Unsupported data found

  • Article

Published : April 8, 2005 | Updated : August 17, 2005

Summary

This alert is generated when DPM discovers new unsupported files or folders in protected data sources. The supported data on the affected volumes will continue to be protected, but unsupported data will not be protected and, therefore, will not be available for recovery. The “Unsupported data found” alert remains active for seven days after new unsupported files or folders are discovered.

Causes

DPM has detected unsupported data types in protected data sources. The “Unsupported data found” alert is generated when DPM detects any of the following data types:

  • Encrypted files, and unencrypted files within encrypted folders

  • Hard links

  • Reparse points including Distributed File System (DFS) links, Single Instance Store (SIS) files, and junction points

    Important

    A protection group can contain data with mount points*.* In this case, DPM protects the mounted volume that is the target of the mount point but not the mount point metadata. When you recover data that contains mount points, you must manually recreate your mount point hierarchy. Note that DPM does not support protection of mounted volumes within mounted volumes.

  • Files within the same folder that have names that differ only in case

    DPM protects only volumes formatted with NTFS. In most cases, NTFS prevents users and applications from creating files with names that differ only in case (such as “foo,” “fOo,” and “Foo”) within the same folder. However, applications running on UNIX, applications using the Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX (POSIX), and some low-level Windows applications that use NTFS APIs can create files that differ only in case.

    When files with names that differ only in case exist in the same folder, DPM only protects the “default” file. Because it can be difficult for a user to determine which file is the default file, you should not rely on DPM to protect any of these files. DPM will ignore changes to non-default files, and will raise this alert to warn the administrator that unsupported data has been discovered.

Note

Although no alert is generated when you attempt to protect this data, there are other types of data that DPM does not support, including the Recycle Bin, paging files, and the System Volume Information folder.

Resolutions

For information about the location of unsupported data, you can review the list of affected volumes.

To review the list of affected volumes

  1. On the Alerts tab in the Monitoring task area, select the “Unsupported data found” alert.

  2. To display the list of affected volumes, in the Details pane, click the Details link.

To avoid any misunderstanding about which files will be available for recovery, you may want to advise your users to avoid creating files of the unsupported data types (such as encrypted files) within the protected data sources.