Tricking NT4 backup to see a map drive not a tape

[lifto]

Hey gang.

I have a number of NT4 laptops that I want to back up to a shared folder on a server and I want to use the NT4 backup utility.

Has anyone figured out how to get the NT4 backup utility to backup to a hard disk rather than a tape drive?

 

[pbxman]

Nope. But there are plenty of 3rd party apps to do this. You'll even find free ones on the net that work well.

NT4 Backup isn't designed to do this and hacking it you'd run into problems with the backup catalogs not reading the correct source files to restore.
Not a good strategy when the goal is a reliable backup that you can actually work with in a crunch. pbxman
Systems Administrator

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful.

 

[jfrantz]

For backing up laptops, I use robocopy to copy to a shared directory on a server using the "mirror" option. That way only the files that have changed since the last backup get sent the the server and laptop's data gets backed up every night.

I've got this as part of the logon script so that if the laptop is connected to the local LAN the data gets backed up automatically. Typically it only adds 15 seconds or so to the login process. For a while I relied on users to back up their own data. They never did, so I had to automate it in the login script.

-Jeff