Backup Forum - Backup4all

[TobyNorris]

I have been using your product since it was first released. I do mirror backups of several partitions. Every so often for some reason your program gets confused and refuses to recognize its own existing backup directory and instead creates a completely new directory. This is highly annoying and a major time waster for me. For example, I have one backup on an external hard drive that I regularly plug into my system via USB port. This external drive has a directory named PhotoBackup1. That directory on the external drive is supposed to be a mirror backup of partition on my PC internal hard drive. Normally, I use your GUI interface and tell your program to update my PhotoBackup1 and everything works fine. However, now every time I try to do a backup your program refuses to recognize its own backup directory named PhotoBackup1 and instead tries to create a new backup directory named PhotoBackup(1) and your program wants to create a brand new duplicate backup of all my files to PhotoBackup(1). The problem is that my PhotoBackup1 directory has the backup of nearly 500GB and there is not room to make another PhotoBackup(1) directory with all the same stuff. Please don't tell me that the only way out of this dilemma is to delete my existing backup and then create a brand new one that takes many long hours. I have had this problem before years ago and I have been hoping that it would be fixed by now. Please tell me what I am doing wrong to cause your program to no longer like the backup directory. Your support is much appreciated.

[Support]

Hi,

You don't need to delete the backup from destination.
The problem appeared because you probably changed the backup destination drive letter or you manually created a backup job with the same name.
The solution is to delete the backup job from Backup4all (no files will be deleted from destination).
After that you need to open in Backup4all the backup catalog (.bkc file) from destination. The backup job will be recreated in Backup4all and you will be able to update your existing backup.

[TobyNorris]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I made a change to my file system and the drive letter for that external HD did change. That is exactly what caused the problem. After I followed your instructions everything is back to normal and I am able to backup again with no problem. I hope I can remember this fix next time. Maybe you could put this on your FAQ. Thanks again for a great product and great service.