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The following chapters will explain how to execute a backup job and to run and control Back4Sure from the command line.
After configuring a backup job as explained in chapter 3, you are now ready to perform the backup operation. If you didn't already saved the backup job, you should do it now giving it a meaningful name. The name of the job is required for creating the log file.
Just click on the "Backup!" button to start the backup operation. You'll see the progress dialog for the running backup, then.
Figure 4.1: Progress dialog for the backup operation
The field "Current Action" shows the currently running stage of the operation. A backup operation is divided into three stages:
During the first two stages the progress bar doesn't move, as Back4Sure first has to know how much files need to be copied. During these stages, the fields "Total Files" and "Files to Copy" will tell you how many files are included in the backup set and how many of them need to be copied. Additionally, the "Directory" field displays the currently processed folder. During stage three, the progress bar will indicate how much of the data is already backed up.
During the whole process, you have the chance to pause or cancel the backup operation using the corresponding buttons at the botom of the progress dialog. If you press the "Pause" button, the job will be paused immediately. This can be useful if you are about to copy some files to a slow backup media by hand or if you temporarily require to have the full computational power. You can continue the job later by pressing the "Continue" button. By pressing the "Cancel" button you may also abort the whole backup operation.
While the files are backed up, you can instruct Back4Sure to shutdown the computer after backup has finished. For this, activate one of the options under "Power State after Backup". With activating one of the possible options to shutdown the computer, the quiet mode is also enabled, so no further dialogs will appear and the progress display will automatically close after backup. This way the computer will be powered off for sure, at least if there is no action to execute after the backup (see chapter 3.7 for details) that may block the process.
At the end of the backup process, there are two more stages, where Back4Sure will set the access times of the target folders so that they match their respective source folders and finally write a log file for the just finished backup run:
In the last two stages, the progress bar will not move anymore. These stages usually only take a few seconds, with very large backups they may take up to a few minutes.
At the end of the backup operation the progress dialog will show you the overall result of the backup. The current action display will turn green if the backup was successful and red if there was an error.
Figure 4.2: Progress dialog after successful backup
Figure 4.3: Progress dialog after backup failure
Errors during a backup operation are not that rare. Usually only very few files were not copied because they were locked by another program. You can easily see which files were affected if you take a look into the log file. Just press the button "View Log" of the progress dialog. Later on you can find the log files on the tab "Log Files" in the main window. The topmost entry is the log file for the latest executed job. You can open them by double clicking an entry. How to interpret the log file entries is described in chapter 5.2.
If you have worked a lot inside the source directories, e.g. reorganized the directory structure or removed or renamed some folders, it is a good idea to do a cleanup run of Back4Sure. During cleanup, depending on the job settings, all files in the target directory that do not have a corresponding source file or do not match the current backup job will be deleted. This operation will free space on the backup media and will also make it easier to do a restore of relevant files.
Attention! To avoid deletion of possibly required parts of the backup, you should thoroughly read the instructions concerning the cleanup options in chapter 3.5!
The cleanup can only be performed together with a backup run. Just press the button "Backup & Cleanup". The progress dialog will pop up again, going through the formerly mentioned three backup stages. After finishing the backup operation two cleanup stages will follow:
During both stages the currently processed folder is displayed in the "Directory" field. As described in the backup section, the cleanup process can be paused or canceled. At the end of the cleanup run and after setting the folder access times and writing the log file, the overall backup and cleanup result will be displayed in the progress dialog.
All functions for running backups are also available from the command line. This way you can easily schedule backups at regular intervals using the task scheduler of Windows (or UK's Kalender, of course). During command line execution, all interactive functions of Back4Sure can be disabled, so no "Are you sure..." dialogs will interrupt the automated backup run.
There are only very few options for the command line interface. There are command line options, preceded by a "-" sign, and the path to a backup job definition. There is no special ordering of the options or the path, any part of the command line beginning with a "-" will be considered as option and one entry without preceding "-" will be handled as path to the job definition. Make sure to put the path to the job definition into quotation marks, especially if it contains spaces. Otherwise the job definition cannot be found. Below you'll find all available command line options:
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
| -b | A backup run with the settings of the given job definition file will be performed |
| -c | A clenup run with the settings of the given job definition file will be performed |
| -q | The job will be processed in quiet mode, i.e without any user interaction |
| -x | Back4Sure will automatically terminated after processing the job |
| -m | Back4Sure will run with minimized main window |
| -ps | After backup, the computer will be switched to standby mode. This will also turn on the quiet mode (-q), so the computer is switched off for sure. |
| -ph | After backup, the computer will be hibernated. The quiet mode is also active here. |
| -po | After backup, the computer will be switched off. Quiet mode is also activated automatically. |
All options may be combined as required. For a fully automated job execution, at least the switches "-b", "-q" and "-x" need to be set and of course the path to the job definition file.
A working command line might look like this:
Back4Sure -b -c -q -x "C:\Backup Jobs\FullBackup.b4j"
With this command line, Back4Sure will perform a backup and cleanup as specified in the job definition file "FullBackup.b4j". All tasks will be executed without user interaction and Back4Sure will automatically terminate when finished.
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