B&R Free Advanced Edition - ? re failed backup

I'm helping a friend setup a backup solution. I setup B&R Free Advanced, did a full image, then scheduled incrementals on a daily basis, all of this going to an external USB drive.

Recently Windows 7 "lost" the external drive. I fixed that for her then checked on the backups. The last file date on the external drive was 11/22, the day the drive stopped functioning. I then looked at the log file for B&R, expecting to see a "failed" note for the backups from 11/22 to yesterday.

Instead it shows "successful"! Under "Type Of Operation" it says "virtual".

What the heck is going on?! Of what use is a "virtual" backup if it's never written to disk? If the backup media is not available I would expect the program to provide some alert so the user knows there's a problem.

She previously used Acronis and had that setup to email her the status of each operation. So when it failed, and it did too often, she'd at least know it.

She's an author so daily, bullet proof, backups are an absolute requirement.

We were trying out the free version of B&R before making a purchase. This issue tells me we need to continue looking for a solution. Before doing so however I wanted to understand what's happening.

 

Bump.