CASTalk.com

We have been told to copy our local My Documents folders to a Samba share,
as a backup. Interesting. I was given a batch file that uses xcopy, and I
immediately downloaded the 2003 reskit so I could use robocopy.

My first question was isn't there a better way to backup user data? And I
assume one would want one's %userprofile% directory tree backed up, not just
My Documents. But while I would appreciate recommendations, the "better
mousetrap" question is not mine to address.

I think that I would like to demonstrate that NTFS attributes are not being
preserved, and would be lost in case of a restore. Robocopy complains if I
try to copy with /SEC. So, that much is not being copied. Not being an
expert on NTFS nor SAMBA, I figured that this was the place to ask about
this.

Greg Stigers, MCSA

NTFS is the filesystem. Samba is a sharing mechanism. If you had a Samba
server with NTFS as the underlying file system, things would be fine. You
would see a similar issue if you were copying from NTFS filesystem-->FAT32
filesystem. Some attributes are simply not supported.

Also, for My Documents backup, it might be easier if you have AD and use the
My Docs redirection. That way the My Docs gets automatically saved to the
server directly. If your client OS is WinXP, then you get Offline folder
support along with the MyDocs so even if the server isn't available (this
assums that the server is running Win2k3), you still can load/save, etc.
Also READs are handled by the local copy which increases Server scalability.

Pat

"Greg Stigers, MCSA" <gregstigers+wmsn@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:%232Vil$AqEHA.2900@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

We have been told to copy our local My Documents folders to a Samba share,
as a backup. Interesting. I was given a batch file that uses xcopy, and I
immediately downloaded the 2003 reskit so I could use robocopy.

My first question was isn't there a better way to backup user data? And I
assume one would want one's %userprofile% directory tree backed up, not
just My Documents. But while I would appreciate recommendations, the
"better mousetrap" question is not mine to address.

I think that I would like to demonstrate that NTFS attributes are not
being preserved, and would be lost in case of a restore. Robocopy
complains if I try to copy with /SEC. So, that much is not being copied.
Not being an expert on NTFS nor SAMBA, I figured that this was the place
to ask about this.

Greg Stigers, MCSA