Sometimes making large-scale changes to your computer is unavoidable. Please bear in mind, though, that such changes may affect your Storage Protect backups.
The lists below cover the most common types.
Changes that cause Storage Protect to resend data
There are several sets of circumstances in which the Storage Protect client software can be inadvertently caused to resend data unnecessarily. If you find that you have made changes of the sort listed below, then you are likely to cause a data resend.
- Renaming your Windows machine
In Windows, the software stores data by UNC path. On a PC called my-laptop, C: would be represented as \\my-laptop\c$ and D: as \\my-laptop\d$. Renaming the machine changes that path, causing a complete resend of data under the new path, in this example \\my-renamed-laptop\c$ and \\my-renamed-laptop\d$.
Please avoid renaming your Windows machine unless absolutely necessary, and if you do have to then please e-mail us at hfs@ox.ac.uk.
- Changing drive names or drive letters
Similarly, changing a drive name will cause a resend of data from that drive. All data on a Mac external drive renamed from /Volumes/my-external-drive to /Volumes/my-renamed-external-drive would be resent.
In Windows, varying the order in which you attach extra drives will assign different drive letters, so the backup client will resend the data as if it were a different drive.
- Moving, renaming, or changing permissions on data
This will generally also cause the client to resend that data. A folder called data, renamed to old-data, will be regarded as new, so Storage Protect will resend the entire contents of that folder, including all sub-folders. Changes of permissions usually also occasion resends. We therefore request that large-scale changes to your data be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Other changes
There are other changes that are system-wide which generally do not cause a resend of your data, but can have other unforeseen consequences:
- Changing operating system (OS) by upgrading an existing machine
If you intend to upgrade an existing machine then please see Install the Storage Protect software to upgrade to the correct version for your new OS.
If your new OS is not listed, we recommend that you delay upgrading until a supported version of the backup client software is released. Storage Protect nodes seen to be using an unsupported OS may be locked, with their contents preserved until the relevant client software version is available. Please note that we do not support OS betas or release candidates.
If your new OS is listed, upgrade the backup client software immediately after you have upgraded your OS. This is because new versions of the backup software do not support the older OS, with the results of such backups being unpredictable. There is no need to uninstall the old version of the backup software before installing the new one.
- Changing OS by moving to a new machine
If you are moving to a similar OS, for example replacing a machine running Windows 10 with one running Windows 11, then you may keep your existing Storage Protect nodename.
If you are changing platform, between Windows, Mac and Linux, then please register a new HFS Storage Protect node. This is because the backup software does not support cross-platform restores, so you cannot swap between Windows, Mac and Linux. If you do, you may corrupt your account and so render your data inaccessible.
- Moving your computer's location
DNS/IP address changes are not important, so moving your machine and backing up from a different location will not cause any problems or cause data to be resent.
