow.

One thing this has taught me is if the combined volume of data is more than can be stored locally, one should break the backup and restore "into chunks." I would have been fine had I only done my own profile, alone, followed by the public profile, alone, as separate steps. As luck would have it, since my personal profile was attended to first, all that data made it and is now uploading to OneDrive. And what I didn't get from Public is definitely non-critical.

 

[Porthos]

that initial uploading is at a very, very, very leisurely pace indeed

Typical consumer internet (not fiber) upload is slow.
Also, onedrive sync is a lower priority process.

 

[HCHTech]

I am now inclined to believe that my external backup drive might be failing.

If the source drive is in good shape, I almost always remove it from the machine, connect it to the new computer (USB3) and use the Fabs 'Transfer' function instead of backup and restore. That way, you are only moving the data once. This process doesn't impact your issue with Onedrive, though.

Also, I wouldn't even attempt trying to move 512GB of data to a machine with a 512GB drive. If the eventual goal is to have most of that data in "cloud only" mode on OneDrive, I think I would have set that up on the SOURCE machine and let it upload. Then copy over only the local data to the new machine and then sign the new machine into the OneDrive account.

Or....considering the cost of SSDs today and your hourly billable rate, swapped out the 512GB in the new machine with a 1TB. <$100 for a Samsung 980.

 

[britechguy]

Or....considering the cost of SSDs today and your hourly billable rate, swapped out the 512GB in the new machine with a 1TB. <$100 for a Samsung 980.

Well, my hourly billable rate doesn't apply to me, personally, and it's my new laptop. And I hate tearing down brand new equipment.

Your point is well taken about having set up M365 on "the source machine" and let everything happen from there, but I chose not to go that route.

I need to read up on Fabs Transfer, because when I quickly tried to go that route I wasn't getting the choices (or results) I was expecting. And that's on me because I haven't RTFM on that feature, and need to.

 

[britechguy]

Also, onedrive sync is a lower priority process.

Very low, apparently. I've crept up all of 1 percentage point in 9-ish hours. It's also been hanging on a file it says is 1.6 GB in size for many hours now, but I can find no apparent way to find out what that file is, nor to cancel it to let others through.

My internet service is slow compared to fiber, but during "the off hours" there's at least some bandwidth to spare.

Of course, there's also the fact that my partner's brand new laptop is doing the same thing at the same time, but with far less total data involved.

 

[Porthos]

Give this a read

Change the OneDrive sync app upload or download rate - Microsoft Support

Specify how much network bandwidth the OneDrive sync client can use.

support.microsoft.com

 

[britechguy]

@Porthos

Thanks. The problem being, though, that by default the Limit upload and download rates is OFF (or at least is on my machine). To me, that means "take all you can get, when you can get it."

If you change the download rate to Adjust Automatically, which I just did, but then flip the limit switch off it's stippled out just as the 125Kb/sec one is when it's off. I can't imagine that "Adjust Automatically" would result in faster speed/higher priority than the OFF setting does, but I'll do more digging myself. I appreciate the pointer.

 

[Porthos]

You can limit the upload and download throughput to a fixed rate (the minimum rate is 50 KB/sec, and the maximum rate is 100,000 KB/sec). The lower the rate, the longer it will take your files to upload and download. Instead of limiting upload throughput to a fixed rate, you can also set it to "Adjust automatically." This setting enables the OneDrive sync client (OneDrive.exe) to upload data in the background by only consuming unused bandwidth and not interfere with other applications using the network.

 

[Porthos]

Honestly, I would have slapped a 1tb drive into the machine.
Assuming NVME, I would just grab one of these. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTM263Y...colid=2C62N8Q8N0AKG&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1
There is a choice between Gen 3 and 4.

 

[britechguy]

I did read that, but why would OFF logically be "slower" than limiting on with any value assigned? Limiting off should, logically, mean take whatever you can get whenever you can get it.

[P.S. I've turned limiting on and put 5000 in the Kbps box]

With regard to the SSD, too late now.

 

[Porthos]

With regard to the SSD, too late now.

Not really but it is your time and money.

 

[fincoder]

Will Fabs Autobackup handle this gracefully, without my having to do anything specific, or do I need to take certain precautions/make certain tweaks, when doing the restore?

When you asked this question initially, there was no mention that your data is bigger than the new laptop's drive. There is no practical way to do that transfer.

OneDrive by default will free up space gradually, on a file-by-file basis depending on how recently the file was opened. In your case every file was newly saved to the OneDrive folder so it would have taken weeks for OneDrive to begin freeing up space automatically.

OneDrive (and all other cloud storage as far as I know) is essentially just a sync between local storage and cloud storage. When there's a lot of stuff to sync, it can take a long time.