Backup systems

Removeable media

Tools and Resources: Although it is normally difficult to insert or remove (mount and unmount) NTFS volumes during a Windows NT session safely, utilities are available that let you do this. One such utility is the Mnt/Unmount freeware utility.

Description of Resource: Mnt/Unmount for Windows NT is a freeware volume mount/unmount utility that helps with the safe insertion and removal of volumes in Windows NT, including volumes formatted as NTFS.

Author: Christoph H. Hochstaetter

Problems occur because Windows NT tends to maintain open files on these volumes even when no application is using a volume. One trick for avoiding this problem is to issue the Chkdsk /f command, after which you can usually remove the volume safely. This problem is not as prevalent with FAT volumes because the operating system treats NTFS and FAT volumes differently; however, if a running process has open files on a FAT volume when you attempt to remove it, the same warnings apply.

The other trick is that the removeable hard drives must (apparently) be partitioned and formatted identically. Or the drive layout must be saved to a floppy after each is setup and then restored from the matching disk when the corresponding hard drive is inserted. Or the newly inserted drive must be re-partitioned and formated before use each time.

Use the quick option when re-formatting the removable drives and then run CHKDSK /I /F to ensure that there are no bad sectors. On my system, doing a complete format results in drive lockup, many bad block errors (event log overflows) and the need to restart the machine. The same drive, with a quick format, then checks out fine and works perfectly.

Replication Service

I tried to use the replication service but kept getting error messages: "System error 5" I got this message in the Application event viewer. It is in conjunction with the Replication service.

net helpmsg 5 shows "Access is denied."

Which either means the replicator cannot read the \\exporter\REPL$ share contents OR under NT4, cannot read certain entries of the exporter's registry. I was told to fix the latter, add an ACE for user REPL Read+Special:Create Key+Set Value to the ACL on HKLM\Sys\CCS\Control\SecurePipeServers\winreg on the exporter.

Note: Dont forget to stop the service when making changes to the configuration!

Questions: