Hi there,

For many of my clients (who are almost all small businesses) I use free client PC backup software.
Since people almost awlays insist on using their Desktop and My Documents to store important business documents (and I can't really stop them), in addition to using server shares, I use freeware backup software solutions for the client PCs to make a daily copy of their information to the server. From the server, it's automatically included in the server's daily or weekly tape/online backups.

Most small companies don't want the additional expense of client PC backup solutions in addition to the expensive server backup software & hardware.
I used to use Titan which was great, but that's now called GFI Backup and is still freeware.
Each client PC has a daily scheduled backup to the server, which works very well and of course are all set at different times of the working day.
Problem is, there's no real way of policing and monitoring the efficacy of these individual backups.

What I would love is a batch file or small software solution that monitors the state of these user-specific backup folders on the server hd, and for it to alert me in some way if it finds that a daily backup did not complete sucessfully for any of the client PCs.

Can anyone think of a way of achieving this? A daily batch file to check file dates? Or a software solution that runs on the server and then emails me or lets me know in some other way that something is amiss? I can't use folder synchs, since more often than not we're talking about PST files as well, which have to use some form of open file copy option (because the copy job runs while their Outlook remains open) which does come with GFI Backup but not, I believe, achievable within offline/synched folders.

Many thanks all,
Diz

If you've got a server then simply redirect the users my docs & desktop etc to folders on the server (via group policy if you're using AD or manually if you're not).
Then just backup those folders with the server backup.

Yes, I do that if they are on the domain.
However, since many of my clients already have their systems setup when I start supporting them, I often find that they're not members of the domain.
They often don't want to change that since their profile is setup just the way they like it, and of course some of them use laptops, and the redirect doesn't work when they're offsite.

Still looking.....Thanks though.

Would allwaysync or the microsoft synctoy work for you?

Does good old fashioned XCopy not work any more? You could always set it up so it only copies new files or those which have changed...

any sync tool will work, I think.
What I am looking for mainly is a way of centralising my monitoring of the effectiveness (or failure) of daily backups from Client PCs to the server, without having to manually inspect them each time.
Thanks.