Pensamos Digital, Inc.

[indiebands]

I installed MMB on two machines (one Win2k and one WinXP) which are connected in a LAN through a SMC Barricade switch/router and a hub. The Current Backup Progress bar moves very, very slowly then conks out at exactly the same point in the process every time I try. Status says "Archiving - 2888/15258 files (18.9%)" however the red "Backup Now" button is illuminated and the Pause button is greyed out. I have tried repeating this process 3 times, but get the same behavior every time.

Any suggestions or instructions would be appreciated. I am intrigued by the promise of this product and may well elect for the over-the-Internet storage option in the future as well.

Best regards,
indiebands

[admin]

Hello,

Perhaps your hard drive is filling up part of the way through the backup. Can you post how much free hard drive space you have? Then restart the backup and when it gets close to 2,888 files but before the pause button goes grey, check your free hard drive space again and post that as well.

Another possibility I can think of is that the total file count in the progress meter might be wrong for some reason and the backup is otherwise completing successfully. Is there a last backup date shown in the progress window? How long does it take to reach 2,888 files? Can you restart the backup process, let it sit for an hour or two after it hits 2,888 files and then come back and see if the progress has changed (check the last backup date too)? If the progress hasn't changed, can you tell if there is a lot of network activity between your two computers (lots of flashing flights on your hub)?

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital

[indiebands]

Hello Tim,
Thanks for the quick feedback. You nailed the issue! No HD space at all (well OK, 4K) on that drive. What is the workaround? Uninstall on that HD and reinstall on same machine but on another HD with GB+ of space? Is it a requirement that the free HD space >= aggregate file size to be backed up? Is there any way within MMB to set the temp and backup location directory locations? That would be pretty handy. Is there any way that you could segment the processing of the files so that it would require less HD? Incidentally, what happens if a file that is scheduled to be backed up is open at the time of the scheduled backup?

Also, my other copy of MMB successfully processed the files to be backed up (plenty of HD free), but now seems hung on "Searching for a Peer." Could that also be because the other copy of MMB has no available backup storage space on its HD?

Thanks in advance for your assistance. I am very enthusiastic about the prospects for your software.

[admin]

Hello,

Yes, MMB does require plenty of free space for creating your backups. In fact, it is very paranoid at the moment and will keep a copy of your most recent successful backup as well as any in-progress backup, so you should have twice the amount of hard drive space available as the total of the files that you want to backup on both machines. For example, if you are backing up 200M on Machine A and 100M on Machine B, you will need 600M free on each machine in order to be on the safe side. In practice, MMB won't use all of that space because the backups are compressed, so the actual space used will depend on how well your files compress.

We are aware that space could be handled more sparingly using various mechanisms, including your suggestion of segmenting the processing. Reducing space requirements might be a goal of future versions of MMB if enough people request it. For now, your best option might be to reduce the number of files you are backing up (e.g., don't backup your "Windows" directory if you could reinstall Windows from a DVD/CD in the event of a hard drive failure).

You are correct that uninstalling MMB and then reinstalling on a hard drive with the required free space would fix your problem. If you choose to go this route, be sure to shut down MMB before uninstalling it. You can do this by opening the administrative panel, going to the "File" menu, and selecting the "Shut Down Magic Mirror Backup" option.

There currently isn't a supported way to set the directory where backups and temporary files are stored. You can change the directory where backups are stored by altering the MMB shortcuts (if you are comfortable doing that and are interested, let me know and I'll tell you what to change them to), but there is no way to change the temporary directory other than reinstalling MMB in a different directory, so the space savings from moving the backup storage directory would probably not be enough for you. Allowing users to set these directories from the administrative console is a feature that might be added to future versions of MMB, possibly even version 1.0, if enough people request it.

Regarding how MMB treats open files, that depends on what program has opened them. If MMB can still read the file, it gets backed up. If it can't read the file or otherwise encounters an error, it will alert you that there were problems at the end of the backup process by popping up a message on your screen and listing the specific file(s).

Please post your feature requests for what features you would most like to see in future versions of Magic Mirror Backup in the feature request forum at:

http://www.pensamos.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

The discussions in the feature request forum will have a very strong impact on how Magic Mirror Backup will evolve - the more people that request a particular feature, the more likely it will be implemented.

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital

[indiebands]

Thank you again for the prompt response and the information about HD space requirements. I now have MMB working on both machines and have completed a backup. On my older desktop (that has most of the files on it), the PIII-500 had to chew on the 1.5GB of files for a while before the transfer could start, I guess the encoding process is pretty processor intensive. Glad to have it up and running. Will post on the feature suggestion forum. Thanks.