Backing up .WTV files

[spasmonaut]

So I'm not sure where this post particularly belongs, but here's my predicament. I'm a "bitter clinger" using 8.1 WMC and have about 2.5 TB worth of shows recorded with WMC that I want to back up. I already have the solution in mind, which is my Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials box that I have this PC connected to. For the life of me, I cannot seem to figure out why it's seemingly just blowing right by all of my .wtv files when it is doing a client backup of "all of my files". If I go to restore, I see the folder there, but I'm certain it's not actually backing up the files given that my overall backup storage usage is shy of about 2+ TB worth of data on my server. I've read about issues where there is a registry flag to tell Windows to ignore these files, and I deleted that key and rebooted and ran another backup to no change. It would appear something in Windows Server would also have to be "tweaked" to get it to actually acknowledge my .wtv files and back them up as well. However, all of my searches online have come up empty at this issue when the backup is happening "outside" of the PC itself. Thankfully I do use Backblaze to also backup my 8.1 WMC PC JUST in case, and I'll continue to do so even with my server doing client backup duties as well. However, should the need arise to restore my PC to its former glory, I'd prefer to use my server to recover the data which will be a LOT faster than trying to download 2+ TB worth of data on my FIOS connection.

I'm anxious to see what you guys and gals have to share on this as I'm rather irked that I cannot seem to locate any reference or acknowledgement that WS2012R2E is deliberately ignoring those files by design so I'm stumped as to why it is seemingly doing it intentionally. The even more frustrating part is knowing that this is content I will have to hold onto for dear life until I move away from FIOS for TV and go with Comcast since Verizon decided to kill off two of my favorite channels, but that's a rant for another day and another forum. All of this content is basically the remnants of content I used to be able to get with FIOS that's now history.

[sbaeder]

You are driving the backup job from the server - right? (I am guessing yes) If so, how did you select the files to back up? If I recall, there is option to select folders and it shows what will be backed up vs. just tell it to "backup the machine"...Have you tried it both ways? Again, I assume you tried all this, but better safe than sorry...

Other than that... If these are archival programs, and not really "dynamic" and changing, why not just make a copy of them "manually" onto the server? You may also want to convert/transcode what you can (based on DRM) to MP4 or other space saving format.

[glorp]

I don't know for certain with WSE2012R2's client backup engine but from my Home Server days I know this:
http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/06/17/g ... er-backup/
was an issue. If your .wtv files are in Recorded TV on the client, then I suspect it's still part of the WSE2012 backup strategy.

I've migrated to a WSE2012R2 as well but I've always kept any .wtv backups manually because of this old issue. I just use a robocopy script to sync them on the server outside of client backup. I never even thought about changing it when I went from WHS->WSE so it never was anything I noticed.

[spasmonaut]

As of now, they are really just archives. The issue is, I want to play them through my Xbox 360 as an Extender in my living room, and in the future once I begin to record TV again once I drop FIOS and add Comcast TV, I want my server to automatically care for these files without having to manually copy data. It defeats the purpose of the utility of the automatic client backups that the server is doing if it's electing to disregard some of the data of its own volition and then I have to manually care for it. In addition, once I can see that it's backing up those files, I'll have a better understanding of whether or not there are other "gaps" in its backup routine or if I'm finally "whole" with the dataset that it is backing up. As of now, no matter what means I use to attempt to get the server to account for this folder and its contents, I just see what I'm assuming to be an empty folder that I can "restore".

[choliscott]

Have you tried Crashplan for local backup?

[spasmonaut]

I don't know for certain with WSE2012R2's client backup engine but from my Home Server days I know this:
http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/06/17/g ... er-backup/
was an issue. If your .wtv files are in Recorded TV on the client, then I suspect it's still part of the WSE2012 backup strategy.

I've migrated to a WSE2012R2 as well but I've always kept any .wtv backups manually because of this old issue. I just use a robocopy script to sync them on the server outside of client backup. I never even thought about changing it when I went from WHS->WSE so it never was anything I noticed.

Well that's disappointing, to say the least. I guess I have two options to consider, one of which you mentioned. I can manually move the content and use Storage Spaces to give me a layer of protection, and it turns out WSE2012R2 won't touch those files either when you do a backup of the server, either. Utter silliness.

The other option is to go with a 3rd-party backup utility, and I had been using Crashplan for cloud backup but it was pretty erratic and ridiculously slow. For now, I'm using Backblaze with better results. I MAY give Crashplan a try and use the local option to push content to the server automatically as I hadn't thought to use that path. I do need to test out Backblaze doing a recovery of my content on a large scale to see how well it holds up. I forget how long it took to upload all (at the time) 6 TB of storage I had on my MCE PC across all drives/folders save for the excluded ones, but I don't think it was more than a week or so on FIOS 50 Mb. Perhaps it was faster, or slower, but either way it seemed fairly reasonable and occupied enough of my bandwidth when I told it to go full throttle that I was satisfied with its performance. I was lucky to eek out more than 300 KB/s with Crashplan uploads and it took a couple of months to push my content up to their servers. I average a bit over 5 MB/s with Backblaze.

[sbaeder]

As of now, they are really just archives. The issue is, I want to play them through my Xbox 360 as an Extender in my living room, and in the future once I begin to record TV again once I drop FIOS and add Comcast TV, I want my server to automatically care for these files without having to manually copy data. It defeats the purpose of the utility of the automatic client backups that the server is doing if it's electing to disregard some of the data of its own volition and then I have to manually care for it. In addition, once I can see that it's backing up those files, I'll have a better understanding of whether or not there are other "gaps" in its backup routine or if I'm finally "whole" with the dataset that it is backing up. As of now, no matter what means I use to attempt to get the server to account for this folder and its contents, I just see what I'm assuming to be an empty folder that I can "restore".

To use an extender, you still have to have the WMC box doing all the real work...So, assuming that it is NOT the server, it would be ... Server->WMC->extender ... so you'r moving a lot of data. If you're thinking you will access the files on the server, why not just use a local "player" (as long as no DRM is involved)...remember, an extender is NOT a player, but an extension of the WMC box.

I think the robocopy or using some other 3rd party to archive and sync (if all you need it for is backup) would be sufficient. Or using some tool like MCEbuddy to move them over to the server and just access the libraries on the server... Either way, looks like you have lots of viable options.

[seajunk]

This backup behavior is by design and has been in all windows versions post NT backup. The built in functions are really only designed to backup the system, so you get a working machine on the other side and all the little things like documents. It was never meant to archive our numerous 5-15Gb wtv files that we keep around for years. You find this out the hard way when try to restore and nothings there.
These days i use a combination of acronis to backup the system, excluding the recorded tv directory then use robocopy for those. Since i have DRM (TWC) i backup one after another to keep the keys in sync with the files. Ive had to recover the system once and it worked so this is the solution for me atm.