Trial software misleading - Outlook backup FAIL

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racassel
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:35 pm

Trial software misleading - Outlook backup FAIL

Post by racassel »

Hello, I tried the software and it looks nice, however the program lies about the successful completition of a outlook PST file backup. Evidently this feature is crippled in the demo / free version and you don't tell anybody it is a fake success report.
My backup to a network share NAS device for Outlook PST file shows successfully backed up 749+ KB of data. The "TEST" also reports success. However, upon examination of the backup file it is 0 bytes and NO FILES FOUND to restore.
Your backup log should show "OUTLOOK NOT SUPPORTED WITH FREE VERSION - BACKUP FAILED" instead of showing a LIE, that the backup was successful. How can I trust anything about this software or company when the "successful" report is an outright lie?

"Test finished at 8/12/2014 1:21:08 AM, 1 file(s) and 0 folder(s) tested, 0 error(s) and 0 warning(s) found
Total number of files added to backup: 1
Total number of folders added to backup: 0
Total size of files added to backup: 749,384 KB (uncompressed), 0.25 KB (compressed)
Number of files excluded: 0
Number of folders excluded: 0
Next scheduled backup: Not scheduled
Backup completed at 8/12/2014 1:21:08 AM with 0 error(s), 0 warning(s)
[8/12/2014 1:21:13 AM] Closing file "C:\Users\rick\AppData\Roaming\Softland\FBackup 5\Catalogs\Outlook Test(1).fkc"
[8/12/2014 1:21:14 AM] Closing file "C:\Users\rick\AppData\Roaming\Softland\FBackup 5\FBackup.hst""

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1951
Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:57 am

Re: Trial software misleading - Outlook backup FAIL

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

Outlook backup is supported in FBackup.
To see what your problem is, I will need the .fkc (backup catalog) file and also the last backup log for that job.
Please send them to info[at]fbackup[dot]com

racassel
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:35 pm

Re: Trial software misleading - Outlook backup FAIL

Post by racassel »

It was .ost not a .pst. To reproduce try it with large open .ost file. The log tail is above. Probably a glitch you need to address. We will give it another look but a false positive is fearful in any case.

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1951
Joined: Thu May 23, 2013 7:57 am

Re: Trial software misleading - Outlook backup FAIL

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

This is the Microsoft position regarding .ost files: "Maintaining changes to OST files within shadow copies is expensive in terms of space and I/O activity. The time-consuming work at backup time is backing up the OST files as part of the image. Everyday I/O will write to the OST file when Outlook is running. So the backup process will impact the performance on the computer. If the OST changes were kept in shadow copies, then Outlook writes to the OST files is copy on write I/O hit (2 writes, 1 read)every time. Even though we have worked to reduce the impact of copy-on-writes on shadow copies, a heavily churned file such as OST file still cause problems on the computer. In addition, the OST files can be regenerated. We delete OST file from the shadow copy before the image is created. For example, after restoring an OST, the computer detect a new version of the OST file on the computer, it will force you to delete, and the regenerate the local OST file. Therefore, it is still preferable to regenerate an OST file instead of restoring it."
Try to backup Outlook while it is closed.

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