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I like Cobian Backup for taking... you guessed?... backups of my files.
I've said why elsewhere. I will repeat one thing here, though...
I am sticking with Cobian Backup for the moment (at 10/25) because it is the devil I know. If you haven't used any Cobian program before now, you should probably start with Reflector. I suspect the set up will be similar. And you might call Reflector "Backup Plus". Both are free.
The Cobian website has plenty of information on the two products. Also, I found a 3rd party page that discussed installing Cobian Reflector which looked pretty good 10/25, but I only glanced over it, I can't vouch for it. (It was from pureinfotech.com.)
For what I want to do... not much, in terms of what the program can do... it Works!
These notes began life on 3 Oct 25 as I did an install, from scratch, of Cobian vers 11.2.0.582 on a Windows 11 Pro (in a Dell laptop), 24H2. (That was my second installation of Cobian Backup onto a Windows 11 machine. It has worked just fine... for the features I use... on the first machine. (For months.))
After I've done what I describe immediately below this, my Cobian didn't work... at first.
At first after I installed it, Cobian wouldn't run. I've explained what I did to fix that further down this page.
Next time I am installing Cobian, I will start by checking whether the computer concerned already has the .NET 3.5 Framework installed.
I think installing that first would be best. I think that if it had been installed on my computer before I did the Cobian install, then I wouldn't have had the minor, "one off" hiccup which I had today. (Oct '25.)
search.brave.com's LEO told me how to see if the Framework is installed...
To determine whether .NET Framework 3.5 is installed on your Windows 11 machine, the most reliable approach is to check the system's features through the "Turn Windows Features on or off" dialog, which explicitly lists .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0).
Open the Run dialog (Win + R), type optionalfeatures, and press Enter to access the "Turn Windows Features on or off" window.
Look for ".NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)" and confirm it is checked.
If that doesn't do it for you, ask LEO "How can I tell if my windows 11 machine has .Net 3.5 installed?" I've abbreviated the answer I got.
The Cobian download link gave me a file called "cbsetup.exe" (It probably makes no difference, but, just to be complete I'll mention that, I moved it to a folder where I keep some of the setup files I've used on a given computer.)
To do the setup, I merely double-clicked on it there.
I got the usual "Do you want to allow this t make changes?". Said "Yes".
That led to a series of fairly ordinary Setup dialogs.
Remember: I was installing this on a computer which had never had any Cobin software on it. (This affects the "right" answer to some of the questions along the installation process.
I won't mention every answer to every question I encountered.
I accepted the suggested installation directory.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Cobian Backup 11
(The "11" in that name has nothing to do with the Windows version I was installing to. Just a coincidence.) (On a different machine, I put Cobian in a folder inside my "Documents" folder, and that works fine too for me.)
Ticked "Create start menu items" and "Install the Volume Shadow Copy requester"
Did not tick "Create a script for unattended installs".
Mostly accepted the default suggestions in the next dialog. Changed the Service Option. Only the following ticked, rest left un-ticked...
(Three ticks)
I was informed that a consequence of choosing to use the local System a/c, I would "prevent access to some network resources." This has never been a problem to me in my use of Backup. (I only ever back up local files. I back them up to a hard drive connected to the system by a USB connection.)
I then got "You are now ready to install the program... (etc)". (Read the etc! I'm just not typing it out!)... and so I clicked on the "Install" button. (Our work to date has merely set things up for the install process, as I imagine you realize.)
Things went... mostly... well. Many lines reporting progress flashed past.
There were some pauses which were explained by pop-ups which went away by themselves.
All of this took less than a minute.
Alas... one of the progress reports was in red. It didn't stay on the screen long... but at the end, in red, I was told "ERR Errors Found: 1. Please consult the installation log".
I clicked the "Okay" button to close the message about that. I clicked the "Done" button to close the final Setup dialog.
Continuing my saga...
I asked search.brave.com's Leo about why I might be getting a "Volume Shadow Copy" error. Here is a heavily reduced version of what it said...
The "Cobian Backup VSC Requester" service failing to load is typically linked to underlying issues with the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or missing system components. Here are the primary steps to resolve the problem:
Ensure .NET Framework 3.5 is installed: A common cause is the absence of .NET Framework 3.5, which is required for the Volume Shadow Copy service to function properly with Cobian Backup.
I then asked LEO of it was okay to install .NET 3.5 on a Windows 11 machine. It said....
Yes, it is okay to install .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 11 if you need it to run specific applications, such as older software or certain games that require it.
(It went on to talk about how to do it, which I've put on this page a little further down.)
I asked how I could see if my system had the .NET 3.5 Framework installed. Leo said something like....
Use the Windows Features menu in Control Panel to see if it is installed.
To get at the "Turn Windows features on or off" option open the Windows 11 "Settings", then search for "turn windows"... That should be enough to bring up a link to what you need. You can't access it via the settings hierarchy.)
I asked how to install it. As part of it's answer to my "Is it okay to install...?" LEO said, snipped...
Although .NET Framework 3.5 is not enabled by default, it can be enabled through the "Turn Windows features on or off" option.
I slightly my fluffed first attempt at the procedure, but I don't think anything happened as a result.
On my second attempt, I asked for just the main elements of the .NET 3.5 Framework. I did NOT request the installation of the two sub-options under ".NET Framework 3.5 (Includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)" (I.e. I did not tick the boxes for "Windows Comm... HTTP activation" or "Windows Comm... NON-HTTP activation. Less is more?)
This process typically requires an active internet connection to download the necessary files from Windows Update.
(There is an alternate option for installing NET 3.5, if internet access is unavailable or unreliable. LEO can help.
LEO also mentioned "that .NET 3.5 is not essential to Win11, and can be uninstalled if not needed."
I had an internet connection. There were several long stoppages in the download process. My system has a good... for a home user... internet connection.
The download/install took 5 minutes to reach 60% completion... The pause at 60% lasted at least 5 minutes... Then another longish fault. A few pop-up messages (which quickly went away without permission. On said "Install of (something) completed. Restart your computer." I did NOT restart immediately. Eventually (15 min) the progress bar reached what seemed to be 100%... but the dialog's button still said "Cancel". I waited. 5 minutes?... Finally the dialog said "Changes completed", and the button changed to "close". Clicked it. It went away normally, returning me to where I'd been previously. Restarted computer, after shutting open apps.
It came out of the restart nicely. A small Cobian-styled transient pop-up appeared, lower right, said "Welcome to Cobian Backup". (This only happened after the first restart.)
Whew! Was I "in"? Would it work?
You need to know how to start the Cobian interface.
Click on the"^" in the system tray, to pop up the group of icons which typically includes Windows Security. The "^" over at the right hand end of the task bar.
In that, you should find a square black and white icon with lines swirling into a vanishing point in the center. RIGHT-click it, and you get a small menu, including "About Cobian Backup"... Click "Open".
Now... a word... "Cobian" is in two parts. There's a "service" (It takes care of itself) And then there's the user interface. It's already running, but minimized to the system tray. Click "Open" on the small menu, and the Cobian interface should be un-minimized.
You should be seeing an ordinary window, with "List / Task / History / Log / Tools / Help" for a menu.
This is where you will manage your Cobian Backup.
Cobian Backup is no longer being developed. There will not be any updates. As installed, it looks for updates from time to time. You will save yourself a trivial nuisance if you go into the Cobian user interface, click Tools / Options and on the General tab un-tick "Check for Updates".
I hope you've come through the install process unscathed?
We need to be clear about what "a Cobian task" is.
Cobian tasks are pre-configured routines to "do things" for you.
Some of them trigger automatically (if your PC is on, and not sleeping) at particular times.
Others only happen when you invoke them.
The granularity Cobian offers is magnificent. I could go on for HOURS about all the possibilities.
For now, for our quick test, all we need is a small, manually triggered task to copy the files and sub-folders of one directory to a backup on the external hard drive. We'll come back to this in a moment.
Cobian Backup is old at 10/25. You could read the Cobian website as suggesting that it isn't suitable for Windows 11. As I said, if you are new to Cobian, I'd suggest you go for Reflector.
As Backup is the devil I know, I will try to use it a while longer... but note: I only use a very limited selection of what Backup offers.
I have an external hard drive connected to my computer that is set up so that it always mounts as a particular drive letter. In the root of that I have a folder called "CobBU", and I use that for Cobian backup files. (I use other parts of the disk for other things, but only a little. But it can be done.
Returning to the matter of a small task, to see if things work. If you have used Cobian before on another machine, I'd still recommend you set up a small "test" task. Later I will talk about ways to move your old tasks to a new computer.
I've not listed everything below... but maybe it will be of some help?
Before you try to create and run the task, be sure the destination drive is connected. You don't need to create any folders in advance. If a Cobian task needs a folder, and it isn't there, Backup will create it.
Click on Task/ New Task
I called my "ByH-Small Tmp Test". Established tasks are listed in alphabetical order, so the "ByH-" prefix keeps all my "to be triggered ByHand" tasks together. (I prefix the others "A-" for "automatic", i.e. on a schedule. That also puts them at the top of the list!)
(The "New Task" dialog is the same as the "Task Properties" dialog that will open later if you want to edit the task's specification.)
For this test task, the rest of the General page, other than the Task name, can be left in its default state. (I.e., among other things, No Group, Full backup.
Don't click "OK" at this stage to leave the section of the new task configuration. (That will close the process only half done. If you DO close it, you right-click on the task's name, and choose "Edit Task".)
Click the top "Add" button to specify a source... i.e. the file or folder you want in the backup.
Click the bottom "Add" button to specify where the source should be backed up.
In the "Browse for Folder" dialog, I selected my external drive, by it's letter, and then clicked "Make new directory". I called the new directory "TmpToTestCobian". (I will delete the trials later.) This will create the directory the root of the external drive. NOT a place you want to play in on a system drive, but the drive for the backups isn't a system drive, in my use of Backup. (The new folder will be present from very shortly after you click out of the dialog... if not earlier!).
(The folders that Cobian will create for you "on the fly", are those INSIDE what you are backing up.)
Change the "Schedule Type" to "Manually". That will disable the other items in this section.
The defaults fine... but maybe change the "Full copies to keep" to 3, so we can see it does that.
The defaults fine.
Everything here can be left empty.
The defaults fine.
Now click "OK" to finish setting up the task....
All you need to do is click the right facing single arrow! Or right click on your task, and choose "Run selected tasks".
Note the progress bars, lower right of your screen. I believe one is about reading in the material to be backed up, and the other is about what has been written to the destination.
There's a log in the big right hand window. I hope you get "*** Backup done. Errors: 0" on your first test of your new install!!! (^_^)
Just use your everyday operating system tools... File Explorer, etc... to see if what's on your destination drive matches the things the back up was meant to put there.
For me, 4 Oct 25, it worked first time!!! (^_^).
Yes! For something like this, you "could" use copy/paste. But that doesn't always work(!) with large copying jobs, and it sometimes messes with the datestamps on the files. And you'll really love the chance to have automatic backups made according to a schedule. Also, by using Cobian Backup you can do a Full backup once a week, say, and two incrementals in the week. And Cobian will take care of discarding old files as they become superfluous. But those are tales for other times.
Now we're going to move some tasks which were running fine on an old computer to the new one.
STOP PRESS: While my approach seems to have worked, 4 Oct 25, I may have made this MUCH more complicated that it needed to be. Sigh. And it is too early to say whether what I've done will work in the long run.
The alternative, which I came across too late, may be built into the program. If you open the ordinary user interface, in the menu you'll see "List". A "list" in Cobian Backup seems to be a collection of task configurations. It may be that I only needed to use "List / Save List As... on the old machine, transfer the file to the new machine, and invoke List / Import...
But what fun would that be??
Returning what I did...
You don't have to restart your computers endlessly... but this would be a good time, given how ambitious we are going to be.
I asked "Can I move my Cobian Backup task specifications from an old computer to a new one with a freshly installed Cobian Backup?", and got...
Yes, you can move your Cobian Backup task specifications from an old computer to a new one with a freshly installed Cobian Backup, but the method depends on the specific version you are using.
For Cobian Backup 11 (Gravity), the primary method involves copying the DB subdirectory from the installation directory on the old PC to the new PC. This folder contains your task list and history database.
You may also copy the settings subdirectory to retain your application settings. After copying, it is recommended to run "Tools - Reset permissions" on the new computer to ensure proper access rights are set.
(It went on to talk about how these things could be done in Cobian Reflector.)
I DID what was suggested for moving the task specs. I did NOT attempt to move my old settings to the new machine "the clever" way.
Before I put the DB folder from the old installation into the Cobian folder on the new machine, I renamed the "as installed + my small test task" DB folder. (This was for insurance. Maybe if it all went terribly wrong, I could get back to where I started.
Copied the old DB folder to the new machine.
Restarted the new machine. (Remember Cobian runs as a service. Best to restart that afresh, don't you think?)
Reopened the Cobian control program...
And there were all of my old tasks! Safely in place on the new machine! HURRAH! (oops... see below...)
Don't you like "old skool" programs? Try doing something similar with a "modern" program. (Or don't, if you take my advice! Bring back ini files and command line parameters, and restrict the use of the registry!
(Rant over. Sorry.)
Oh dear. All was not fully well. I tried to rename one of my old tasks. I tried to create a new task.
In the large pane at the right of the Cobian interface, for each of them, I got "Cannot create... DB\Mainlist.lst... access is denied."
Be not afraid! We can fix this!
Exited Cobian (just the interface... using that option within the same menu used to open it. RIGHT-click on the icon to get the menu, remember.) With File Explorer, I drilled down to the DB folder. Right clicked on "DB". Opened its properties. Went to the Security tab. Gave full control over the folder to "Users".
Restarted the interface. As usual, it was minimized, hiding in the bit you open with the "^" at the lower right hand corner of the screen.
** HURRAH ** (no "oops"... so far!)
Now I could rename old tasks, create new ones. Whew!!!
If you have successfully moved your old task specs to the new machine: Congratulations!
But! Unless your new machine is fully set up as you old one was set up, if you have, as you probably do, of course, some scheduled tasks, ones that happen "automatically" you may want to turn off some off, remember!
Select any you want to turn off for the moment. Right click on one of the selected tasks. Click "Toggle Enabled Flag". (You should get a red "x" at the start of all the disabled tasks. (Reverse this to re-enable them, of course.)
I want to use all of my old tasks in the new machine... but with just one change.
On the old machine, the drive for the backups was mounted as "D:". On the new machine, I will be mounting it as "S:".
The sane and sensible approach: On the new, now nicely set up, complete with all old tasks: Rename each of them with a "z" ahead of the old name. Do a clone of each, removing the z and changing the letter of the destination. Remember: If Cobian can't find the specified destination folder for the backup, it will create it! (This is helpful when you change the disk you're using for the backups!)
Tedious.
Reckless approach: Shut Cobian down. Load DB/MainList.lst into a text editor. Use editor's tools... in my case, change every "Destination="1,D:\..." to "Destination="1,S:\..." (and every "Destination="3,D:\..." to "Destination="3,S:\..." (Those are the only two such lines in the case of my tasks. You might have others.)
It seems the other files in that folder are log files for each of the tasks.
Pray
Reboot Cobian.
I got reckless, tried that today, 4 Oct 25. It seemed to work! It's early days yet, but at least it is working so far.
Usually Cobian uses very sensible names for the folders containing my backups, names which include a datestamp.... e.g.
"Thunderbird 25-02-01 09-54 (Full)"
(By the way, the folder's "date modified" isn't always what I would expect.)
Alas, here's some bad news.
Sometimes the folder containing the backup is called "Document". Hard to understand, I agree... but maybe the filename SOMETIMES doesn't DISPLAY properly.. but then, in different circumstances it DOES? Weird. Unlikely. But watch out for it on your own system, and look at what LEO turned up, inserted below.
As I recall, when I don't get a datestamped name I always get "Document". And sometimes when I drag that folder to a different folder, the name changes to one WITH datestamps!
All that being said: I love Cobian. It has saved me several times. (I try not to need backups!!) I've never doubted the integrity of a backup.
I asked search.brave.com's LEO about this...
Why does Cobian Backup sometimes fail to put date/time in filename?"
Before I show you what Cobian said, here's some GOOD news. When I went looking for examples of the BAD names I sometimes get, I couldn't find one!
I don't think I imagined the problem!!! Here's what LEO had to say...
Cobian Backup may fail to display the expected date and time in folder or file names due to specific configuration settings and interactions with the operating system, particularly when using certain features like Volume Shadow Copy or when dealing with system folders.
One known issue occurs when the "Volume Shadow Copy" feature is enabled in a backup task. In this scenario, full backups may lose their timestamps in the folder names as displayed in Windows File Explorer, while differential backups retain them.
This discrepancy is an "illusory behavior" specific to File Explorer's display, as the actual file and folder names contain the correct timestamps when viewed via command-line tools or properties. The solution involves either disabling Volume Shadow Copy or disabling the "Copy file attributes" option in the Engine settings.
Another issue arises with system folders like "Documents" or "Pictures" when the "desktop.ini" file is present. This file can interfere with the proper display of timestamps in the folder names within File Explorer. Excluding "desktop.ini" as a mask in the backup task settings resolves this problem, ensuring the timestamps appear correctly.
Additionally, the timestamp in the folder name itself is determined by the time the backup task completes, not the source file's timestamp. The source file's timestamp is only copied if the "Copy timestamps" option is enabled. If the backup task is configured to copy timestamps from the source, the destination folder's creation date and time will reflect the source's timestamps, which can lead to confusion if the source timestamps are not what is expected.
Finally, when backing up to network-attached storage (NAS) devices, some NAS systems may have issues with specific characters in filenames, such as semicolons used in time formatting (e.g., "13;16;21"), potentially causing unexpected file creation or naming issues.
This can result in the appearance of incorrect or missing timestamps in the filenames.
I imagine you are pretty tired of all this by now. Imagine how tired I was when I finished doing it all, and writing it all up? I hope it will let you install Cobian more quickly, more easily. It is a stunning program, very clever. And free! I think we have to be tolerant if mastering it is less than trivial?
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