I saw this thread but it's not exactly what I was looking for and hoping to get ideas from a different angle for doing MSS backups while trying to go "green" by only having my PCs on only when necessary. Currently, I leave my PCs on 24x7. Not a big deal but if I could save some energy here and there and do a small part for the environment (and my wallet), why not?

Does anyone have any ideas for:

Turning on the PCs right before a scheduled MSS backup if they're turned off?
Turning off the PCs following an MSS backup?

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Richard

My gadget blog: http://www.gadgetinsane.com

I *may* have answered my own question. (google is your friend)

I can go into my computer's setup and following the instructions that I found here for automatically turning on my computers. I figured I'd turn them on 5 minutes before my backups are scheduled to start.

Turning my computers off (or into standby/hibernation) is easy enough with the Power Options in Windows XP Control Panel.

The only thing I question is whether my PCs will consider the MSS backup over the network as "inactivity" and shut itself down inadvertently while the MSS is trying to back it up. I will need to test this.

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Richard

My gadget blog: http://www.gadgetinsane.com

The site you are referencing there . . .
http://www.astahost.com/info.php/turn-c ... t7075.html

Literally crashed my computer..............what's up with that?

What have I done.

Well, if it's any consolation, I changed the time for the "Power-On by Alarm" to something current and it didn't turn on my PC.

It looks like it *should* work but doesn't - at least not for me/us.

It looks like I'm back to asking how I (we) can backup our PCs if it's powered down. I should also ask, will the MSS backup work if a PC is in standby or hibernation?

_________________
Richard

My gadget blog: http://www.gadgetinsane.com

If a client PC is in standby or hibernate mode, the Connector software will make sure it is woken up around the scheduled time selected for backups on the MSS. There is nothing to configure in the BIOS to enable this (no Power-On-Alarm or Wake-on-LAN), it's all automatic.

If the PC is turned off, no backup will occur.

I always do standby, but if you're concerned about the (little) energy drain, hibernate works as well and uses no power.

One (current) shortcoming of the automatic wake-up is that there is no corresponding shutdown once the backup is complete. I've had to set my PC to go in standby after 1 hour to make it go back in standby after the backup.

_________________
Ben.

HP EX470 w/PP3, 8.0TB (2x500GB, 5x1TB+1x2TB WD Green Drives, 2GB RAM), TR4M-B
PC1: Desktop, Windows 7 Ultimate (x64)
PC2: Media Center, Windows 7 Home Premium (x32)
PC3: Desktop, Windows XP Pro SP3 (x32)
PC4: EeePC, Windows 7 Home Premium (x32)

I really appreciate the time you've taken to provide your feedback. I understand how standby would work but wonder, somewhat technically, why hibernate would work if the PC is sort of "off".

As a question, did you set the standby for 1 hour to avoid the PC from going into standby while it was in the middle of a backup? From your experience, does the PC believe it's still active while a backup is occurring?

Thanks again.

_________________
Richard

My gadget blog: http://www.gadgetinsane.com

My understanding is that through ACPI, the operating system can ask the computer to turn itself back on at a specified time. This is essentially the same as the Power-On-RTC-Alarm option you may have in your BIOS, except you don't need to set it up yourself.

FYI: in Standby mode, only the RAM is powered. In Hibernate mode, nothing is powered. In both cases the CPU no longer receives power and isn't used to wake up the PC at the requested time.


Most of my daily backups take around 10 minutes to complete. You can check how long your backups take by opening the Event Viewer and looking for the backup events on your client PC.

I haven't bothered to check what happens if a backup should run over 1 hour, but I'm pretty sure the PC will not shutdown while the backup is in progress. For me 1 hour was simply a good compromise between PC "uptime" and conserving energy.

_________________
Ben.

HP EX470 w/PP3, 8.0TB (2x500GB, 5x1TB+1x2TB WD Green Drives, 2GB RAM), TR4M-B
PC1: Desktop, Windows 7 Ultimate (x64)
PC2: Media Center, Windows 7 Home Premium (x32)
PC3: Desktop, Windows XP Pro SP3 (x32)
PC4: EeePC, Windows 7 Home Premium (x32)