NovaBACKUP
Confirm the validity of a DR Image by Mounting the DR Image volume as a drive letter (Virtual Drive) in Windows.
NovaBACKUP, starting with v15, have a way to mount a DR image volume to a drive letter in Windows (as a virtual drive) to check if the image is valid and to be able to perform single file restore of files from within a completed DR image. It is not so obvious how to utilize that feature so this is the guide:
First of all you can only mount a DR image to a drive letter in Windows, as a virtual drive, if the DR image itself is stored on a locally connected storage device. A DR image located on a network path cannot be mounted even though the file browsing interface allows you to browse to a network path to select the DR image, the image will not mount if it is located on a network path. Copy the DR image(s) to a locally connected storage device such as a USB hard drive in order to do this if that is the case.
To confirm that a Full, Differential or Incremental Disaster Recovery (DR) image is valid you can use the "Mount backup image volume to a drive letter" feature inside NovaBACKUP, running in Windows, from the "Home tab -> Disaster Recover Wizard -> Launch Disaster Recovery Tool for Backup/Restore/Boot CD Creation -> Tools" area of NovaBACKUP running in Windows. You mount that .NDF file as a Virtual Drive in Windows to mount all of the volumes contained in the image to a virtual drive letter in Windows. If the volume does not mount then the DR image is probably not fully valid. When you go to mount the DR image, whether it is a Full DR or Differential/Incremental DR, you will by default only be able to browse for .NDF (Full DR), to browse and mount Differential/Incremental DR files you will have to change the "Files of type:" pull down menu to "All Files (*.*)" to see the DR Differential (.NDD) or .DR Incremental (.NDI) image files to mount those type of DR images to a virtual drive in Windows. If the Mount does not work follow the instructions below to see why that can be and what you can do to correct that. If you have followed all of the instructions in the following guide and the DR image volume still cannot mount then that DR image is probably not 100% valid.
If when clicking the "Mount" button after selecting the volume to mount you get a message about"Unable to mount" right away, first make sure you are not mounting a DR image located on a network path as that is not supported, copy that DR image file to a locally connected storage device such as a USB hard drive and retry this operation.
If you recently updated to version 19, and are now unable to mount image backups please follow these steps
Please follow this procedure to update/repair the Image Backup Mount Drivers in NovaBACKUP 19.1 when updating from a previous version:
- Locate the setup file you used to install the current version of NovaBACKUP on your machine
- Run this setup file, when it starts select "Maintenance", "Next", followed by "Change"
- Select the drop-down to the left of "NovaBACKUP Image Backup"
- Select the arrow next to "Virtual Disk Driver"
- Choose the option "Will be installed on local hard drive"
- Select "Next" until you "Finish", if prompted to reboot, choose "Yes"
- Close the "NovaBACKUP Download Installer" dialog if it is open
- You should now be able to mount an Image Backup
NOTE: You must reboot the machine to allow changes to the registry\drivers to be applied.
NOTE: Warning regarding attempting to execute new DR image jobs, set to overwrite mode, which attempt to overwrite existing DR images and that have already been mounted as a drive letter using the DR mount feature, will fail because the file is still open by Windows. This should be obvious but if you attempt to execute a new DR image backup which utilizes Overwrite write mode and you have a DR image volume mounted as a drive letter in Windows then any new DR images will fail to save since they are trying to overwrite an existing file in use by Windows because of the DR image being mounted.
Because of the "Disaster Recovery Mount image volume as drive letter" feature if someone had mounted a DR image .NDF/.NDD/.NDI from the DR Tools area and then attempts to run another DR image which is set to "Overwrite" for the write mode (the default write mode is Overwrite).
The DR Error code seen in these cases after a few minutes of execution (when trying to take a new DR Full/Diff/Inc image that was attempting to overwrite the existing, which would be the default option for DR writing):
Result = 1, ErrorCode = c0000001 c0000240.70013.1638.69
-and/or-
Result = -2147023170, ErrorCode = 0