BackupAssist Classic v14

BackupAssist Classic v14.0.3

Maintenance released February 20^th, 2025

New: added basic Server 2025 support

• All backup types, restores, and BMR recoveries are confirmed, including Exchange, SQL, and Hyper-V scenarios. CryptoSafeGuard and Cyber Black Box are also confirmed.
• Note that Exchange EGR on Server 2025 is not yet fully confirmed, though it seems most functionality is working.

New System Protection:

• Improve error message when the destination volume is sparse.
• Include a new warning BA6127 if automount is disabled and the backup fails.
• Improve stability through file copy retries where possible.
• Use fallback file system traversal when NTFS errors occur (also when using Legacy System Protection).
• Avoid infinite retries when write errors reoccur in early stages of reopening a vhd file.
• Fixed regression since 14.0.1, where non-critical deduplication volumes are automatically added to every BMR backup with VSS applications selected, even if they are not necessary or selected.

Other backup types:

• All backup types: Improve VSS warnings to indicate when the VSS writers are unstable. This could happen if the backup process is killed after VSS writers have become involved in a backup.
• Cloud Backup: Fix rare issue "Only one asynchronous reader is allowed time at one time" that could theoretically affect Cloud Backups on some multi-core machines.
• Cloud Backup: Fix “WebException” issues reported on rare installs of Cloud Backups caused by incorrect handling of some reparse points.
• Legacy System Protection: New jobs using Data Container will only use VHDX format in all cases.
• Network backups: Avoid retrying network writes and eventual timeouts if the destination becomes full.

Restores and Test Restores:

• Show a warning message if Hyper-V Granular restores are attempted from an unsupported dynamic disk.
• Avoid having CryptoSafeGuard Shield lock the whole destination drive during Test Restore of New System Protection backups.
• Fixed the workflow for Cloud Backup restores when the access keys used for backup have subsequently changed.

Exchange Granular Restore tool:

• Added support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 CU14.
• Fixed bug where Shared and Resource mailboxes were being restored into the Public Folder tree instead of their original mailboxes.
• Fixed a bug where enabling Debug logging didn't take effect until the program was restarted.

General/Installer/Reporting:

• Fixed email/SMTP regressions introduced in 14.0.2:
  • Pre-existing Email Server settings would be disabled upon upgrade (needed to be manually re-enabled only).
  • Mail settings UI could fail with an InvalidArgument exception if no non-standard browser was installed.
  • Fixed SMTP email sending errors caused by DNS bugs in library.
  • SMTP Server port field was not editable in some languages.
• Fixed UI regression in 14.0.2 for some languages.
• Added modern email authentication support for personal accounts (eg. Microsoft Outlook).
• Fixed FileLoadException when running vm-instant-boot.exe from a network path.
• Avoid hanging the console UI if a configured global network path is not reachable.
• Avoid showing a “Details” link in reports where there aren’t any extra details in a reporting section.
• Rename BA Prerequisite for Microsoft so it doesn’t still show BackupAssist v12.
• Avoid installation of obsolete RealSCSI component, which has been seen to flood the logs with unnecessary messages.
• In a very rare circumstance, the BackupAssist Service would be unable to continue, and would fail upon restarting. This has been fixed so that restarting in this scenario is now possible.
• Fixed the Export Settings that is failing on some machines due to a fault in JobService logic. The issue is silent, and causes the exported settings to fail imports on other machines.
• Fixed cases where a potential ransomware has been detected but no banner is shown.
• Allow SMTP configurations that do not follow the de-facto standards for ports, eg. using port 465 or 587 without server support for SSL/TLS.
• Avoid showing irrelevant drive encryption warning in the Discover Backups UI.
• Fixed rare cases where the duration of a backup is incorrectly shown with “< 1 second” in the report list.

BackupAssist Classic v14.0.2

Maintenance released October 30^th, 2024

New feature: Modern authentication support for sending email notifications

• New modern authentication options allowing users to authenticate and send email using “Office 365” or other email providers, including Google.
• The dedicated “Office 365” authentication type allows users to authenticate using a business or personal Office 365 email account. Click “Launch web browser to login”, enter the login credentials, and accept the permission request so that BackupAssist can securely send email from your account.
  • Note that BackupAssist does not store your credentials and cannot read emails or other content
• The alternative “Custom OAuth2” allows modern authentication using many other email providers, including Google and Office 365 if you prefer to use your own application. See your provider’s documentation on registering an OAuth application.
• NB. We will be providing a dedicated Google authentication option in the very near future.

BackupAssist Classic v14.0.1

Released September 26^th, 2024

Cloud Backup (includes important fixes)

• Fixed BMR for Disk-to-Cloud backups on Server 2016 servers with Active Directory and MBR firmware (including Gen 1 Hyper-V guests).
• Fixed BA6104 regression error after upgrade to v14 for Cloud Backups on systems with dynamic volumes (eg. software RAID).
• Fixed crash that could occur when configuring Azure Cloud Backup jobs using a connection string.
• Fixed BA950 warnings for Disk-to-Cloud (BMR) backups on some systems.
• Fixed timeout error during Test Restore of massive files in Cloud Backups.

System Protection (includes important fixes)

• Multiple fixes and improvements for New System Protection Backups and Test Restores of these backups (including BA8207 errors) even when the OS leaves inconsistent metadata in the snapshot.
• Fixed eject capability for new RDX destination introduced in v14.

Other important fixes

• CryptoSafeGuard - Fix issue causing temp files from CSG scanning to be left in the Windows temp directory. This issue can also cause very slow scanning and “IOException: The File exists” errors in the logs, and potentially could fill up the system disk in extreme cases.
• General - Fixed BA6999 error preventing backups from occurring on recovered systems.

Other changes

• Installer now supports Windows 10/11 and Server 2016 and later only.
• Data Container usage is no longer recommended except for NAS.
• Enhanced progress reporting per file in the Activity Monitor for System Protection, File Protection, and File Archiving (except tape).

BackupAssist Classic v14.0.0

Released July 17^th, 2024

NEW Disk to Cloud (D2C)

• Ability to choose “all critical volumes” (BMR) for cloud backups with the Cloud Backup Add-on.
• Detects and backs up system structure information as well as volume data.
• “Download from cloud” feature to support disaster recovery (DR) from D2C backups.
• Such “downloaded backups” work with Lifeline Recovery (incl Classic v12.0.* and ER 1.4.*).

NEW Desktop in MBC

• When registering to MBC on workstations, select Server edition or Desktop edition (with Cloud).
• Simple to use, cost effective monthly subscription, no keys or tokens required.

Cloud Backup

• Added new “Daily” backup scheme for Cloud Backups, with simple “number of backups to keep” retention settings (no longer limited to just 1 week of backups and GFS).
• Added ability to dynamic adjust to transfer rates upon request by cloud provider. This allows automatic handling of various provider limits, response types, and errors (for initial release this is off by default).
• Reduction of skipped files issues, via improved retry abilities for various cloud request issues, and automatic recovery from some types of metadata corruptions.
• Improved performance for backup of large files eg. Hyper-V guests.
• Added two Advanced threading options that can be enabled to reduce the amount of threading, which may improve performance on slower computers/destinations, available in the Cloud options UI.
• Preview release fix – backup of network paths has been corrected since 12.1.0p0 release.

Advanced imaging engine

• Dedicated Rdx destination for New Imaging backups.
• The list critical volumes process no longer depends on the presence of wbadmin, so backups can run without wbadmin being installed.
• Added ability to recover from more interrupted backup scenarios, for example where backups were killed during complex parts of merge processing.
• Added support for Aomei Partition Assistant created FAT partitions.
• Improved some obtuse error messages and related knowledgebase articles.
• Removed the limit of only 100 backup retention for backup jobs.
• Added missing “Customize schedule” button.
• Add option to disable the advanced NTFS performance optimization for cases where there are NTFS errors on source volumes and chkdsk cannot be run, available in the Imaging options UI.

Test Restore:

• Added Test Restore ability for File Archiving jobs.
• Performance optimization, disabled gathering of integrity information by default during File Protection backups, with new “Enable file integrity checking” option available in Replication options UI to turn this back on. With the option disabled, Test Restore can only perform read testing of backups. Enable the option to check file integrity.

Other enhancements:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2022 support has now been confirmed.
• BackupAssist WFH has been rebranded to BackupAssist Desktop to match branding in other markets. This is only a branding change and does not affect licensing or any functionality.
• Added wildcard capability for whitelisting paths for CryptoSafeGuard scanning.
• Obsoleted RSync and WebDAV backup destinations.
• Added ability to cancel queued jobs from the job list.
• Minor updates to EGR.
• Changed to utilise .Net Framework v4.7.2.
• During installation, notify users about potential upcoming “Callback Technologies” driver installation.
• Driver version numbers are now included in backup reports.

Fixes:

• Fixed RDP/Blackscreen issues after running some iSCSI backups.
• Fixed issue affecting Test Restore of Cloud Backups for files marked with Offline that are not also Sparse.
• Integrity databases from File Protection backups (~$bkint.db) are no longer restored as if they are backed up files.
• Fixed issue affecting Cloud Backups if windows updates were in progress during the backup.
• Fixed NAS test routine to support subdirectory-only access.
• Fixed discover and recovery from encrypted backups made on other machines.
• Fixed Exchange recovery capabilities for discovered backups.
• Fixed broken save option for media checking options in the Prepare Media screen.
• Avoid superfluous wbadmin errors in windows logs due to Cyber Black Box activity.
• Avoid using Internet Explorer when opening help links.
• Fixed issues seen by some users after change to daylight savings time.
• Fixed incorrect reporting of Data Container jobs’ RVR and GRC capabilities.
• Improved VSS errors raised for generic BA6124.
• Fixed incorrect OS version display for RecoverAssist RE on Windows 11.
• Fixed a service startup problem that could occur if a reboot happens while a backup job is running.
• Don’t leave redundant “*.bac.destination” in the local catalogues folder after backups.