We have noticed that even though Microsoft has tried to be very helpful by providing reports on the network status and backup status that can be emailed to users, these reports are highly inaccurate.

You will be emailed a report with a big green checkmark stating that the backup completed successfully. If you are using SBS 2008 you can look in the SBS Console and it will also say the backup completed successfully. So you think things are working and there are no problems.

SBS Console

Sample Email Report

You wont know the difference unless you click into the recover a file area. When you do that all the backups are listed. There it shows that the backups have "completed with errors".

If you view the detailed reports you will see that the backups did not complete or even backup entire drives. If the backup gets stuck on one file it does not backup the entire drive.

Microsoft says it improved its backups starting in Windows 7 but I think they took 10 steps backwards. The built in backup system does not allow for you to pick what you want to back up, backup reports are not accurate, and it dies on one bad file.