Need some Backup Help

[Joseph Sinclair]

Craig White wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 15:32 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> 
>>Craig is correct in that a files backup (the best you can do with a file share) will not permit a bare-metal restore.
>>
>>That said, if you do need a files backup, then what you need to do is use the admin share.
>>
>>Every drive in Windows is shared by default, and there's very little you can do to prevent it (One of the barn-door security holes in Windows).
>>If you can connect with an ID that has administrative rights, then you can use\\Server\C$ for the C drive or \\Server\D$ for the D drive, etc...
>>
>>This only works for partitions mounted with a drive letter, but most Windows users don't use multiple partitions, much less filesystem mounts.
>>
> 
> ----
> I guess we didn't really fully clarify the issue.
> 
> You can back up c:\windows from an WinXP system, but it's going to be
> somewhat worthless because you won't be able to restore it or much of
> anything worthwhile unless you do some type of backup that permits a
> 'bare metal' type of restore (i.e. boot system from CD, restore
> partitions and contents from backup and reboot from restored system).
> 
> Craig
> 
----
I did understand the issue, and I did agree, at the start, that your comment about it being useless for disaster recovery was entirely correct.  I merely wished to provide information that can be helpful in less stringent circumstances. Not every backup needs to be a bare-metal restore.

There are times when individual files or small sets of files are needed, and my comments were intended for those situations, such as a need to restore host files, or jdbgmgr.exe(which is often removed by novice system administrators because it really looks like a trojan thanks to a very poor icon choice).

Richard's original post asked about how to get around a permissions issue on C:\Windows.  Using the Administrative share for C will do that.

In fact, no Windows system can provide a disaster recovery level of backup via Windows file share, AFAIK all Windows remote backup solutions provide a service, running on the system to be backed up, that provides full access to the drives for that very reason.

==Joseph++