[Update] Backup4all 4.8 build 278

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Ten days after the major release of Backup4all 4.8 we are making a small update, build 278. You can download it here: Backup4all 4.8.278. Even though today it’s Friday the 13th, we’re confident enough to release the new build as it’s our commitment to fix any bugs as soon as we find them, instead of gathering up fixes and releasing updates less often. Plus, we’re not that superstitious, especially since there are facts stating that fewer accidents happen on Friday the 13th.

Anyway, back to the new release, here’s what changed in Backup4all 4.8 build 278:

  1. Restore failed with “Incorrect password” errors. When using a backup type which does zip compression (i.e. Full, Incremental, Differential and Mirror with zip), there’s the option to Encrypt the archive for better protection (you can see if a backup job is encrypted by right-clicking on a backup job and going to Backup Properties -> Compression -> Encrypt the zip files). The password used for the encryption is stored in an .ini file (don’t worry, it’s not in plain sight, it’s encrypted). In certain situations, the stored password was considered as being un-encrypted. This lead to it being encrypted again by Backup4all (that’s 3 times if you’re counting). So when trying to restore that backup job, the user received a message that the password is incorrect (even if the correct password was entered). This only affected backup jobs created with Backup4all 4.6 or less and only the Professional and Portable editions (because Encryption is not available in Lite and Standard).
  2. Large split files weren’t deleted from the destination when the option to do so was enabled. This bug was occurring only when backing up more than 2GB of data using mirror backup to FTP and having the “Remove excluded or deleted files from backup” option checked (if you’re wondering, this option shows up in Backup Properties -> Mirror). When backing up large files to ftp, the data is split by default in files of 2 GB resulting: file_001.ext, file_002.ext, file_003.ext and so on. The “Remove excluded or deleted files from backup” option when checked should do exactly what it says, if you delete/exclude a file from the source it will do the same in the destination. However, when Backup4all was trying to remove these large split files, it wasn’t looking for the correct path so the files were still kept in the destination. This buy only affected the Professional and Portable editions, since FTP/SFTP is not available as a destination in Lite and Standard.
  3. “Error: FillSpanDrives could not find drive letter for BackupID=1 and StorageIndex=0”. In certain situations after the second execution of a fast mirror backup the error message mentioned earlier was shown when testing the backup, even if the modified files were correctly backed up. This error didn’t affect in any way the backup, just the result of the Test operation was wrong.
  4. Error when using the “Yes, limit number of file versions”. To save storage space, Backup4all has an option to limit the number of file versions it keeps (for all backup types except Mirror). You can find this option in Backup Properties -> Type -> Save storage space. When this option was enabled, if all files from the first full backup had new versions and reached the set limit, the first backup was deleted. However that meant the backup job didn’t have a Full backup anymore. As a solution, we now detect that the Full is deleted and the next backup in list will became a Full backup.

As mentioned above, you can download the new build directly from the download page: Backup4all 4.8.278. This update is free for all registered users of previous 4.x versions (and will automatically recognize your settings and existing backup jobs). If you have any suggestions regarding this release feel free to leave a comment.