Using DeltaCopy to backup to a mapped network drive

July 16, 2010 9:34 AM

On Windows, is there a way to use DeltaCopy to backup to a mapped network drive? (the mapped drive is on a NAS)

It works fine when I backup to a local drive, but when I try to backup to the mapped drive, I get these lines in the log file:

Executing: rsync.exe -v -rlt -z --chmod=a=rw,Da+x --delete "/cygdrive/E/testFileToBackup.txt" "maincomp::targetMappedDrive/testFileToBackup.txt" @ERROR: chdir failed

rsync error: error starting client-server protocol (code 5) at /home/lapo/packaging/rsync-3.0.4-1/src/rsync-3.0.4/main.c(1504) [sender=3.0.4]

posted by atm to computers & internet (4 answers total)

If you're using Cygwin (which you are from the error message) the way to specify a SMB network share is //machine/share/directory/filename.ext. The drive doesn't need to be mapped to a letter. I have no idea what DeltaCopy is but if it's a front end for Cygwin's rsync then just throw it in the trash and use rsync directly. This "maincomp::drive" stuff is the problem -- it almost looks like the software is trying to specify a drive letter to a Cygwin app, which is not how it works; Cygwin apps speak POSIX paths, so it's /cygdrive/d/path, not D:\path.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:57 PM on July 16, 2010

Thanks Rhomboid, yes, I think DeltaCopy is a program that adds a gui to rsync. I was using it because I didn't want to attempt rsync on my own. Would I just use rsync in a command line script? If you know how, could you tell me what syntax I should use in the rsync command?
posted by atm at 7:40 PM on July 16, 2010

The log file entry is showing you the rsync command that it was trying to execute, so if you just clean up the syntax of the destination then you should be good to go. Alternatively, if DeltaCopy has a field for the destination that is free-form then you might be able to get it to work by changing that, i.e. try using a UNC path instead of a drive letter or vice versa.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:30 AM on July 17, 2010

I see the rsync switches used in the rsync command, but can you tell me how the target and destination should be entered because I don't quite understand how to do it? I'm backing up the folder e:\data and putting it in the folder \\nas\databackup which is mapped to my R: drive. (Maybe it's a DeltaCopy thing and not an rsync thing, but the "maincomp" is my computer's name and is the "server" part of the client/server DeltaCopy setup.) DeltaCopy's gui doesn't allow for free-form source or destination entry (I guess that's one of its "appeals").
posted by atm at 4:27 PM on July 17, 2010