Strange behaviour with mixed NTFS/ReFS environments

[M-M-C]

Hello,
we are using Backup & Replication Enterprise in our company so i know it really gets the job done. Therefore i started using the community version for my network at home.
I noticed some very strange behaviour while trying to backup my private workstation at home. The physical workstation has 3 harddisks, one is formated with ReFS.
Trying to create a backup on a windows network share (NTFS-based) stops with an error after reading a few GBs from the ReFS drive (system disk was fine). The same backup-job runs successfully if i choose a veeam server repository (sitting on a ReFS disk).
Copying the finished backup-files from the repository to the NTFS-netshare results in the same error again. Copying the backup from ReFS to NTFS locally and then to the NTFS-netshare finally worked.
Here is a link to the exact error:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... erverfiles
So basically it means there are some incompatibilities between ReFS and NTFS if alternate data streams are being used.
Microsoft's fault, not a Veeam issue (so no case ID).

I just want to know if veeam is using alternative data streams while creating backups or if veeam is even aware of these incompatibilities. I've been using veeam for a few years now with VMs and physical PCs but this was the first attempt to do a backup of a ReFS drive... and it failed. Im still trying to find a workaround for all this ReFS <-> NTFS mess (thanks microsoft for releasing slightly incompatible file systems to the public...).

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums

the alternative data streams issue sounds strange to me. I cannot find ADS on my repository (see screenshot). I added alternate data streams to "ADS.txt", but the backup files don't have them



In general, it is recommended to write to a repository instead to an SMB file share. Did you try that?

Best regards,
Hannes

[M-M-C]

Yes, as I wrote above doing a backup to a veaam repository works fine. Furthermore I'm not completely sure the problem really originates from alternate data stream, it's just a guess. Information on that matter is hard to come by.
Personally I just installed the B&R community version on an old laptop, created a repository and called it a day.
I just think the "average Joe" home user might have a problem if the only way to backup a PC with ReFS is installing the B&R server or using an external harddrive (i didnt test it with external drives but i think that should work). For example doing a quick manual backup in a very small home network could be impossible with just the agent and without a server. And that's exactly what i tried to do when those errors came up.
But then again, ReFS is only available on Windows Servers, Pro for Workstations and Enterprise, that's not what an "average Joe" would use.

This is just a "heads up" that there could be some problems when using a ReFS/NTFS-mix and SMB in a home environment but i dont have the time and ressources to dive deeper. And thank you for giving us a business-grade backup solution for free, it's the best by far, even compared to non-free consumer solutions.

Und schöne grüße von der deutschen Nordseeküste nach Österreich