Windows Network Backup does not start anymore - blame Samsung Magician

Recently I upgraded to a new Samsung SSD. Love it. The speed boost over even a last-gen SSD is amazing. But that's not what this post is about. Since I upgraded my primary drive, it was also time for a clean Windows install. I guess some people would find this tedious, but I actually enjoy setting things up, starting from a nice clean slate. The frustration, however, was that stuff that previously just worked, now didn't.

It took a lot of headscratching trying to figure out why I was unable to set up automated backups again, using Windows backup, as outlined in a much earlier post of mine. Well, turns out the old post is still accurate and up-to-date, and that the new factor is now Samsung Magician to deal with.

It is otherwise a fantastic piece of software, one that further customizes your system for improved speed or reliability. It serves as a good reminder to enable AHCI on your motherboard if you've never used it, checks that you're using SATA6, etc. You can also run benchmarks to make sure you're squeezing the performance out of your drive. But again, that's not what this post is about.

Sure enough, after having done a prior optimize, Windows backup was turned off via Samsung Magician. But not really, because I can still access "Backup and Restore" from the Control Panel, and even set up my backup location and credentials; the damn thing just won't work.

Turns out it deactivates the Windows service, but not the GUI. Hit up your Run prompt (CMD+R) and enter services.msc:

Find "Windows Backup" in the list of services, and sure enough, it will be disabled:

Now, you can either choose to leave the Startup Type as disabled, and just start the service manually this time, but that makes no sense for automated backups, as your service already needs to be on when the backup is initiated. Set the Startup Type to automatic, start the service, and save the settings:

You should once again be able to run a scheduled Windows Backup as usual!

How to back up a SD card image, i.e. Raspberry Pi OS

Setting up a Raspberry Pi to finally run how you want it, can take a while. And it is super annoying when, for whatever reason, the SD card becomes corrupt, and you need to reinstall everything. Lame. Luckily, there is a tool with which a SD card can be imaged and stored away in waiting, until its triumphant return; it isn't the backup image you need right now, but it is the image you deserve...

Enter Win32 Disk Imager. It is likely something you've used before anyways when setting up your RasPi, because the official documentation speaks highly of its use. For our purposes, we just need a simple backup image:

1. In the Image File textbox, select your save path and file name
2. Make sure the right Device (i.e. SD card's drive letter) is selected.
3. Hit the "Read" button.

That's it! If you ever need to reload this image onto a blank SD card, just load the backed up image and hit the "Write" button instead.

Another related good read here, with suggestions for Mac/Linux.

Windows 7 Professional Backup to Synology NAS

Lately I've been enjoying exploring my Synology NAS. I have a DS213+ that I purchased after a recent scare in which some of my PC hard drives failed. Until then, proper backups were a distant afterthought, but data preservation has since become a neurotic pastime.

Finding the right tool to perform autonomous backups was actually harder than I thought. Synology is often touted as having fantastic software to go along with their sleek hardware, but I could not put up with using Data Replicator 3, which comes with the unit. I have somewhat over 1TB of crap (I'm a digital packrat...) that I wouldn't mind hanging on to, and absolutely need incremental backup capability. Data Replicator 3 would perform a complete data replication (ha ha) and then go and delete the older backups, depending on your settings. A single backup would take many hours of dominating network bandwidth. If there was an incremental backup option hidden somewhere, I could not find it before becoming fed up, and started looking at other options.

There are lots of supposed good (and free!) options out there, but I settled on Windows Backup. Here's my experience:

• It is already included in Windows 7, and readily available without initial setup.
• Any version of Windows 7 can back up to a local disk, but Windows 7 Professional can back up to a network location.
• Can run autonomously on a schedule.
• Folders can be "cherry-picked" as needed.

This post assumes that Synology DSM has already been set up, along with proper users/groups/folder permissions. Setting up the Windows side of the coin was easy enough. Note that since we are about to set up a way to automatically back up our stuff, we need to make sure that Windows Backup is actually running properly - check this post out if Windows Backup is behaving oddly or not starting. Otherwise, hit up the Start Menu -> Backup and Restore, then select "Set up backup" to get started.

Browse to your NAS location. Do note, that to be able to backup to a network location, you need a genuine and activated copy of Windows 7. If for some reason you haven't yet activated your copy, the setup will keep failing at this step, even if your NAS is visible on the network and has correct credentials entered.

You'll see a warning saying that other people on your network might access your backup, but that's why having good user settings and permissions on your Synology's end is a good idea. 

Once your network location is shown, hit next, wait for validation, then pick what you want to back up. I'm anal retentive, so I want to pick what gets stored:

From here, go nuts with your goods. You can even include a system image if you want some way to quickly restore your computer in case of nubbery. After that, review your settings, and you're done! All that remains is the actual backup. The first backup will take the longest, but the subsequent backups are indeed incremental, and should go much faster.

Windows backup seems to store files in a compressed state in a weird folder/zipfile hierarchy that I haven't dug into too much. It does save a tiny bit of space if that's your thing, but with a 3TB drive, it really wasn't a concern for me.

All in all, Windows backup seemed to work the most intuitively, and was seamless with my Synology unit.