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I have a 1TB USB disk where I make the first level of backup of a WS2008 R2 file server. The usb is not fully encrypted, just about 700GB. Cobian is running as a service, impersonating Administrator user when doing backups.

It happened that "accidentally" some guy unplugged the USB and then plugged it again. It is not a big deal as everyday I check the backups, but I wanted to make a script to mount the encrypted file just in case before doing the backup. The script works ok if I execute it, but it seems to fail if executed by Cobian with no session opened. Cobian always fails as doesn't find the mounted unit (T:). The script, in a .bat file:

"[fullpath]\truecrypt.exe" /v z:\backups /l t /k [keyfilepath] /a /q /s /c n > "C:\mount.log"

Z is the usb, it always takes that letter when plugging it. Also, mount.log is always empty. I've read the TrueCrypt Known Issues and FAQ and I can't see anything related. Any idea about why does it fail or how to get log messages?

PS: I also tried mounting the encrypted file as Removable Media, with no luck. The USB gets mounted itself as drive, not as removable media.

2 Answers 2

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+50

Check the System & Application event logs.

To catch errors, change the end of the batch to: > "C:\mount.log" 2>&1

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  • Tried again: mount.log keeps empty. Event viewer shows an event at the time of the task: (it is translated from spanish, so it may be incorrect): Registry:Application Origin: VSS Event Id. :8194 Task category:None Level:Error Key words:Classic User: Not available Host: ... Description: Volumen Shadow Copy Error: Error when checking IVssWriterCallback interface. HR = 0x80070005, Access denied. If often occurs by an incorrect security configuration in the proccess of writing or when applying for. I guess this is after the .bat execution, it shows 3 sec. later than the scheduled task.
    – Mike B
    Sep 17, 2011 at 9:05
  • Not solved my problem, but I award the bounty as it was the first to point to explicitly set the error output.
    – Mike B
    Sep 24, 2011 at 0:03
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May be, if there is no open user session, Windows doesn't assign drive letter to usb device? Create a cmd file like this:

cd z:\ 2> c:\test.log
echo %errorlevel% >> c:\test.log

Schedule a task to run this task at time, when there is no open user session. Check c:\test.log

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  • Good idea to check if z: exists. I would even pit a unique file, Z:\Special123 and then in the script "if not exist z:\Special123 goto ERROR or something similar.
    – jftuga
    Sep 20, 2011 at 22:26
  • I'll try as soon as I can, but the backup gets done when I mount the unit with the shown script. It gets done in the middle of the night with, for sure, no session opened.
    – Mike B
    Sep 21, 2011 at 7:06
  • Tried "cd z:\ 2> c:\scripts\test.log || echo %errorlevel% >> c:\scripts\test.log" in a .cmd file. When executed by task scheduler, test.log is empty. When executed by a fake task in Cobian it says "0". Not a surprise. The backup works with no session if nobody unplugs the usb. Cobian sees Z: and T:
    – Mike B
    Sep 21, 2011 at 13:55
  • May be adding ' 2> "C:\mount.log" ' instead of ' > "C:\mount.log" ' would help? Sep 21, 2011 at 19:14
  • I already tried with > "C:\mount.log" 2>&1 as jftuga said. Tried anyway with > "C:\mount.log 2> "C:\mount.log" with the same result. log is empty, unit is not mounted.
    – Mike B
    Sep 22, 2011 at 5:53

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