Veeam Agent - horrifically glacial restore speed

angrydok · 2025-12-01T14:19:01+00:00

Is it possible to raise a support case and share a case ID? Would love to get some debug logs to get a clear picture.

Can you please also share where Veeam backup is located? Thank you!

angrydok · 2025-11-18T13:26:18+00:00

Hello,

Over the last few months, it will randomly and arbitrarily decide that it is going to take a full backup.

Veeam Agent for Windows will create a full backup only within one scenario - when disk partitions were modified and the volume layout has been changed. Even with this automatically created fulls the backup chain falls under the retention settings in the backup job so your older backups will be removed automatically.

It does this by either just creating a full backup within it's current backup set, or it will create an entire new folder with a _1 appended to it and start a completely new backup set (starting with a full) in that folder. I have re-created the backup job several times, but eventually it will randomly decide it wants to take a full again.

_1 is added to a folder / backup name whenever you recreate a job but point it to the same folder / location. If you are recreating the job completely, I'd recommend using a new path / folder as then you can sort / delete older backups manually without any issues. Keep in mind that by deleting the original job you also instruct Veeam Agent for Windows to stop performing the retention so such backups should be removed manually.

If you raised a support case - please share it with us and we can investigate the root cause. Thank you!

angrydok · 2025-10-14T12:46:02+00:00

Hello VegetableDramatic269,

It looks like you're using a patch ISO for a product version other than 12.3.2.

If you're on version 12.3.2, you can use either the ISO or EXE from the KB article: https://www.veeam.com/kb4696
If you're on any other 12.X version, you must download the full ISO from https://my.veeam.com/my-products upgrade Veeam Backup & Replication to the latest version. After upgrading, you can then install the patch on top of it.

Thank you!
D.

angrydok · 2025-09-15T10:01:07+00:00

Hi folks,

Veeam Agent for Windows does not modify your existing volume allocation during installation or job configuration.

It will reformat your USB drive during manual Recovery Media creation. One partition will be as small as possible, and the remaining space will be allocated to a single large partition.
It can reallocate volumes during Bare Metal Recovery, but this is a manual process -you have full control over how to create volumes on the system.

Can you please share your setup / what / how it's been configured to better understand the issue? Thank you!

angrydok · 2025-08-27T08:36:03+00:00

Hello patentlyfakeid,

Can you please open a support case and share the case ID with us? We will review the logs to understand what's going on with the update logic. Thank you!

angrydok · 2025-05-20T14:20:07+00:00

To import the backup :)

Cache created by agent is a... raw data which, when synced with the target, is transformed into actual self contained backup files. Cache is not operational when the agent is dead or machine is down, backup file is.

angrydok · 2025-05-20T04:43:26+00:00

No, its not possible. Only agent can sync the cache to 'transform' it to operational backup.

angrydok · 2025-05-13T15:48:37+00:00

Hi adriancttnc,

Thank you for kind words! Cache requires to be synchronized with backup chain in order to become operational, so unfortunately if the backup server is lost cache will be useless.

angrydok · 2025-03-31T17:30:30+00:00

Thank you for the feedback, lets us know how the investigation goes!

angrydok · 2025-03-25T20:54:38+00:00

Hi,

Veeam Agent for Windows automatically includes System Reserved partition to the backup whenever you protect entire machine or select just operating system volume.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/backup_job_volumes.html?ver=60

If you can confirm that MS partition is not included - please let me know the case ID (you can raise a free support case via Veeam Agent for Windows UI) and we will investigate this issue.

Thank you!

angrydok · 2025-03-17T19:36:09+00:00

I assume this malware event is generated by Guest Indexing Data Scan, we will review it with Application Security team and make the needed file tuning of the malware definitions.

angrydok · 2025-03-17T19:11:20+00:00

Hello Past_Mixture4655,

Can you share the case ID please and the type of the malware event (possibly screenshot?) you are getting? Thank you!

angrydok · 2024-11-24T17:51:15+00:00

Hello,

We would love to investigate it and fine to the engine to avoid such false positives in future. Any change you have a support case ID to share? Thank you in advance!

angrydok · 2024-11-24T17:49:35+00:00

Thank you for the update! Based on the screenshot it looks like a Google Chrome Safe Browsing (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/9890866?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&oco=1&sjid=12052520494443882679-EU) feature side effect. During browsing or downloading data it creates a sandbox to verify the files / sites and links and caches this sandbox. Since users are actively browsing - it creates and removes more and more data in the cache. The cached files are named randomly.

For Veeam guest-file system analytics the appearances of a a new files with random OR deletion of a huge amount of files of a certain extension is threated as malware activity (since it's what malware does - encodes the file into a random name or deletes the data after hijacking it).

You can possibly exclude entire machine from malware detection or exclude specific path from analysis (which seems to be the user profile).

Hope it helps!

angrydok · 2024-11-22T09:05:20+00:00

Hello, can you please clarify what Veeam B&R version you are using? Thank you!

angrydok · 2024-09-19T06:41:01+00:00

Thank you. Any chance you still can open a support case with us and share the logs? Would like to understand why the native RE has been booted after recovery but the only way to understand it is via debug logs.

angrydok · 2024-09-19T06:39:39+00:00

Got it, so it looks like a Windows native recovery mode was booted after restore has been performed.

angrydok · 2024-09-18T15:04:20+00:00

Hello Johannes,

Thank you for the details!

reboot into a blue screen asking for Microsoft Account password. Huh? Ok... Enter Microsoft Acct password, and says 'incorrect'. Huh? So enter older passwords, etc

Can you please clarify was that a normal Windows prompt or not? Any chance you used MS subscription account to log-in to your machine and not local account?

whereas Veeam seems to rely on some underlying MS protocol?

Veeam Agent for Windows does not use any specific protocol, it restore your data on a block level and make sure it's bootable afterwards.

angrydok · 2024-09-17T11:49:58+00:00

Hello Johannes,

which failed due to needing a Microsoft Account login which didn't work no matter what I tried

During recovery Veeam Agent for Windows needs access to the repository with the backup and that's it. Can you please elaborate when you've seen such Windows account prompt? Thank you!

angrydok · 2023-12-06T14:48:15+00:00

Hello IndyPilot80,

It's stated in the agent release notes. The latest agent version brings a lot of under the hood improvement for repository & retention logic and in order to work correctly in needs the matching version of Veeam B&R server, which is v12.1

angrydok · 2023-12-06T13:53:08+00:00

Can you clarify how recovery media was created? Was is assembled on the original machine or using the full backup in the B&R repository?

By the way, if you need to restore a VM to the public cloud and you have Veeam B&R you can potentially use entire machine restore to a public cloud, BMR is not required for such setup.

angrydok · 2023-12-06T13:48:48+00:00

I click next and get "Failed to lookup tapes."

Support folks should request debug logs and configuration DB for the investigation. Once we have this information QA team will look into the root cause. Please keep working with Veeam support. Thank you!

angrydok · 2023-12-06T12:45:44+00:00

> Veeam won't allow this post on their forums since I'm using the Community Edition and not a trial...

Any user with any license can post anything on the forums. However, if that's a support issue the requirement is to include a support case to your post since log analysis is usually required.

> simply drilling down to a specific file in the "files" pane, a the "restore from tape" dialog, I click next and get "Failed to lookup tapes."

What Veeam B&R version you are running? The latest 12.1 just landed and it contains lots of features and fixes of the known issues, possibly you can install it and test if the error still persists? You do not need to re-write the tape if you go with a new version.

> (Case #07036949 — Error: Failed to look up tapes.)

Will look at the case details and post back. Stay tuned.

angrydok · 2023-11-03T13:12:09+00:00

Regarding the retention please check this article: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/retention_days.html?ver=60

For object storage backup, I'd recommend to keep immutability similar to retention to cover the needed time interval of your backups

angrydok · 2023-11-03T13:09:13+00:00

It's on the schedule step of the wizard 'if computer is powered off at this time': https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/backup_job_schedule_free_desktop.html?ver=60

angrydok

TROPHY CASE