View the debug.log files – SAFE Backup

You will only really need to view this in the case of a missed backup, as this log will tell you when the next backup will run.

To view the scheduler log, open file explorer and go to the C drive, open Users and select the user account that the backup runs on. You will then need the .obm file if it is a Business User backup, and the .acb file if it is a Single User backup. After that the Log file, the Scheduler.

In this location you will see lots of debug files. The one you will need to read is the top one, if your backup has missed for a long time you will likely see that the “Date modified” date is not recent, this indicated that the backup service is not running which will be why it is missing. Please give this a restart.

Scroll to the bottom of the file where the text ends. You will see the file is counting down to the next backup for the sets on this machine. The set name is mentioned first after [info] and you are then shown when it will next run. If you date on the left is not todays date this means the file has not been modified, as mentioned above you will need to give the backup service a restart.

Once the service has restarted the log will start to count down and show todays date and the time. You may need to close the text file and refresh the file explorer window first.

This file is also a good indication of why the backup missed a certain backup. For example, you can see from this log that my machine was not talking to the backup server between 4.44pm and 7.32am the next day, so the backup missed.

I know this is because my machine is off at that time, this is shown in Event Viewer. This will show other issues too, the debug.log will give you the time to check.