Cloud Backup FAQ

Ultrasafe or Ultrasafe MAX account password lost

If the account is UltraSafe or UltraSafe Max and the password is lost, there will unfortunately be no way to recover any of the data that has been backed up. As we do not have the password stored on our systems, we will be unable to assist with its recovery.

What we can do for this case is help regain access to the account or help with the creation of a new passphrase so a new backup can be created. Please create a support ticket or start a chat and contact us for assistance.

Compression rate varies depending on the file types.
See details.
In Online Backup and Recovery Manager (OBRM) for Windows, click View/Restore.

In OBRM for macOS, click Recovery.

In OBRM for Android, click My Cloud.

  1. Sign in to your account in the Infrascale Dashboard.
  2. On the Home page, click the Device Management tab.
There are three types of accounts available: Regular, UltraSafe, and UltraSafe Max.
See details.

ShadowProtect licenses are purchased on a perpetual basis, meaning they will automatically renew every month unless:

  • The machine upon which the ShadowProtect license was activated was unable to reach the ShadowProtect licensing server for 30 days.
  • This could be caused by a network issue preventing access to the licensing server. Check your firewall status.

To resolve, you will need to cancel the existing license in the Dashboard and add activate a new license.

  • On the machine in question, all three of the following unique identifiers have been changed:
  1. machine name
  2. software ID
  3. hardware ID
  • If a perpetual license was not activated, and ShadowProtect was setup on a time-limited trial (14 days).

ShadowProtect can be installed and configured using a time-limited 14-day trial, and will expire after 14 days if a valid license is not activated.

Why Cloud Backup monitoring and alerting system did not capture that the license had expired?

Cloud Backup monitoring and alerting systems require the installation of OBRM on the same machine as ShadowProtect is configured. Once a valid cloud backup account has logged in to OBRM, a monitoring event for ShadowProtect will be created.

The events include:

  • backup started
  • backup completed
  • backup not run in more than 3 days (warning)
  • backup not run in more than 5 days (error)

The monitoring event is labeled as the relevant backup type.

These events can be viewed on the backup history page in the Infrascale Dashboard.

If OBRM is not installed alongside ShadowProtect, then there will be no monitoring events.

 

 

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Online Backup and Recovery Manager will retain all files that have been backed up, even ones that are deleted locally.

The only way to remove files from the cloud is by using the View/Restore button in the application and manually deleting the files. The backed up files will be removed if retention policy for locally deleted files is configured by user.

The initial backup will always take the longest. Subsequent backups will only upload the block level changes you make on your files, so it will run much quicker.

Other factors include the speed of your internet upload, the amount of data that you selected for backup, and your computers processing speed.

OBRM backs up data at the rate of about 2 to 4 GB per day for your initial backup. But if you have a fast connection and left undisturbed, you can backup up to 8 to 9 GB in a single day.

Once the initial backup has been completed, subsequent backups will only be for changes/updates which will greatly reduce the backup time.

  1. Sign in to your account in the Infrascale Dashboard.
  2. On the upper right, click your account name, and then click Billing.

Yes, Online Backup and Recovery Manager compresses data to speed up backup and recovery.

See details.

The confusion sometimes happens when backups are configured manually (manual selection of files/folders) and certain folders are added to the backup set that appear to be symlinks or folder redirections, like C:UsersAll Users. This particularly happens when the whole folder C:Users is added to the backup set and then some access errors appear in the report for the files that are located in C:ProgramData.

The first question is why the latter folder is backed up despite it has never been added to the backup set?

This is by design of Windows that the folder C:UsersAll Users is a symlink to C:ProgramData:

  • Only C:ProgramData actually exists as a “real” folder.
  • C:UsersAll Users is a symbolic link to C:ProgramData. That is C:UsersAll Users points to C:ProgramData, so if you navigate to the former, you are automatically redirected to the latter. That is why they appear identical.
  • C:ProgramData is known as the “All Users Profile” and is required for the correct operation of Windows 7. Please do not delete it, if Windows even lets you.
  • C:UsersAll Users is there for backward compatibility. Poorly-written applications do not retrieve the path of the All Users Profile correctly. They say, “Windows, give me the name of the profiles directory.” Windows says, “C:Users.” And the program says, “OK, I know the All Users profile is called All Users and it is inside the profiles directory, so it must be C:UsersAll Users.” Really, what the program should say to Windows is, “Windows, give me the path of the all users profile,” to which Windows would say, “C:ProgramData.”
These account types differ in data compression and security levels, as well as in features available to them.
See details.
By default, there is no limit on the file versions stored in the cloud for the File and Folder Backup and the Advanced Folder Backup (with Forever Save policy).
Backup accounts, which use our cloud servers, are not affected by many file versions since only one MAX Baseline is calculated against their used space.
Nevertheless, if needed, the company, partner, and distributor accounts can use special tools to clean up old and deprecated file versions from other backup accounts.
See details.
Background

In configurations when there are two backup products running simultaneously, there is a high possibility that all incremental or differential backups will be transformed into Full.

Explanation

Two backup solutions can not create incremental or differential backups simultaneously because incremental backups fully depend on the full backups. In other words, full is the starting point for increments. Consequently, each backup solution will have a separate starting point (full backup) and incremental chain will be inconsistent for both backup solutions.

For example, review the situation when there are two backup products and each of them has “Full and Incremental” backup policy configured. What happens is:

    1. Backup solution #1 (BS1) Full 00:00
    2. Backup solution #2 (BS2) Full 00:05
    3. BS1 Inc 01:00

What worth knowing is that Exchange and SQL are storing the information about the last backup only. So, what happens on stage 3, is BS1 requests information from SQL/Exchange about the last backup time, and receives “00:05” in return. BS1 sees that it does not have any full backup on that time, and considers that something went wrong. Therefore, to prevent any data corruption and keep the backups consistent, it converts the incremental into full.

Solution

There are three viable solutions:

  1. Use only one backup solution for backing up Exchange and SQL. We recommend the following approach.
  2. Use “Fulls only” backup policy.
  3. Take as the fact that there is high chance for incremental or differential to be converted into full.
Online Backup and Recovery Manager (OBRM) for Windows saves the restored data in the default folder. To view or change the default folder, go to Menu › Advanced Options › Folders.
OBRM for macOS asks where to save the restored data each time a file or folder is restored.

This scenario is not tested, but the cache location is simple storage and should not prove to be an impediment.

When setting up a backup, go to Settings › Folder Settings › Select Network Location.

As a warning, there will be communication over the connection to the storage, which could slow down performance.

That Java applet is pretty essential. It is responsible for decryption and download of the UltraSafe file. Do not be fooled by the fact that it is a Java applet—it runs locally, and thus preserving the “we never upload the password” UltraSafe credo.

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