Can't restore from drive on home LAN

Using TI 10 I can backup an image to an internal drive on a 2nd computer connected to my LAN. But when I try to restore from this drive, TI doesn't see the drive.

No problem seeing an external drive connected to the computer to which I am trying to restore, but I can't see the network drive.

Is there a way to see this network drive? Do I need to use a different version of TI?

Thanks......

 

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading here that network based backups are not all that reliable with TI, so I'm not surprised. Even if you do get it to recognize the drive, then you have the issue of the LAN being slow compared to other connectivity options.

 

TI Home will restore an archive over a LAN but the Linux has to be happy with your network card.

Try typing in the location and the filename of the archive using the UNC method. \\servername\share\path\filename
if I recall correctly.

If you have a 100Mbit LAN remember that it is a theoretical 4.8 times slower than USB2. I don't believe wireless LAN is supported and its speed would be even worse anyway.

I do store the occasional archive on a network drive as a second or third level backup but my plan, should I ever need to use one of them, would be to copy it to a USB drive first and then plug it into the machine needing restoring.

 

That's smart........now why didn't I think of that? Because I'm not as smart as you when it comes to backups, and probably because my brain has turned to jello these past couple of weeks working through all my TI problems.

The network drive was my third level backup, following an external drive and another partition on the same drive.

I haven't given up totally on TI, and I am painstakingly going through the process of doing (almost) a test restore on both my computers. I don't actually complete the restore, but I do boot from the Trial TI 2009 disk and make sure that TI can see all my drives. Thus far so good, except for the network drive.......but you gave me a workaround for that. Thanks.........

 

Glad to help. Be sure you do a validate with the TI CD as part of your test.

 

Yea, I forgot that was important.......in the morning.

 

If you can create a TI 2009 Trial rescue CD, it may have the network drivers to see the remote drive.

However, copying the backup to a USB drive and then restoring it from that drive attached you your computer (as SeekForever said) will probably take less time than actually restoring across the network.

Of course, you could upgrade your network to full Gigabit.

 

Backing up and restoring over a Gigabit LAN is really nice. I am able to achieve the full speed of the hard disks (about 60 MBytes/sec) across the LAN. For all intents and purposes it's just as fast as using an internal disk.

 

I am using the TI 2009 Trial rescue CD, but I guess it doesn't have my network drivers.......no big deal.

This gigabit network........are we still talking wireless, or are we now into fiber optics, cables, etc? Can you get wireless routers at that speed; if so, what is the cost? Just curious.

 

1000Mbps (gigabit) networking is wired. It can use standard Cat 5e cable, though Cat 6 is probably recommended (I have Cat 5e and it does fine). Gigabit routers and switches are not that expensive for standard "home" types. Wireless routers that include gigabit wired connections can also be used, but they're usually limited to four ports.

On my network, I get about USB 2 speeds (usually around 1.6GB/min). On my internal drives and eSATA drive, I usually get 3-4GB/min.

 

Wireless, no. Wired Gigabit Ethernet hardware is not that expensive. I found an 8-port Gigabit switch for $30. By some fluke it was less expensive than the wired 100 MBps switch that I had originally intended to buy.

 

You also need 1000Mbps network cards at each machine you plan to share data with at that speed.

Cat5e cable is fine, especially in the typical home network where cable lengths are nowhere near the 100 meter max length specified.

I did have a couple of short cords from a Linksys 100Mbps router and network card kit that would not work at 1000Mbps.

 

Last August I purchased a WD World Book II 2TB drive and recently installed it since my Maxtor 250GB USB drive just wasn't large enough. This drive is a network drive and frankly I should have returned it to Costco although they'd wonder why I had it so long before setting up. Fun doing 200GB backups that take 12 hours. No doubt a full restore would also take that long

I never thought of copying the image file from the WD net drive to my other drive a WD Mirror Edition that thankfully is a USB drive.

Can I copy the .tib file that contains the full image over to my other drive? Obviously I would throw it into another folder so it doesn't mix with the current TI backups on my other machine. Then I could restore from the USB drive if required, although frankly it takes 10 hours to backup 300GB. I realize I can copy any files from one drive to another, but does the image file contain all the partition info inside the tib file? I ask this rather dumb question because when the image backup begins it takes time setting partitions although they're no doubt part of the tib file.

Sure miss the Maxstor drives as they were quite fast on the USB and were 7,200RPM.