No error handling for local network recovery
I've tried looking around the forum to check if someone had a similar issue but I didn't find anything, so I decided to make this post.
We use ATI to do full backups of HDs periodically, and the backup files are stored on our 3 computers.
Whenever we need to recover or use the files in another computer, we use the file/folder recovery option on ATI and select the ones we need- frequently the entire "Users" folder. It gets sent through our local network by using a temporary shared folder on the receiving computer.
Some files (e.g.: Onedrive folder, some Appdata folders.) are not able to be directly sent through this method due to file permissions(?), causing ATI to pop up an error box with the buttons "Repeat", "Ignore", or "Cancel". We usually just go and ignore these files and then move on with our tasks since they are not the files we need anyway.
That error box also pops up whenever ATI cannot recover due to loss of connection or some other kinds of blocking, so we use "Repeat" once the problem is settled for it to continue the recovery process.
The problem is we've been using ATI 2016 all this time, and once we switched over to ATI 2020... There's no error box. Whenever something happens to the recovery (due to previously mentioned finnicky files or loss of connection), the recovery does not wait for any user input and instead just immediately stops the recovery process. It also shows on the backup page the message "Recovery has succesfully completed", but upon inspecting the "Activity" tab or the receiving computer's shared folder, you can clearly see it stopped midway through.
We tried all the error handling options, to no avail. We've switched back to ATI 2016 for now since we can't always check if the backup was completely recovered or not. Is there any way to get the user input error box from ATI 2016 back?
- What type of full backups of your HDD's are you creating here? (...) Disks & Partitions type backups, or are they just of Files & Folders?
A: They are Disk & Partitions type, where we grab the HDs themselves from another computer and hook it up to ours to do the backup, then afterwards return them to their original computer, which is related to the next question:
- Are you recovering files back to the original computer where the backup was created from, or to a different computer?
A: Most of the time they are recovered to the same computer they came from, although I'd say about 1 of 5 times we need the files on another computer.
- Are these backup tasks that were created by ATI 2016 and continued by ATI 2020, or were they new tasks created by ATI 2020?
A: We uninstalled 2016 and installed ATI 2020 completely, then created new backups for the ones we needed then, although we still kept the 2016 backup files they weren't being used.
- The error handling options (in the Options > Advanced page) are purely for backup tasks not recovery.
A: We thought it'd also affect the recovery options, although looking back it somewhat explains why it doesn't affect anything, whoops.
Thank you for the quick response, I think I might have enough time today to do a recovery that'll fail on purpose, to showcase the activity tab and etc, if I'm able to do it I'll post the screenshot of the GUI here.
I've uploaded pics of ATI 2020: right after starting recovery, after it suddenly stops, and what the activity tab shows. As well as single pic of what happens instead on ATI 2016, with the error prompt window and options for us to choose what to do.
If you want to reproduce this error, simply start a file recovery to a folder at your local network on ATI 2020, and, for example, interrupt the connection by removing the cable.
I can see how you might want to ignore recovery of one file if it would allow recovery of all the others.
I don't know for certain, but I suspect ATI would handle a permissions error differently than a loss of connection with the device so the permissions problem might be hard to reproduce.
Just curious, but what are the error settings in the advanced tab?
Also, I know this isn't a direct answer, but personally, I would never recover any user profile directly over the original. The reason being is you won't necessarily see a Windows permission error (due to lack of permission or files in use).
Instead, restore the user profile (or files/folders within it) to a temporary location such as a dedicated external USB drive - do not restore the original permissions with them.
Then, copy the restored files into the user profile so that you can monitor in Windows if there is an access error or a permission error at that time.
For what it's worth, even an administrator needs to accept UAC to connect to another users profile at least one time and you will only see that message in Windows directly when you attempt to connect to someone else's profile.
On top of that, "documents" and "appdata" can be a little tricky in Windows 10, because Microsoft uses soft junction points to make it backwards compatible with Windows 7. That's why you have "My documents" and "Documents" which are essentially the same, but because one is a junction point, you can end up in a recursive loop in some cases.
Ultimately, to avoid issues and be able to monitor for errors or permission issues, recover to a different location, without the original permissions and then copy them into the profile and monitor it. The copy will reset the permissions to the folder they are directed to at that time.
Patrick O'Keefe wrote:
I can see how you might want to ignore recovery of one file if it would allow recovery of all the others.
I don't know for certain, but I suspect ATI would handle a permissions error differently than a loss of connection with the device so the permissions problem might be hard to reproduce.
Thank you for the response
ATI handles permission errors very differently for sure, although the outcome is the same- the recovery instantly cancels itself, no error message is displayed (aside from the activity tab log). Because of that we always thought it could be related to the error handling box itself (ignore, repeat, cancel), since ATI 2016 didn't show such issues.
Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:Just curious, but what are the error settings in the advanced tab?
(...)
Ultimately, to avoid issues and be able to monitor for errors or permission issues, recover to a different location, without the original permissions and then copy them into the profile and monitor it. The copy will reset the permissions to the folder they are directed to at that time.
Regarding the error settings, we tried with silent mode on and off, as well as with more and less repeat attempts, alongside others both on Backup and the Recovery ones. Although as Steve Smith mentioned the backup settings don't affect the recovery.
Regarding the alternatives to a direct recovery, often times we recover user folders that have over 200GB, 500GB of files on them- ATI allows us, through ethernet, to send these files with rates over 500Mb/s assuming the receiving computer has a Gigabit ethernet port.
Having these being sent through external HDDs or others would sadly triple (or more) the time needed for the operation due to USB port speeds, Windows' file system speed etc etc. We'd also need to directly go to the computer and hook it up, along other stuff.
Although we did consider that option before, at that point we realized we would rather just stay on ATI 2016, which still works.
This raw file transfer speed is one of the great reasons we always stuck with ATI, and in fact ATI 2020 averages out on even faster recovery speeds, alongside a better interface and more/better tool options than ATI 2016, so we acquired the software eagerly, but as of now the cancelling issue makes it unusable for our purposes.
Thank you for your response.
These past couple days I personally tried to fiddle with some more options, including mapping the network folder through IP/Computer names, changing folder permissions and other stuff, to no avail, so we are still using ATI 2016 for our daily shenanigans. I appreciate your help, I hope we can find a way.
Couldn't you still recover to the same drive, but a different folder (like the root of C: or some other specifically defined folder)? That would still allow you to get the network speeds. Then use cut/paste instead of copy paste from the same drive to itself, but the correct folders and it should be an instant move.
Ultimately, if it's working in 2016, but not 2020, it does seem more like an application change (maybe a bug). I'm not really sure without being able to experience the difference and the behavior. I don't use 2020 regularly and tend to only do restores to different systems from recovery media in most cases.
CD INFO,
So I understand you are creating Full backups and these backups are created as Disk and/or Partition style backups.
I think therein may be the problem. Have you attempted to create a File and or Folder style backup of the data? Doing so my fix your issue here. Reason being is that with the introduction of TI 2020, Disk and/or Partition style backups use the newly introduced .tibx format. This new format introduces meta data tracking of data blocks for disks and partition backups. This might be at root of your errors given your use case scenario.
Conversely, creating a Files and/or Folder style backup using TI 2020 does not use the .tibx format. Instead, it uses the old .tib format of previous versions of TI including that of TI 2016. The .tib format does not make use of the meta data block tracking so, if in fact this tracking is the cause of your error, elimination of the tracking from the backup should in turn eliminate the error.