4½ hours ago I was feeling relieved, because I finally understood what I did wrong the first couple of times I tried to use Backup4All (B4A), and now realized how to begin a proper backup. Half an hour later, I was so disappointed I actually was thinking about removing B4A from my computer right away!
The backup started at 15:00:52 Danish time (GMT+1). Notice what happended:
Starting backup for "Doc4Me" at 30/03/2008 15:00:52
[15:29:02] Waiting for user input:
- "Cannot open file "C:\Documents and Settings\karar\Dokumenter\e-Books\ß?.doc".
I was "lucky" because I passed by the desk only two minutes later, and saw that the screen was showing some strange looking window, so I could click "skip" and see the backup procedure go on. But what if this has been at night and I was off to bed? The backup was stalled on pause: Nothing was happening! And for what? Waiting for me to click a button, because of lack of full Unicode support!!!
To confirm this mis-feature, it did the same thing 1½ hour later:
[17:01:07] Waiting for user input:
- "Cannot open file "C:\Documents and Settings\karar\Dokumenter\Videoer\Ashley Tisdale - Be Good To Me ??.mp4".
This time I was lucky again and wasted merely six more minutes. It was not the files' content, but the names of the files, that was the problem: "Syntaksen i filnavnet, mappen eller diskenhedsnavnet er forkert." = "The syntax in ("of"?) the file name is wrong"
The actual file names in question:
ßИ.docAshley Tisdale - Be Good To Me ♫♥
.mp4These characters, И♫♥, are of course not common in any way, but they are supported by Explorer and my media players and several other programs, including your browser (?), and to my understanding they are Unicode characters. B4A does of course support Unicode, but not FULLY.
Next problem: the compressing to zip containers.
For some time I watched the text very closely as B4A was working, and it became clear to me that maybe 70 percent of the time was spent "updating zip file"! So my next question must of course be: HowTo backup 'one to one' without compressing? It will not save space, but eons of time!
After 3½ hours I aborted the backup, by then merely 38 % of
My Documents were saved. Backing up a computer seems to be so big a project, it clearly takes practising, and has to be well planned ahead.
--
At the end of the day I find it unacceptable that Backup4All did not go on with the backup when it found a strange filename, but STOPPED. It could have informed me at the end or whatever, but it cannot just STOP and sit there, waiting for ever. Maybe there is an option somewhere I should have activated? I didn't find it.
I would also like the option to make a backup without compressing.
And I want Backup4All to FULLY support Unicode.
Edit: I turned off email client, skype, scrensaver and other 'active' programs, before starting the backup. I also first changed Priority to High.
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