Knowledgebase & FAQs

My Backup Alerts say I have "missed backups" - what does this mean?

The Backup Software that runs on your Desktop, Laptop or Server is configured with a schedule for when to run Backup Sets. You might have several different sets configured - perhaps dealing with your E-Mail, SQL Databases and general Word documents distinctly.

Each "Backup Set" will be configured with a "Schedule" - the time at which it runs (and if you've not setup daily backups. the day on which it happens). Built in too is a "retry window" - by default set to 6 hours. If a scheduled Backup does not happen, then the backup is "missed" and you'll receive the daily summary alerts to let you know.

Scheduled Backups normally fail because:

A)
The computer system was not switched on at the time (or within the retry window) that backups are due to start. This is more common on Desktop/Laptop computers.

If this is a one off, then it's nothing to worry about, but if you constantly miss backups then you should look at changing the schedule time to one where your system will be on. Don't forget that it is possible to configure our Small Business Backup software to shut your computer down once it is done if you like to run backups overnight but don't want to leave the computer running all the time. It also happens if you've setup "Daily" backups - this includes Saturday and Sunday - so if you're only open Monday-Friday, perhaps change to "Weekly" and tick the 5 weekdays as those days to run the job.

B)
There was a problem with your Internet Connection

Generally running your backups overnight is fine - but occasionally you might have a problem with your Internet connection - particularly if you use regular broadband. At night most ISPs and people like BT tend to perform maintenance and if they're performing some, it could stop your Internet connection working in the early hours - breaking your backup job (and since everything is working by the morning, it may seem like the software is the fault).

If it's a rare issue, then don't worry, but if it is a regular issue you may need to investigate this with your ISP or speak with our support team.

C)
A different backup set was still running at the time the "missed" backup should have run.

This can happen if you have several Backup Sets configured, and one of them takes too long to run. Only one set can run at once, and therefore we generally advise spreading the time individual sets out by some margin. There are no hard/fast rules on when is best, it all depends how much data you have and how often you back it up, but we tend to find if you've got a typical setup with a small number of documents changing/adding per day, try giving each set a clear 2 hours to run.

Again if this happens very rarely it isn't anything to worry about - but if it starts becoming a regular issue, you may want to consider adjusting the backup schedules. If you suddenly add or rearrange a lot of files on your computer, it can cause a sudden increase in the time it takes to perform backups.


If none of these issues seem to be the case, get in touch with our Support Team and we'll be able to try and help you identify the likely cause of your issues.

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