Scheduled backup to pCloud virtual drive fails, while manual backup works

[Xopher]

Hello Team,

I’m using Hasleo Backup Suite Professional 5.8.2.2 on Windows 11 and trying to save a System Backup to a pCloud virtual drive mounted as P: drive in my File Explorer. pCloud is basically a cloud storage service similar to Google Drive.

e.g. Destination:  P:\Backups\Hasleo

The unusual behavior is:

• If I create the task without a schedule and click Proceed, the backup starts normally and successfully writes to P:
  
• If I add a schedule and click **Save**, Hasleo immediately reports: The system cannot find the path specified. (0x02FB008500000000)
  

• The scheduled task also fails with the same error
  
• Running the saved task through BackupCmdUI.exe also fails with the same error
  
• The Browse dialog can see and select the P: path without any issue
  
• Another backup competitor (Macrium Reflect scheduled backups) can write to the same pCloud drive successfully, so this is an issue with Hasleo
  

This appears to be related to how Hasleo stores or resolves the destination path for saved tasks, since immediate manual backups work.

My question is — is there any supported way to make scheduled Hasleo backups use a cloud-mounted virtual drive such as pCloud? If not, could support for this be considered in the near future?

In this day and age, surely there must be many people who prefer to run scheduled backup tasks to their cloud storage and this limitation with Hasleo is a huge deal-breaker for me personally as I was looking to transition over from Macrium.

[al3x]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

the HBS window runs with local admin rights in your current user context. This is probably why you can do normal backups as the drive is accessible to your user. As soon as you set up a schedule (or rerun the task via "Backup" button), I assume HBS will manage the backup with its background service "Hasleo Backup Suite Service", which essentially runs BackupService.exe as SYSTEM user.

I don't know how pCloud Drive works exactly and how it mounts drives. But I registered a test account and tested a bit myself, too.

It seems that the P:\ drive is mounted system wide, so if the pCloud Drive process is running with any user, the drive is available to all users on the same machine. My first thought was, maybe the drive is only available to the current user and because HBS uses a background service in another user context, the drive might not be accessible to that user.

But seeing that all users of the machine can access the drive, that theory is probably disproven to some extent.

I also tried to switch the HBS service user from SYSTEM to my Windows user to see if that might fix it. It doesn't unfortunately, still fails with error 0x02FB0085.

At this point I think you should wait for @admin (Hasleo staff) to respond. He might have an idea why this doesn't work with the background service and maybe this can be fixed 👍

Best regards,
al3x

[n8chavez]

I don't believe pcloud works that way; at least I've never had luck saving large files directly to it as they're being written. That's one of the reasons I use rclone instead of any cloud storage provider's software. When I used to try to do something similar, pcloud would take issue with the caching of that file. As you know, the file is not directly written to that p:/. It is first cached on the local disc..

I am curious, what happens if you schedules task is run as admin? What happens if backupgui is run as admin win script? (Something like, "C:\Program Files\HBS\bin\BackupCmdUI.exe" /a run /g GUID /t 0) What happens if caching was turned off within pcloud?

[admin]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Regarding this issue, I think we need to install pCloud Drive to analyze and fix it. pCloud isn’t available on our end, which is a hassle.

[admin]

Please try the fixed version bellow:
X86/X64
ARM64

[Xopher]

Hello @al3x @n8chavez and @admin!

Thank you all so much for your answers. Especially @al3x I appreciate you taking the time to actually test and verify the issue.

I don't believe pcloud works that way; at least I've never had luck saving large files directly to it as they're being written.  That's one of the reasons I use rclone instead of any cloud storage provider's software.  When I used to try to do something similar, pcloud would take issue with the caching of that file.  As you know, the file is not directly written to that p:/.  It is first cached on the local disc..

I understand your concern, but I can confirm that backing up directly to pCloud definitely works. I've been using it like this with Macrium Reflect on a scheduled backup set to a folder on my virtual P: drive.

As you mentioned, the backup is initially cached on the local machine (%LOCALAPPDATA%\pCloud\Cache) and then uploaded to the destination in pCloud. After the upload is completed, the cache file is automatically deleted from that cache folder (I believe upon restarting the PC). Sometimes it may be a bit wonky and doesn't delete, in which case I've had to manually delete the cache file. But at the end of the day, it still works.

Please try the fixed version bellow:
X86/X64
ARM64

I just saw this so will give it a try and report back my results!

Also, perhaps you already figured this out, but I believe pCloud has a free 10GB storage plan to test around with. You'll probably need to create an account and download their desktop app to mount the virtual P: drive to test things out, so just a FYI.

[admin]

I just saw this so will give it a try and report back my results!

Also, perhaps you already figured this out, but I believe pCloud has a free 10GB storage plan to test around with. You'll probably need to create an account and download their desktop app to mount the virtual P: drive to test things out, so just a FYI.

Yes, we've already installed pCloud Drive and tested it. Thanks.

[Xopher]

Please try the fixed version bellow:
X86/X64
ARM64

Hi @admin,

Just tried the fixed version (v5.8.2.2), ran a scheduled backup, and I'm pleased to report that it seemed to have worked! The backup is being uploaded to pCloud now, so once that completes, I'll also check to see if I can access the backup image without any issues. Thank you so much for the quick fix!

If I may ask:

1. What did you have to tweak in the backend to make this work with pCloud?
   
2. Also, is this new version like a beta build, or is this a new production build? Will it automatically update when newer production versions become available in the future?