Can I backup to an unmapped network drive?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Anders Petersson's Freeware Forum : One Thread

Does No Hands Backup support backing up to an unmapped network drive? I can see how do backup an unmapped network drive to a local drive but I can't figure out how to go the other way.

-- Anonymous, September 06, 2002

Answers

Hey John.

Yes, NHB can do that. Although network shares (like "//Mainframe/Shared") can be a bit ennoying since they sometimes don't answer properly (sometimes you have to use the Win Explorer and browse to them to get thier attention). Are you getting a error message, or what is the probelm?

-- Anonymous, September 22, 2002


Hey John.

As I told Joćo, you're able to write in (and not browse to) the location of the network share, like: //mycomputer/storage

As I understood that the browse dialog had its limitations I added a text box where you can manually write in the path. This was added in version 2.0.17 (1 June 2002) so perhaps you need to download a newer exe?

If you have the right version a text box will appear when you select "change backup destination".

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2002


John,

I had that problem too - I have two computers with big drives, so I partitioned each one in half, intending to back them up on each other. However, I was unable to use NHBU to backup to a non- networked drive, and had to manually map the drive through the neighborhood network folder. This was pretty inconvenient as you can't use window's task scheduler to map a drive and the automatic reconnect at logon only works if... Surprise! The computer that has that drive is up and running. This kind of defeated the 'no hands' concept, SO..!

I found and used this excellent donateware program MACROMAKER http://members.ij.net/anthonymathews/MacroMaker.htm to make a macro that goes into the neighborhood network and networks the drive needed for NHBU to work. So far so good, windows task scheduler maps the drive, then starts NHBU.

I was glad to find MACROMAKER, as it works great, but If there's a simpler way to get NHBU to work on an unmapped network drive though, I would love to hear it!

Now if we can Anders to put an 'ignore folder/file' feature on NHBU (I don't feel a need to back up my 'temp' folders and files, or my IE cache) then it will really kick butt! ;)

-Dave

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2002


Anders, I was not able to CHANGE BACKUP DESTINATION to an unmapped network drive because Browse for Folder did not list any of my other networked systems under NETWORK NEIGHBORHOOD. However, if I map a network drive prior to running NHB, it will show up as a local drive of course. I would rather not have to map the drive, instead, I would like to go through the CHANGE BACKUP DESTINATION process I be able to see and choose any drive on my network in the same manor that I can look at them from Windows Explorer.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2002

Windows 2000 (probably above too) can automatically map network paths as drive letters on startup.

-- Anonymous, October 30, 2002


I had this problem but I wrote a .CMD file. Save the following as NHB.CMD using Notepad.

echo on net use y: /delete /y net use y: \\YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME\SHARED_DIRECTORY_NAME if not exist y:\ goto nodrivey "C:\Program Files\No Hands Backup 2.0\NHBackup.exe" C:\Program Files\No Hands Backup 2.0\NHB_FILE_NAME.nhb :nodrivey

I use this to backup one machine using another. As the source nmachine (laptop) may not be connected, I mount the drive as part of the process. If you run this using scheduler then it will mount a Y: drive. Make the Y: drive the source on the NHB file.

Hope this helps.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2003


Moderation questions? read the FAQ