When I installed OneCare I made a mistake and chose external media option for backup and assigned MyBook USB drive for that. The gravity of my stupidity was revealed yesterday when on another machine with a similar situation I had to unplug all connections and move the box out of the way in a hurry. When I put it back together the system for some reason refused to boot. I might have done something wrong in a hurry. I tried reinstallation DVD in repair mode, tried safe mode, tried a live talk on the phone with Dell, nothing helped so far.
I may endup reinstalling the OS from scratch from OEM dvd.
On the helthy machine I am trying to put the backup where it belongs: I carved a separate D: partition out of my large 300GB velociraptor C: drive but I cannot change the option in OneCare. I open the GUI, see change settings, click it, Backup tab, Configure Backup button. Central Backup Device (recommended) is dimmed. External Hard Drive is checked: that was apparently my initial choice. I turned off the backup by unchecking the other checkbox, closed the GUI (the other one) and restarted OneCare again. I turned the backup on, the same thing, I cannot change to the recommended option (Central)
I did not reboot the machine though. I don't know if that would have helped or not?
Centralized bckup is supported. It is backup to an internal drive that is unsupported. One Care does not "see" Vista backup so there is no relationship between the two. If you configured Vista backup and One Care backup they both should be working per the schedule you set. I don't use Vista backup as I have found it to be unreliable at times and a bit of a pain when when trying to locate and restore a single folder. I also don't use One Care backup since I reconfigure my computers often and some of them do not have One Care installed. Additionally One Care backup is not configurable enough for my needs. I am surprised that you haven't taken advantage of the Acronis NFR offer. I've used True Image for years and it is reliable, easy, and fast.Jim - MVP Windows Live - Forum Moderator - Live One Care - Live Mesh
Centralized backup is using one backup location for all of your One Care protected computers. This can be an external USB hard drive connected to a single computer or a NAS device. A partition on an internal drive can be used as centralized backup but is not natively supported by One Care hence the workaround posted above. One Care backup can be configured to back up all One Care computers to a single device ( centralized backup ) or each computer can have an external drive attached directly to it for backup. Jim - MVP Windows Live - Forum Moderator - Live One Care - Live Mesh
it is surprising that Central backup is not supported. Why did they provide the option for it that is impossible to use?
Also it is interesting that you can set native Vista backup internally I believe, although I am not sure now that I had this option available when I performed many of my Vista installations. I think there was an option to set an HDD partition but when I tried to change that I could not find any way to do it in the GUI.
I am also wondering if there are any traces in the registry for the native abckup as well as OneCare backup and secondly what is the relationship between the two? I had my Vista backup initiated but then I downloaded OneCare and it offered its own backup. Was the first abckup option cancelled?
I've made so many changes to my systems lately that I just stare at some folders and cannot for the life of me recall where they came from but there is a WindowsImageBackup which could also be a copy from one of my old systems but the date there is 3/11/09 - the likely date I got the OneCare, so it must be from this Vista that apparently was abandoned, correct?
Centralized bckup is supported. It is backup to an internal drive that is unsupported. One Care does not "see" Vista backup so there is no relationship between the two. If you configured Vista backup and One Care backup they both should be working per the schedule you set. I don't use Vista backup as I have found it to be unreliable at times and a bit of a pain when when trying to locate and restore a single folder. I also don't use One Care backup since I reconfigure my computers often and some of them do not have One Care installed. Additionally One Care backup is not configurable enough for my needs. I am surprised that you haven't taken advantage of the Acronis NFR offer. I've used True Image for years and it is reliable, easy, and fast.Jim - MVP Windows Live - Forum Moderator - Live One Care - Live Mesh
I don't trust 3-rd party apps. I use MS stuff exclusively, besides I have my own application that can do a complete clone of any disk. Image master can do an iso image for you if you want. It is sort of MS software and it is free with source code available.AlexB
Centralized backup is using one backup location for all of your One Care protected computers. This can be an external USB hard drive connected to a single computer or a NAS device. A partition on an internal drive can be used as centralized backup but is not natively supported by One Care hence the workaround posted above. One Care backup can be configured to back up all One Care computers to a single device ( centralized backup ) or each computer can have an external drive attached directly to it for backup. Jim - MVP Windows Live - Forum Moderator - Live One Care - Live Mesh
So, Centralized backup is a network notion. Now I understan, thanks. Now another question.
I am surprised you are saying that you've had problems restoring files. I use "Restore Previous Version" on file folders sometimes a few times a day. I've used "System Restore" a few times, actually to my detriment:) a few times also. It never failed me. I used them both under OneCare and without it, natively, and they always worked. I don't believe there is an engine level difference between OneCare Backup and the native. MS would never miss a chance to reuse software unless there were major problems with the native backup but there could not be.AlexB
I had a problem once with Vista backup. Once is not really a show stopper but my backup routine is somewhat peculiar and I guess I'm just very comfortable with TI.Jim - MVP Windows Live - Forum Moderator - Live One Care - Live Mesh
