Page 1 of 1

Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 03 Jan 2021, 13:54
by BrianS
Morning all,

I've been experimenting with Cobian for a few months now and largely, it satisfies my needs.

However, there is one "undocumented" feature I have found. I believe is because of the way Windows 10 works (same for Windows 8.1, as far as my tests have found) and not really an issue with Cobian 11

If I configure a Full backup of the entire Documents folder on my Windows 10 Pro 64bit build and trigger a backup, Cobian backs up the entire folder as requested, compiles and emails a log file exactly as expected. If I then use Windows explorer to view the backup folder Cobian has created (I don't have compression or encryption switched on) instead of the being called something like... Documents 2020-12-27 13;38 (Full) it is called Documents with a timestamp identical to the Documents folder on my PC. If I login to the console of my NAS drive and examine the folder using the (Linux) file explorer I can see that the folder is named as I expected, but the timestamp is still same as the "Documents" folder on my PC. Subsequent "Full" backups produces additional "Documents" folders, which is likely to make restoring files from specific backup sessions a little bit tricky.

If I "clone" the Full Backup and change the backup type to Differential and then run this, then the software behaves exactly as expected with correctly named folders.

The "log" files sent via email, do contain the correct (as far as Cobian 11 is concerned) folder names on both full and differential backups, and as they are presented as links, the Windows explorer can browse the folders.

Has anyone a strategy to avoid this behaviour?

Regards,

Brian

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 03 Jan 2021, 18:43
by DMoRiaM
Hello BrianS,

I've used Cobian without compression only twice in all the time I used it. And never got this kind of problem you are describing.

In order to test, I disabled the compression and started a full backup, them a incremental, after that a differential and finally another full backup. Everyone of them went with no problems and the correct folder name was assigned. My version is in Portuguese (Completo = Full).

C 2021-01-03 15;26;22 (Completo)
C 2021-01-03 15;33;12 (Incremental)
C 2021-01-03 15;36;40 (Diferencial)
C 2021-01-03 15;38;51 (Completo)

My version is 11.2.0.582. What is the version you are using?

I was unable to reproduce the problem. You need to have your backup uncompressed? In all the years I've been using Cobian I had no erros with the .zip or .7z file format it uses. I never used encryption as it is not need for my use case.

If you version is older, could you try to update you installation and try it to see if the behaviour still happens?

Regards,

Marcelo

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 03 Jan 2021, 21:12
by BrianS
Hi Marcelo,

I am using the same version as you...

I have done some more experimentation since my original post.

If I switch encryption on, The folder shows as named correctly, both in windows and using the linux file explorer. The encryption unfortunately slows down the backup considerably.

or

If I switch compression on, (having turned encryption off) The folder shows as named correctly, both in windows and using the linux file explorer. Compression doesn't seem to slow down the backup by anywhere near as much.

The answer is obviously to leave the compression switched on.

Thank-you for your prompt response

Regards,

Brian

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 11 Jan 2021, 19:15
by cobian
This happens only with "Common folder names" i Windows: Documents and Desktop will always show that name on Explorer even if the names are some others. To solve that you need to exclude the file desktop.ini. Add this file as a mask in your exclusion list.

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 11 Jan 2021, 19:52
by BrianS
Thank-you Luis,

that explains perfectly what is happening and how to solve it...

Regards,

Brian

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 16 Jan 2021, 12:42
by BrianS
Hi guys,

One curios problem remains...

I can now backup "Documents" or "My Documents" and Cobian 11 will create the correctly named folder on the NAS box. However, the folder timestamp is not the time and date the folder was created. Looking at the folder from the Linux based file explorer of the NAS Box (QNAP) also shows this time. It's not the time and date the "Documents" folder was created, it is however consistent and is the same each time.

It's not the end of the world, but is there anyone with knowledge of Windows 10 file structure who can explain the behaviour, this is academic now as at least the individual backup's can be identified by excluding the desktop.ini files from the backup.

Regards,

Brian

Re: Backing up "Documents" in Windows 10

Posted: 17 Jan 2021, 18:06
by cobian
NTFS and Windows don't use UTC time by default (it can). Most Linux systems use UTC. Could that be the problem?