I was sent this very usefull article which simplifies a process that can frustrate to the point of mania. Here it is.........

YOU MAY HAVE READ MANY SOLUTIONS LIKE THIS:

1.Locate the root directory of the drive or the file share where the backup was originally stored.
2.Copy the Mediaid.bin file.
3.Locate the root directory of the location where the backup is currently stored.
4.Paste the Mediaid.bin file.For example, if the original backup location is drive D, and the backup was moved to drive E, copy the Mediaid.bin file that is located in the root directory of drive D to the root directory of drive E.
5.Try to restore another backup file.
If the backup location is inaccessible, or if the Mediaid.bin file is corrupted, contact Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) for help rebuilding the Mediaid.bin file.

For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Support Services telephone numbers, and for information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support 
OR THIS :
Error Description:When you use the Restore Files option to restore a backup file on a Windows Vista-based computer, you may receive the following error message:The restore did not finish successfully. Error code:
The backup file could not be found. Check your hardware configuration or restore from a different backup (0x8100001A).and the Mediaid.bin file is corrupted or lost, then use the following instructions for rebuilding it:

1.Unzip the sdutil.zip file and rename it from sdutil.ex_ to sdutil.exe
2.Copy the sdutil.exe to the root of the driver which contains the backup files
3.Open the folder Catalogs located bellow the folder BackupSet “aaaammdd” “xxxxxx”
4.Copy the file GlobalCatalog.wbcat to the root of this HD
5.Go to Start -> Execute and type CMD.exe
6.At this “DOS” window type: sdutil mediaid GlobalCatalog.wbcat [HD letter (as an example D:\)]
7.A new MediaID.bin is created
8.Try to restore the backup as usual using the advanced restore option and next the option restore an older backup created in this machine
9.If done: it’s over!



FORGET ALL THAT CRAP JUST DO THIS:
1:GO TO BACKUP AND RESTORE.
2: SELECT ADVANCED RESTORE.
3:SELECT RESTORE BACKUP FROM ANOTHER COMPUTER, YES I KNOW ITS NOT ANOTHER COMPUTER BUT THIS WILL ALLOW FOR THE MEDIA.ID NOT MATCHING!
4:CHOOSE THE BACKUP THAT IS NOT WORKING AND IS CAUSING YOU TO LOSE HAIR ,NAILS AND SLEEP AND POSSIBLY TO THINK ABOUT SEEKING OUT THE SERVICES OF A EXTREMELY LARGE HAMMER LOL
5.CLICK SELECT FILES FROM BACKUP, JUST SELECT THE ENTIRE FOLDER WHICH WILL BE C OR D OR E OR WHATEVER DRIVE YOU BACKED UP.
6. SELECT RESTORE TO A DIFFERENT LOCATION, THEN CHOOSE LOCATION, LIKE A NICE CLEAN LARGE DRIVE. DO NOT SELECT ORIGINAL YOU CAN DO THAT LATER WE JUST WANT TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE FILES CLEANLY AND QUICKLY WITH NO ERROR.
7.CLICK RESTORE FILE AND MAINTAIN ORIGINAL FILE STRUCTURE AND HEY PRESTO SIT BACK AND WAIT, THIS WILL BYPASS ALL THAT CRAP OF MEDIA.ID AND USING THE PAIN SDUTIL TOOL. HOPE THIS HELPS…..PEACE OUT FROM HUNTER
🙂 🙂 🙂 :thumbsup: :thumbup:

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I recently bought a 1Gb USB hard drive for £65 - just save your documents and other important files and hope for the best 😉

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Acronis true image, Norton ghost... In Linux there is dd, Macs use time machine. There's plenty of solutions about that will make life far easier then that lot.

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The simplest backup software I've ever used on the PC is Cobian Backup:

http://www.cobiansoft.com/index.htm 

You just configure the folders you want to backup, when you want to back them and it just mirrors the folders wherever you've told it to.

Meaning you can go into the backup and recover any one file, a whole folder or the entire backup.

You can set compression and time stamped backups if you want, or just keep it simple.

And it's free :thumbsup:

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.......root directory of the drive or the file share where the backup was originally stored
.........Mediaid.bin file.
........Locate the root directory of the location where the backup is currently stored.
.....Paste the Mediaid.bin file.......if the original backup location is drive D, and the backup was moved to drive E, copy the Mediaid.bin file that is located in the root directory of drive D to the root directory of drive E.
.....restore another backup file.
......backup location is inaccessible, or if the Mediaid.bin file is corrupted, contact Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) for help rebuilding the Mediaid.bin file.

The backup file could not be found. Check your hardware configuration or restore from a different backup (0x8100001A).and the Mediaid.bin file is corrupted or lost, then use the following instructions for rebuilding it:

Unzip the sdutil.zip file and rename it from sdutil.ex_ to sdutil.exe
GlobalCatalog.wbcat to the root of this HD
......“DOS” window type: sdutil mediaid GlobalCatalog.wbcat [HD letter

MEDIA.ID AND USING THE PAIN SDUTIL TOOL????

....Acronis true image, ......Norton ghost... In Linux....dd, Macs......time machine........???

Do I have a Linux?? Do I need one?? :confused:
Where can I buy a "time machine"???

I feel that the 21st century is leaving me behind...... :(

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time machine........

I feel that the 21st century is leaving me behind...... :(

That's not what he meant by time machine 😉

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I recently bought a 1Gb USB hard drive for £65 - just save your documents and other important files and hope for the best ;)

The next stage is to buy 2 USB hard drives of different makes, back up to both. Unplug both of them and keep one at you mum's house.

Penrhynman

I just use an old backup program that was free with a computer magazine and has the option for straight file copy, plug in an external drive and go back to the telly....

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For those of us with a proper operating system, I recommend using software RAID. I use this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdadm 
with two 500G drives.

For those of you with Windows, well, sheesh, whatever!

Chris.

I recommend using software RAID.

I hate to go all Enterprisey, sysadmin and preachy at You, but RAID is not a backup solution.

Disk Imaging is, Copying and pasting important files to a different drive - sort of works. RAID is simple Redundancy, as the acronym, (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks), implies.

I've seen too many people lose data to array's kicking it, from a simple RAID0 stripe (Might as well kick your drives, the data loss is a 'comin!) to a full fat RAID60 controller taking out a whole SAN that did not have a viable backup.

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Its not so much the backing up but more the restoring of access to allow a back-up.

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MY problem is with RAID itself, and it's continued perception as a Backup solution. If people think they have a valid backup, they stop using other solutions.

It can be anywhere from hard to impossible to restore from a RAID array that's just gone tits up. I'm not going on a rant about the abomination that is software RAID, though it's less of an issue these days with most home PC's under-utilising a half decent Quadcore CPU.

In the event of a recoverable disk failure, up to the limits of the aray, You will get slow to glacially slow I/O on the storage subsystem while rebuilding, and with today's disk sizes, it also takes forever, and the array is vulnerable while it's rebuilding.

Should You have a Multiple disk failure (it's not an edge or extreme case either), then there's a good chance You just waved goodbye to a number of Terabytes of data.

I used to build servers/systems that were designed, as far as was practical, to avoid *any* data loss, and I still keep abreast of things, should I ever lose my senses and want to go and work in that environment again.

I know the home environment is different, but RAID is still not a backup, irrespective of being located in a nice aircon supplied, UPS fed Data centre, or on a posh laptop in the middle of Africa.

Okay, geek rant over... You may now resume your normal underground shenanigans.

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RAID is not a backup solution.

Spot on. I will add my confirmation of this too. I am told occasionally that I shouldn't comment on things that are outside my region/profession/interest area/etc, but just for once I can make a legitimate comment! 😉

RAID is not a backup solution.

Spot on. I will add my confirmation of this too. I am told occasionally that I shouldn't comment on things that are outside my region/profession/interest area/etc, but just for once I can make a legitimate comment! ;)

and for that intelligent observation you are hereby entitled to change back your signature, "who turned off the lights"
Yes I cracked the obscure language that you used for this.
:lol:

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I am proud of my signature! 😠

ahh backups so easy to think you have them working till it comes to crunch.
Raid is not a backup but goot to put your backups on.
The osx time machine is brilliant, simple to use both to backup and restore and as its part of the OS its pretty hard to brake.

Its not too har to backup properly on linux as well.
1) Build your os on top of an LVM or btrfs volume.
2) stop all services that you care about having running when the backup is used.
3) make a snapshot.
4) start up services again.
5) copy the snapshot somewhere.

No idea how to do this safely on windows without spending a lot of money.
Its vital to stop the services for a consistant backup however if you don't care aboit your data you can skip this step and just copy stuff then hope for the best at restore time. This si the approach of most windows backup software 😞 and a surprising amount of linux stuff too.
of and dd is bad unless you have unmounted the fs first ..

MY problem is with RAID itself, and it's continued perception as a Backup solution.

Depends which RAID.

I am using RAID1 - i.e. exactly the entire dataset written to two disks. Therefore one is a backup of the other. If one goes tits up, all the data is still on the other.

It is just an automatic way for me to save each file on two disks.

Chris.

ahh backups so easy to think you have them working till it comes to crunch.
Raid is not a backup but goot to put your backups on.
The osx time machine is brilliant, simple to use both to backup and restore and as its part of the OS its pretty hard to brake.

Its not too har to backup properly on linux as well.
1) Build your os on top of an LVM or btrfs volume.
2) stop all services that you care about having running when the backup is used.
3) make a snapshot.
4) start up services again.
5) copy the snapshot somewhere.

No idea how to do this safely on windows without spending a lot of money.
Its vital to stop the services for a consistant backup however if you don't care aboit your data you can skip this step and just copy stuff then hope for the best at restore time. This si the approach of most windows backup software 😞 and a surprising amount of linux stuff too.
of and dd is bad unless you have unmounted the fs first ..

Yeah, dead easy for a demented, drunken, crippled pensioner like me !! 😢 😢 :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :glare: :glare: :sneaky: :sneaky: 😞 😞

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MY problem is with RAID itself, and it's continued perception as a Backup solution.

Depends which RAID.

I am using RAID1 - i.e. exactly the entire dataset written to two disks. Therefore one is a backup of the other. If one goes tits up, all the data is still on the other.

It is just an automatic way for me to save each file on two disks.

Chris.

So how will your "solution" work if you find that for some reason you want to restore a file (mirrored on your two disks) that you accidentally deleted a couple of weeks ago? Or if you need to revert to an earlier version of a document? That's where REAL backups come in handy. Like those that know have said, RAID is NOT a backup solution, it is only a safeguard against hardware failure. And it should not be promoted as a BU product! It provides better security in the event of disk failure, but there are many other critical situations where Backups work, but where RAID will be as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Seriously, RAID is just a level of redundancy. It can and does fail outright. Should you be rebuilding your RAID1 array from the mirror and bad things happen, bang goes Your data.

I use a RAID60 array over 8 1TB drives, which is about as "bombproof" as RAID gets (2 dead spindles per sub-array), yet I still use a Drive image of my Non-RAID'd boot drive on an external drive, drag n drop my essential/non-replaceable files to the same external drive, then manually burn them to Blu-ray, and store them off site. a RAID60 array is not, for most sane people, a sensible option, but I put my money where my mouth is regarding backups.

I've seen many a dead array, of all RAID levels. Hell, I'm usually cursing the "IT Consultant" that recommended they use it as a "backup", while I try to salvage data from it. RAID is not, and was never intended as, a backup. It is merely a way to keep things running should a platter or two crap themselves, so You can swap a spare spindle in, and once it's rebuilt, you *should* be back to normal. Disaster proof it is not.

It may work for You, and good luck to You with it, but please, don't advertise it as a "backup solution". In addition to having worked with this stuff at an enterprise level, I also taught myself a £1600 lesson about backups. Vogon (or other equivalent DR company) clean room recovery is fecking expensive, and probably your only decent option with a truly goosed disk. With the above solution, I haven't lost a single byte to anything other than my own stupidity, but for most people, it's total and utter overkill.

A simple drive image to an external drive will suffice, possibly using Optical media stored offsite (read:- at a mates/relatives house) as a fall-back measure, should both the local and external media get nuked in some fashion, such as a house fire.

I know I go on, but I've seen many "backups" using RAID simply keel over, and I don't want it to happen to anyone on here, given the high likelihood of a wealth of Mine-related information likely sitting on someone's hard drives.

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