Cannot seem to backup from 1 PC, across LAN, to another PC hard drive
Greetings - I have 2 PCs. PC1 is the Family PC running Windows 7 Home Premium. PC2 is the Office PC running Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. They are connected together via a simple LAN with Ethernet connections and router. I also have a "Homegroup" setup so I can share files back and forth between them easily. This all works great with no issues
I want to use TI2014 to backup the C drive of PC1 to a 3TB hard drive on PC2 (so all my system backups are just on this 1 hard drive, in one place). So I have this 3TB hard drive shared. PC1 can se e it on the network and read/write files from/to it with no issues.
So I setup a backup in TI2014 where I specify this shared drive as the destination. TI2014 sees this share in the "Browse For Destination" window and allows me to select it. Then I start the backup and after several minutes of seeing the "calculating..." message I get this error message:
"Access to the specified file is denied: \\?\UNC\MARK-PC\BackupShare\TestBackup.tib"
To specify another location, click Browse.
Obviously the path looks weird. I have tried a ton of different permissions settings/changes and keep getting the same message. The 3TB drive uses GPT (not MBR) so thinking that might be an issue with TI2014 I tried a smaller HD on PC2 that uses MBR but got the same error message.
I have done this in the past with older versions of TI and Windows, but not with Windows 7 and TI2014. Acronis says that they DO support backing up to remote hard drives across a LAN. Does anyone know what might be going on here? I would appreciate any/all suggestions!
Thanks - Mark


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Thanks for the quick reply. I typed in the UNC path. No dialog displayed. Then I clicked the arrow. Still nothing displayed. But I do now have a link near the top of the Browse for Destination dialog that says "Specify credentials for this location". If I click this it displays an "Edit Authentication Settings" dialog asking for a Username and Password.
BUT here's the thing... When I setup this share I did not specify a username or password. I also don't have a Windows password setup for this box. What would I use for the username and password?
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Well, defaults are none which obviously doesn't work, admin + admin, admin + password.... I suspect that the credentials in your case however are not needing a username password but instead need your homegroup credential. Open Control Panel, choose Network and Internet, click Choose homegroup and sharing options, under Other homegroup actions choose View or Print homegroup password. Your password should be displayed. This password is created by Windows upon creation of a Homegroup. Isn't Windows terrific?
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Enchantech - Last night I tried the Homegroup credentials and that didn't work either. BUT then I tried admin and admin just for grins and that works. So I pushed the "Test Connection" button with the admin/admin credentials and it succeeds. So I tried the backup again. This time I get a "Creating Image Backup" message with a spinning logo on screen (which I have never seen before) for about 15 minutes, then I got the normal processing bar screen AND same error message as above once again...
"Access to the specified file is denied: \\?\UNC\MARK-PC\BackupShare\TestBackup.tib"
To specify another location, click Browse.
So Acronis seems to be happy with "admin" and "admin" as the username and password BUT the backup still doesn't work. Any other ideas to try? Are there any detailed logs that I can look at to learn more perhaps?
Can you tell me if TI2014 really supports this type of backup now, or am I wasting my time here?
Thanks, Mark
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Sounds to me like a permissions error on the PC2 side. Access the BackupShare folder and right click on it and select properties. Select the security tab and look at permissions. You need to grant full control of that folder for read/write functionality. Seeing as how the admin + admin works this tells me that your access is via the default Windows admin account which you as a user do not own and do not have permissions for. You should add your username to the list that appears for permissions to the BackupShare folder and allow yourself full control. If you do not find your username in the add list then you should create an account on PC2 with administrator privileges and use those credentials when attempting logon from PC1 to the PC2 BackupShare folder. Hint, when you choose Edit on the permissions box begin to enter your admin account username. Any username on PC2 that is recognized will be displayed for addition to the permissions. I suspect you have an administrator account on PC2 so make sure that that account is added to the list and that it has full control granted. When accessing the folder on PC2 use the credentials for the admin user account you added to the permissions in the previous step. If that proves unsuccessful then you should take ownership of the backup folder by the existing/created admin account.
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I've encountered the same issue that Mark Beede describes in his Fri, 2014-05-30 07:11 post. I really don't think the issue is a permissions issue. I have two other laptops running without issue. All of my laptops backup to a 14 TB RAID array on my desktop. On the laptop, my wife's Sony Vaio, is where I have encountered the problem. All systems are running Win8.1 with all of the updates. I have TI 2014 installed on all systems. I've setup the TI backup per Grover's instructions at https://forum.acronis.com/forum/56872. I have success on two systems (laptops) and failure on the third (laptop). To my knowledge I've created the backups the same on all three systems. All systems are connected via wired Ethernet
On all of the systems I can browse to the backup folder on the RAID and either delete files or create files.
On all systems the main ID has admin rights. On the desktop when I shared my drives I gave full control.
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jgt,
I notice in your machine specs that you indicate your offending machine, Sony Vaio, your OS is Win 8.0. Have you considered the Win 8.1 upgrade or this machine? You might wish to, not saying that an upgrade itself will solve your problem but support for Win 8.1 will be better.
You also do not indicate whether or not you are connecting via wireless or wired connection, below are some support pages for troubleshooting your Sony Vaio network connection issues.
https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/41882/c/65,66/
https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34310/c/65,66/
https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/35216/c/65,66/
If you are using a wireless connection bandwidth may not be sufficient to support bakcup/restore operations and could be the source of your problem. You can also download a 30 day trial of the Wireshark app which can be run on your machine and can help tremendously in troubleshooting network connection problems.
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I've updated my signature but in my post I did say that all systems were running Win 8.1 (x64 BTW) and in my post I also stated that all systems are connected via wired Ethernet. Prior to upgrading the Sony to Win 8 and recently 6.1 it was running Win 7 x64 and TI 2013 and this worked.
I'm NOT using wireless for the network.
BTW Macrium Reflect is able to image my disk without any problems.
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Thanks for clarifying your configuration for me. I know that the idea of the problem being a permissions error seems impossible. I do not know if in your case you are attempting access using //UNC/ path but if you are you need to understand that permissions to a UNC share are at a machine level and not a user level. If your machine name has changed for example over the course of your upgrades then this can be the root of your problem. You should have a look at event viewer for any Security violation errors. If you see such entries that is a prime indicator that permissions are not set correctly for the event indicated. (share access)
One way around this is to create a local shared folder on the nas to use for backup purposes as local shared folders tie permissions to the user account level.
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