How to Save Backup Report Logs to an Alternate Location

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

SUMMARY

Windows 2000 Backup (Ntbackup.exe) does not have a command-line parameter to specify the location to which reports are saved after a backup operation is finished. The backup report is saved in the profiles folder of the user who performed the backup operation. You can view the reports by clicking Report on the Tools menu in Backup.

Backup keeps only the last 10 backup reports. The corresponding Backup##.log files are located in the "Documents and Settings\User_Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data" folder.

You may want to maintain more than the last 10 backup reports, especially if you have a large number of backup tapes or you perform a large number of backup operations and you need to reference the old reports (log files) on a regular basis. This is also useful if multiple users perform backup operations on the same computer and you want all the backup reports to be copied to a common shared folder to make gaining access to the reports easier.

This article describes how to copy and rename the log files so that they are stored in an alternate folder using a Date-time.log naming convention while still allowing Windows 2000 to maintain its own reports (the last 10) in the normal fashion.

MORE INFORMATION

This article contains a sample batch file that you can use to start Backup. The batch file copies the current (the last 10) reports to a temporary location, delete the reports, and then starts Backup. After Backup is finished and quits, the batch file copies the newly created backup report to another temporary location so it can be renamed, and then copied to a final depository folder. Finally, the backup reports folder is repopulated with the most current (the last 10) backup reports, followed by folder clean-up operations.

NOTE: This batch file copies only the newly created backup report log file to the final depository folder. It does not copy or rename any pre-existing reports. However, over time (after 10 backup sessions using the batch file), all the reports existing in the user's profile folder will also be located in the final depository folder.

You can further automate this method if you substitute the stand-alone ntbackup.exe command with ntbackup using command-line parameters, and then schedule the complete batch file using Task Scheduler.

To view a list of all available switches and parameters for Ntbackup.exe, type the following line at a command prompt:

ntbackup /?

Sample.bat Batch File

REM Be sure the final destination folder (C:\Bkuplogs) exists before using this batch file. (mkdir c:\bkuplogs)
REM This folder is used as the final resting place for the logs after copying and renaming them.

echo off
mkdir C:\oldlogs
copy "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data\backup*.log" c:\oldlogs\*.* /y

del "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data\*.log"

ntbackup.exe

mkdir C:\templog
copy "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data\backup*.log" c:\templog\*.* /y

del "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\WindowsNT\NTbackup\Data\*.log"

FOR /F "usebackq tokens=1" %%n IN (`dir c:\templog /b`) DO @FOR /F
"usebackq tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%d IN (`date /t`) DO @FOR /F "usebackq
tokens=1,2 delims=: " %%t IN (`time /t`) DO @ren c:\templog\%%n %%d%%e%%f-%%t%%u.log

copy c:\templog\*.* c:\bkuplogs
del c:\templog\*.log
rmdir /q c:\templog
copy "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data\backup*.log" c:\oldlogs\*.* /y

copy c:\oldlogs\*.log "C:\Documents and Settings\bkupuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data\*.*" /Y

del c:\oldlogs\*.log
rmdir /q c:\oldlogs

Additional query words: different

Keywords : kbtool
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto