StorageCraft ShadowProtect Offline Backup

How to perform an offline backup with ShadowProtect

In this tutorial I will walk you through performing an offline backup of my SQL server running Windows 2008 R2 with StorageCraft ShadowProtect Recovery CD. My server is currently a virtual server however you can follow this method to backup a physical server also. The version of Recovery CD that I’m using is 2.1.1 x64

ShadowProtect offline backup

1. Boot the server using the ShadowProtect Recovery CD. Click on the Disk Map tab. You can see here that I have 2 drives. I want to backup the first drive only as my second drive is where I store all my backups. Windows 2008 R2 creates a System Reserved volume of 105MB and this is the volume I will backup first. I right click on System Reserved and select Backup Volume.

2. Select perform a fllbackup and click Next.

3. Select a destination for your backups. Click the harddrive icon above the Name field. I pointed this to my D:Backups. I will place my backups into D:BackupsShadowProtect. Click Next.

4. In this window you can change the File Name by clicking on the name or just use the default. Click Next.

5. Select a compression method, I always use the Standard method. Optionally give the backup a password. You can also split the backup files into smaller pieces. Optionally type a comment. Click Finish.

6. In the Tasks tab you can see the status of the backup job. This backup task has completed.

7. Now we will repeat the same steps to backup the second volume. This is where the C: sits for my Windows Server and my SQL databases. Right click the volume and select Backup Volume.

8. Perform a full backup.

9. Select the destination for the backup files

10. You can change the File Name by clicking on the file name, or just accept the defaults. Click Next.

11. I will use the default options here and click Finish.

12. Again here you can see in the tasks tab the status or completion of the backups jobs.

13. You can also mount a backup image and browse the files within it. Click on the Drives Tab and click on the shield with the magnifier glass. Mount your drive if it isn’t already and browse to your shadowprotect backup files. Select the backup that you wish to mount and click Ok.

14. The backup image mounts and you can now browse the files and folders contained within this image.

Disclaimer:
All the tutorials included on this site are performed in a lab environment to simulate a real world production scenario. As everything is done to provide the most accurate steps to date, we take no responsibility if you implement any of these steps in a production environment.