Release notes

Below is a listing of all BackupAssist ER releases.

BackupAssist ER 1.4.4

January 19, 2024

Cloud Backup

  • S3-compatible backups no longer use the ListAllMyBuckets API call, improving the ability for users to configure privacy settings for their clients’ buckets.
  • Multiple improvements to improve performance and handling of very large backups (>20 million chunks).
  • Avoid unnecessary cloud backups when the local backup hasn’t changed, giving BA749 minor warning instead.
  • BASUP-1314 Minor update to AWS SDK version to better handle rare Delete API responses.
  • BASUP-1315 Add progress reporting to the garbage collection step at the end of the backup.

New System Protection

  • Show backup progress for hidden volumes.
  • Fix link for scripts help page.
  • Add support for BMR from systems with FAT32 partitions created by Linux tool mkfs.fat.
  • Improve failure response for ERROR_DISK_FULL to avoid hung backups in rare cases.
  • Updated CBFSConnect driver version.

Recovery

  • Fixed vm-instant-boot for some downloaded cloud backups.
  • Avoid issue potentially preventing running multiple recoveries in sequence.
  • Enhanced recovery capabilities for New System Protection backups where only the contents of the BackupAssistBackups folder have been moved to a different location.

Exchange Granular Restore

  • Minor UI improvements.
  • Fixed a bug when the program was unable to see folders in an Exchange 2010 database.
  • Fixed a bug with reconstruction of folders tree in an Exchange database.

General/UI

  • Fixed “Locate backups” to find local and remote backups.
  • BASUP-1359 Fix bug where MSP installations were not expecting to autorenew, and expiry warnings were accidentally shown in the UI at the end of the month.
  • BASUP-1313 Allow scripts to be configured separately for the local and cloud stages of D2D2C jobs.
  • BASUP-946 Improve logging to assist troubleshooting of registration errors.
  • Fixed rare race condition causing backup crashes on startup.
  • Addressed an issue relating to service startup.
  • Refined backup reports to provide concise detail about Bare Metal Recovery options.
  • Avoid CSG scanning “System Volume Information” to reduce clogging of logs.

BackupAssist ER 1.4.3

June 29, 2023

Important backup fixes and improvements

  • Fixed unexpected network connection issues during encrypted backups to NAS.
  • Fixed resumption from out of space issues when backups fail to complete and never deleted the oldest backup.
  • Added dynamic old backup deletion that monitors diskspace during the backup.
  • Improved handling of encrypted backups on slower machines, via increased API timeouts.
  • Improved resumption after backups are interrupted/killed during the reverse incremental phase.
  • Improved detection of complex disk setups.
  • Updated the encryption driver version to avoid unhandled and other exceptions during encrypted imaging backups on some machines.
  • Automatically fix non-compliant source partition layouts to avoid issues during recovery.
  • Fixed BA5 errors occurring due to an InvalidOperationException.
  • Fixed the monitoring and reporting of VSS component results for VSS writer backups, so that the statuses reporting match across the activity monitor and VSS Application Backup sections.

Recovery fixes and improvements

  • Fixed Lifeline Recovery error “LBK_GetImageInfo failed” when selecting some encrypted backups for recovery.
  • Fixed VM Instant Boot discovery of downloaded Cloud Backups.
  • Improved reliability of driver installation when driver sources are large.
  • Improved reliability of installation for RAID drivers without a device description.
  • Allow installation of drivers that are not found (virtual or unidentified at the time).
  • Support installation of drivers that require a reboot after installation.

Exchange Granular Restore

  • Added the ability to restore compressed MS SQL tables.
  • Fixed a bug when the program was unable to see folders in an Exchange 2010 database.
  • Fixed a bug with reconstruction of folders tree in an Exchange database.
  • Fixed a bug when the program crashed during an injection into original mailbox for objects with ID longer than 19 symbols.
  • Fixed a bug when some objects were not displayed in the database after restore for some users.

Other improvements

  • Updated the AWS and Wasabi regions list for Cloud Backups.
  • Removed false warnings from the UI and reports at the end of each month, when monthly subscription licenses are coming up for automatic renewal.
  • Fixed reporting of Bare Metal Recovery capabilities for BMR capable local and cloud backups.
  • Fixed false-positive validation of incorrect URL / bucket combinations with BackBlaze / S3 destination.
  • Fixed detection of Exchange Server 2019 for some scenarios.
  • Improved handling of licensing issues that can cause disconnection from the Managed Backup Console in rare cases (MSP builds only).
  • The BackupAssist Service now uses the "Delayed Start" mode, in order to avoid race conditions on server (re)startup.

BackupAssist ER 1.4.2

February 14, 2023

Cloud Backup

  • Implemented new retry mechanism in Cloud Backup, for files that would otherwise be skipped (sometimes causing the backup to abort).
  • Cloud Backup: Improved recovery in situations where a metadata chunk is corrupted, so that all intact data is recovered, instead of failing with “Restore not completed due to errors” and recovering nothing.
  • Update Wasabi regions list.

New System Protection

  • Fixed BA6125 “network error” for encrypted backups to local disk, by handling unexpected ERROR_RETRY error codes properly.
  • Support backup and recovery when the source and target disk offsets are different (physical vs backup), and
  • Also support environments where a 4K format source disk includes non-4K aligned partitions.
  • Added ability to handle some scenarios where the GPT headers for a backup volume become corrupt.
  • Many other stability improvements.

Other

  • VM Instant Boot: Now supports encrypted backups (vm-instant-boot.exe)
  • Fixed service crash due to a rare race condition on some machines
  • Many Lifeline Recovery fixes, including some to match the System Protection fixes above.

BackupAssist ER 1.4.1

April 12, 2022

Cloud Backup

  • Updated the region list for the Wasabi destinations to include those added since the previous release of ER.
  • Improved handling of certain S3 connection timeouts that have been seen on S3-compatible destinations including Wasabi.
  • Added general warning notes to the S3-compatible destination setup screen, to avoid common questions and potential mistakes in setup.
  • Improved the consistency of bandwidth usage when throttling is enabled within BackupAssist.
  • Added a message in the backup warnings for skipped files to describe the cause, which may be timeouts, protocol issues, or many other reasons.

Local Backup

  • Fixed backup of systems where 4K boundaries for hidden partitions are not met.
  • Fixed a backup fault that resulted in a BA6113 error for backups to encrypted Synology (DSM7) NAS destinations.
  • Fixed incremental encrypted backup when backup disks unexpectedly mount offline.
  • Fixed rare and not-reproducible issues BA6124 and BA108 related to unusual file time properties encountered during local backup.

Recovery

  • Fixed VM Instant Boot for rare systems where drive letters for off-boot critical volumes are assigned differently during recovery.
  • Also fixed VM Instant Boot for systems with off-boot hidden partitions.
  • Fixed translations for some RecoverAssist messages.

CryptoSafeGuard

  • Updated CryptoSafeGuard metadata.
  • Fixed protector handling when ER and Classic are installed on the same machine.

Cyber Black Box

  • Suppress minor backup warnings previously shown due to issues collecting some low priority pieces of forensic information.

Exchange Granular Restore update

  • Added support of Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 CU11.
  • Added support of Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 CU22.
  • Added support of Windows Server 2022.
  • Added support of Windows 11.
  • Added Debug Logging feature to make it easier to gather log files for troubleshooting.
  • Fixed a bug when Public Folder items and Inbox were missing for some users.
  • Fixed a bug when Mailboxes were missing for some users.
  • Fixed a bug when Exchange restore could not perform export into the original mailbox in some cases.

BackupAssist ER 1.4.0

December 15, 2021

Server 2022 and Windows 11 support

  • Includes fixed handling for multiple International OS versions.

User interface

  • Report totals for recovered files are easier to understand, showing the amount of data downloaded from a cloud location.
  • Several minor UI tweaks.

Local backup fixes:

  • Fixed an incremental backup fault that was resulting in a BA6112 error on systems with 512 physical block disk and 4K unaligned size.

Recovery fixes:

  • Fixed flaw causing “Access is denied” errors being reported when recovering from cloud backup, with “overwrite existing files” option.
  • Fixed an issue when recovering from Local encrypted backups, from a different machine, or when the backup is no longer in the original location.

BackupAssist ER 1.3.0

November 4, 2021

Features

  • Ability to configure and run multiple backups per day.
  • Added specific cloud backup destination support for Wasabi and BackBlaze B2.

Enhancements

  • Ability to backup to Amazon S3, BackBlaze and Wasabi buckets that have Object Lock / Bucket Immutability feature enabled.
  • Email reports can now be configured from the Settings UI, alongside the Daily Summary email if desired.
  • A Web Proxy may also be optionally configured in the Settings UI for setups where direct Internet access is not available.
  • Forensics data can now be recovered from a cloud backup.
  • Exchange Granular Restore update with support for Exchange 2019 up to CU10, and Exchange 2016 up to CU21, and many bug fixes.
  • Improvements to low-level imaging support for various backup disk configurations.
  • Cyber Black Box has improved reliability and reduced redundant warnings.

Fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where VM Instant boot would not work if CSG is enabled.
  • Fixed an issue in Lifeline Recovery media creation that resulted in some non-empty USB drives.
  • Fixed an issue that caused BA8015 warning to be seen when Cyber Black Box collection was run.

BackupAssist ER 1.2.1

September 8, 2021

Features

  • You can now configure custom scripts to run before and after backups, just like you can in BackupAssist Classic (pre and post-backup scripting).
  • Audit Log tracks the use of the BackupAssist ER console and the main backup and recovery operations.

Enhancements

  • BackupAssist ER now supports configuring an Internet Proxy for web requests.
  • Can now configure to Ignore SSL Warnings for S3 compatible destinations.
  • Improve the validation sequence prior to starting multiple-disk Lifeline recoveries.
  • Increase the limit for the number of backups to keep locally and in the cloud beyond 100.
  • Report backups that are missed when a computer is in Sleep mode at the scheduled backup time.

Backup fixes

  • Fixed an issue that caused Cloud Backup failures for some Recovery/OEM volumes.
  • Fixed a problem with Local and Cloud Backups of read-only (non-BMR) volumes.
  • Fixed a backup fault that resulted in a BA6118 error on some systems that have OEM partitions.
  • Fixed a corner case situation where an error in setting the backup VHD metadata resulted in future backups failing
  • Fixed backup failures when backing up into NAS destinations after April 2021 Windows updates are installed.
  • Improve backup reliability to iSCSI attached destinations.

Lifeline Recovery fixes

  • Fixed an issue with Lifeline Recovery that resulted in each recovered disk incorrectly containing the Recovery and System partitions.
  • Fixed Lifeline recovery issue that failed to attach the right drive letters on multi-disk restore of volumes from single disk backups.
  • Fixed support for creating Lifeline recovery media on EFI systems using USB sticks >32GB.
  • Fixed an issue where a cancelled or failed Lifeline recovery could in some situations incorrectly cause subsequent attempts to fail as well.
  • Fixed a problem in Lifeline Recovery when recovering to an offline disk could fail.
  • Fixed an issue in Lifeline recovery that sometimes resulted in the recovered system failing to boot - in particular with Server OS's with SAN policy set to OfflineShared.
  • Fixed an issue in Lifeline recovery that sometimes resulted in the invalid recovery of empty (not selected for restore) volumes by the OS automatic repair process after restart.
  • Improved Lifeline recovery to ensure that partition IDs are unique across the system for restored volumes.
  • Fixed a display issue in Lifeline recovery that made fields hard to read on Hight Dot per Inch screens.

Other fixes

  • Improved the ability to recover from backups that have been moved from their original location.
  • Fixed an issue preventing the use of a custom Web API port setting.
  • Ensure that a BA status code is correctly logged in the backup report if there is a timeout or error during Cyber Black Box forensics collection.
  • A supported remote install/update script for BackupAssist Classic and BackupAssist ER is now available on request from our technical support team.
  • Improve CryptoSafeGuard shield coverage during system startup.
  • Fixed an issue preventing use of the VM Instant Boot feature on some systems where the CryptoSafeGuard shield was enabled.
  • Reduced the chance of seeing BA8007 during a backup when CryptoSafeGuard is enabled.

BackupAssist ER 1.2.0

February 18, 2021

NEW Cyber black box recorder

After a cyber hacking incident, investigators rely on forensics to piece together what happened. Cyber Black Box captures this vital forensics information in real time and includes them in the backups.

NEW Expanded support for S3-compatible cloud storage providers

BackupAssist ER's S3-compatible cloud backup destination now has support for BackBlaze B2 storage, and improved and expanded support for QNAP QuObjects (previously OSS). It’s never been easier to create predictable and reliable backups to even more cloud storage solutions.

NEW Support for the backup and recovery of ReFS systems

BackupAssist ER now supports the backup and recovery of volumes with ReFS file systems.

Disk to Disk to Cloud Backup

  • The number of downloaded cloud backup files and their cumulative size is now correctly reported.
  • A recovery from a local backup now correctly reports the number of recovered files and their cumulative size.
  • The detection of insufficient disk space when downloading a cloud backup has been improved.
  • Fixed an "out of disk space" error that incorrectly stopped a cloud backup from downloading.
  • Improved the performance of incremental backups to the cloud.
  • Added a warning that subsequent cloud backup downloads will start from the beginning if the download is canceled.
  • A cloud backup job’s secret key field now ignores leading and trailing spaces.
  • Improved the reliability of destination checks for S3-compatible backups.

Lifeline Recovery

  • Lifeline Recovery now supports restoring two volumes from one disk to 2 disks (one volume per disk).
  • Lifeline Recovery now supports bare-metal recovery to a smaller disk than the original disk that was backed up.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a bare-metal recovery of read-only volumes (such as OEM partitions) to fail.
  • The wording in the Recovery Report has been improved and localized.
  • Improved Lifeline Recovery error messages related to accessing network backups.
  • The original volume letter will now be retained for critical volumes after a bare-metal recovery.
  • The bare-metal recovery process now provides more details about hidden volumes and their relations with the critical/OS volumes.

Exchange Granular Restore

  • Exchange Granular Restore has been updated to show deleted items for public folders, and support universal language encodings in the message body.
  • Support for Exchange Server 2019 CU3.

Backups

  • Implemented support for hidden system partitions located on a different non-OS disk.
  • Implemented support for backups of OEM, multiple recovery and MBR recovery partitions.
  • Improved the speed of backups by improving the encryption performance.

User interface

  • The Restore Activity tab column “Recover status“ will now be called “Backup status” during a recovery.
  • When getting close to the end of the 7-day evaluation, the warning message that the user can Register the installation or Extend the evaluation has been clarified.
  • Added labels to the icons on the top navigation bar to help explain what they do.
  • Improved the Lifeline Recovery UI to more clearly report the recovery result.
  • Fixed text that was cut off in some of the Lifeline Recovery screens.
  • The Build a Lifeline recovery media screen no longer shows empty disks under the USB stick dropdown.
  • Improved the size and position of the Lifeline Recovery wallpaper.
  • The connection check is now only applicable when the installation is registered and it will not be shown for a registered evaluation.

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug in the backup engine for Windows 2012R2.
  • Fixed hangs of ReFS volume backups.
  • Fixed an error where a Volume Shadow Copy error (BA612) was being reported as Disk full error (BA6122).
  • Fixed an issue where a backup job to a slow destination (e.g. NAS) times out and results in a failed backup.
  • Fixed an issue where date/time was not following the culture settings of the Operating System.
  • The debugger now correctly launches the BA Classic console.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented backups of an MBR extended partition from being accessed during a recovery.
  • Fixed an issue that would delete existing non-system volumes if they existed in the target bare-metal recovery disk.
  • Fixed an issue involving bare-metal recovery to dissimilar hardware: AHCI->NVMe, NVMe->AHCI.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented a recovery from accessing a network backup after previously canceling a recovery that had used that backup.

Managed Backup Console

  • Fixed a problem that prevented an installation from sending requests to the Managed Backup Console if the machine time was set to a future date.
  • Extended the daily grace period for pings to Managed Backup Console, so that a new installation is not immediately de-registered upon receiving a fail response.
  • Backup reports sent to the Managed Backup Console will now retry if the first attempt fails.

BackupAssist ER 1.1.2

September 9, 2020

  • The release addresses a vulnerability in the software that could be used to compromise backup data. We are recommending that all BackupAssist ER users upgrade to v1.1.2 to receive this update.

BackupAssist ER 1.1.1

September 2, 2020

  • Fixed an issue that caused local backups to be stuck at the beginning or about 3/4 of the way into the backup when running on systems with latest Windows updates.

BackupAssist ER 1.1.0

August 24, 2020

New feature

  • Introduced support for S3-compatible cloud backup destinations. This includes support for destinations like Wasabi, MinIO, etc.

Image Backups

  • Fixed an issue that prevented recovery or instant boot from a backup that was done when the job was disabled
  • Improved the handling of volume and bare-metal selections when validating jobs.

CryptoSafeGuard

  • CryptoSafeGuard will now be enabled by default.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a CryptoSafeGuard scan to hang because of a specific file pattern.

Lifeline Recovery

  • Fixed an issue that could cause Lifeline Recovery to incorrectly report “recovery succeeded” when the connection to the backup or the recovery destination is lost during the recovery.
  • Improved flexibility on the recovery destination when there is more than 1 volume in the backup. e.g. Input: 4TB disk; partitions C*/D/E*/F are 1TB. Options now include: restore C/E to 2TB disk or F to 1TB disk.

File and application recovery

  • Fixed an issue where a recovery could fail, in some circumstances, when a scheduled backup starts during the recovery process.
  • Fixed an issue where the wrong error message was displayed when trying to run a recovery while a backup is running. Previously it was displaying a CryptoSafeGuard error.

Exchange Granular Restore

  • New option to launch the Exchange Granular Restore tool manually so clients can extract emails from .edb/.pst files previously recovered from a cloud backup.

User interface

  • Updated the BackupAssist ER icon in the list of installed applications.
  • For the “Your recover options” page cards, the help links have been moved to the bottom left and the action buttons have been moved to the bottom right.
  • Resized the column widths for the files table in the Recover properties to optimize the space usage.
  • The Action buttons for the “Restore from available backup” page is always visible so it does not scroll off the page if the grid is too long.

Licensing

  • Fixed potentially inaccurate subscription-renewal-date display.
  • BackupAssist ER will now only allow license keys in the valid format to be used.

Reports

  • Improved the backup report warnings for reverse-incremental problems.

Other

  • Other applications can now appear in front of the BackupAssist ER splash screen.
  • Removed the NTFS and file ownership options when downloading backups. These are not relevant to backup downloading.