Can't validate backups after copying to external media
Hi, This is a problem that has bugged me forever, but now I'm pissed off enough about it to try to solve it.
I have a normal, default trueimage backup. I backup to a second internal drive so it is fast and easy to access, and then afterwards I make a copy of the backup on a large, slow archival drive.
The problem is that for best data security, I want to validate the final copy of the backup on the archival drive to make sure there were no errors in the whole process. But TrueImage won't do it. If I go in Explorer and tell it to validate the files, it does nothing. NOTHING. No response, no dialog box, just the null action, no entry in the log. If I try to re-add the backup from the other media, it acts successful but when you try to validate, I get the dreaded "can't find version" error, and there is nothing I can do to make it understand where the files are. If I try to re-name the drives so looks for the original backup set on the other drive, it ignores that and goes directly to the original drive, regardless of the drive letter, so that doesn't work either.
The backup set is correct, because I can validate the exact same file in their original spot. But I can't get True Image to understand there is a second copy on another drive that I want to ALSO validate. How can I get this to work? Why can't TrueImage re-add a backup that was just made, from another location?? Why won't validate work from explorer regardless of where the backup set is?
Thanks for your help. That's a terrible design decision, to keep an internal database that can get out-of-sync with no way to rebuild or correct it. I won't accept my backup program deciding for me where or when my backups get stored or when I can move them around. Neither of the workarounds are acceptable unfortunately. Off to find a better backup solution....
It occurs to me that as the recovery media does not use the data base you should be able to do the validation from the recovery media. Not particularly easy but you may find that a better option.
Not sure if this will meet your needs, but you could validate the backup task before copying the files to the external storage. Providing there are issues with the external storage, I suspect merely copying the files would not impact of their integrity. Steve would be better placed to give advice on that issue. This assumes that you are copying all the files to the external storage, not just recent ones. In the latter case I would expect there to be problems.
Ian