vshadow backup

Hello Denys, Glad to hear your using the scripts and it is working well. I must admit I used rsync to backup and found it too slow too, Ill have a look at backing up to Linux  with Rsync when I have some spare time. I did hear that there are ways to speed up Rsync especially with windows. Ive set it up so workstations on the road cant see the backup server and dont have to slowly backup, most remote users come into the office at least once a month so we at least get some copy of their data.

As for the backup of the whole disk essential, well probably not but I havnt had to restore a complete system yet but there has been one occasion where the registry needed restoring after a system wouldnt boot and just by booting BartPE and restoring this file worked fine. Once the first copy has been run with robocopy (slow even on LAN) further backups run so fast its not an issue with speed as it parses folders so quickly, but yes you could easily speed up the whole process with just the My documents folders being backed up. The storage SIS isnt an issue as duplicated files are saved once on the server which is why I didnt mind backing up nearly everything on the c: drive. The XP system restore stuff would have killed the storage if I allowed that to be copied. Unfortunately Ive never heard of SIS for anything other than Win servers however there are other equivalents you can buy, cant remember their names. I would love a similar free product for Linux and Id convert the server straight away.

As for your psexec question I think you are asking if PSexec can itself copy the vshadow/dosdev files, well Im sure it cant but its nothing to copy these files to someones drive in a logon script, or you could easily keep all the files on the workstation just by simple change to the scripts, I left some of these on the server so to stop some people changing this.

I hope I have answered some of your questions.