Backup systems

Removeable media

Tools and Resources: Although it is normally difficult to insert or remove (mount and unmount) NTFS volumes during a Windows NT session safely, utilities are available that let you do this. One such utility is the Mnt/Unmount freeware utility.

Description of Resource: Mnt/Unmount for Windows NT is a freeware volume mount/unmount utility that helps with the safe insertion and removal of volumes in Windows NT, including volumes formatted as NTFS.

Author: Christoph H. Hochstaetter

Problems occur because Windows NT tends to maintain open files on these volumes even when no application is using a volume. One trick for avoiding this problem is to issue the Chkdsk /f command, after which you can usually remove the volume safely. This problem is not as prevalent with FAT volumes because the operating system treats NTFS and FAT volumes differently; however, if a running process has open files on a FAT volume when you attempt to remove it, the same warnings apply. +

The other trick is that the removeable hard drives must (apparently) be partitioned and formatted identically. Or the drive layout must be saved to a floppy after each is setup and then restored from the matching disk when the corresponding hard drive is inserted. Or the newly inserted drive must be re-partitioned and formated before use each time.

Use the quick option when re-formatting the removable drives and then run CHKDSK /I /F to ensure that there are no bad sectors. On my system, doing a complete format results in drive lockup, many bad block errors (event log overflows) and the need to restart the machine. The same drive, with a quick format, then checks out fine and works perfectly.

Replication Service

I tried to use the replication service but kept getting error messages: "System error 5" I got this message in the Application event viewer. It is in conjunction with the Replication service.

net helpmsg 5 shows "Access is denied."

Which either means the replicator cannot read the \\exporter\REPL$ share contents OR under NT4, cannot read certain entries of the exporter's registry. I was told to fix the latter, add an ACE for user REPL Read+Special:Create Key+Set Value to the ACL on HKLM\Sys\CCS\Control\SecurePipeServers\winreg on the exporter.

Note: Dont forget to stop the service when making changes to the configuration!

Questions:

• How to not mount fat/ntfs-formatted usb drive (hd, memory stick or similar) when inserting to win2k/xp system? would help prevent more harm when recovering data.+

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