AceBIT

I'm currently using AceBackup 2003 (1.0.2.12), running on Win XP pro with all the latest patches & service packs installed.

Everything works beautifully except for one file: a backup of my Outlook pst file (created using the Outlook backup util from Microsoft).

The file is reasonably large (about 570MB or 595,345,408 bytes to be exact) and every time I try to process it with AceBackup (either using an archive or backup project) it fails after about 10 minutes and no message is recorded in the log except the start time and end time.

This is the largest file in the project - there are just over 18,000 files in the project with a combined size of 2.86GB. The project is to archive my whole "My Documents" directory onto an external hard drive.

The file is definitely not locked or in use by another program as Outlook itself is closed. It's not compressed or encrypted and doesn't have any special attributes set (not read-only, not hidden, only marked as ready for archive).

The issue doesn't appear to be related to the use of the external hard drive either as I get the same result when I try archiving to c:\temp as well.

Does anyone have any ideas ... I can't think of anything else to try! Is this fixed in the more recent version?

Thanks

Hello,

Yes, the problem of very large files is solved in AceBackup 2004.

Best regards

P.S. Note, that MS Outlook should be closed when you backup a .pst file. While Outlook is running other programs cannot read .pst content.

I upgraded to Acebackup v2004.

I don't get any more error messages however it appears to be taking an excessive amount of time to process the large pst backup file mentioned.

I started my archive process at 11pm on Friday and it was stuck on the pst file when I checked its progress at 8am on Saturday. I left it running and checked again at 4pm Saturday and it was still processing the same file!

At that point, I decided to cancel the process and start again but omit the pst file from the archive set (I'll back that up separately).

When I re-ran the archive process without trying to archive the pst file, the rest of my files (approx 18,000 files comprising nearly 3GB) were processed in only 53 minutes.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

Hello,

Compressing and encrypting such large file (> 500Mb) indeed takes much time but surely not so much as in your case. Please make sure your disk with TEMP directory has compared free space (approx 500 Mb) to keep auxilary files.

Also, is it possible that another application (for example, antivirus monitor) accessed the .pst file during backup?

Berst regards

Thanks for your suggestions ...

My temp directory is located on C: which currently has 13GB free ... so I don't think that would be causing an issue. I noticed my disk use under the Windows Task Manager monitor crept up to about 700MB (or about 75%) during the operation ... don't know if that's relevant to anything?

Nothing else should have tried to access the file - the file was created using the MS Outlook backup add-in which basically just takes a copy of your pst file and puts it somewhere. However, I also closed Outlook just to be sure it hadn't retained any file locks or anything like that on the backup pst file. Smaller backup pst files are processed no problems.

My antivirus is AVG which is scheduled to run at 6pm each evening so that shouldn't have interferred with Acebit's processing either.

Weird huh? Oh well, I just ended up using another program (SecureIT) which compressed & encrypted the file in about 15-20 minutes.

If I could however, I'd like to just use one program to do my entire backup because then this could occur overnight and wouldn't need any manual intervention in the morning!

Unfortunately, I can't use SecureIT to do everything either as the version I have falls over when processing so many files! It's not easy!

Thanks

Hello,

AceBackup creates an auxilary file in the temp directory during backup/restore. After completion the operation this file is deleted. Therefore disk containg TEMP directory should have room for this auxilary file.

Could you tell please what encryption and compression setting you use?

Best regards

It was Blowfish 128 with maximum compression.

I didn't realise you could change the compression until I looked under Project > Properties! I might change this to "Fastest" with a different type of encryption and see what happens next time.

Thanks

Hello,

Yes, it is possible to change encryption method for existing project but we do not recommend to do this because new encryption will be applied only to new files while old files on backup media will have the old encryption method. This might lead to mixing in a single backup project files encrypted with different algorithms. This is not a problem if you do not change the project password - in this case AceBackup automatically detects encryption method while restoring files. If different files have different passwords you will be prompted to enter password for restore if a restoring file has different password than the project's current password.

Regards to your problem with .pst file. We have introduced a special method for processing very large files, which significantly increases processing speed such files. This update will be available in a few days. Please check Help|Update Manager later.

Best regards