The December 2025 backup thread mixed three different symptoms that should be diagnosed separately: tasks appearing slowly in the UI, scheduled jobs not firing, and Windows Outlook PST files being difficult to copy. Treating all three as one “backup bug” leads to the wrong fix.
The original poster eventually found a network-related log message and later switched to pushing backups from Windows toward ZimaOS. Another user temporarily restarted the backup service with cron, but that workaround was never presented as an official fix.
Current ZimaOS Backup Has Changed Since 1.5.3
The current ZimaOS Backup guide describes independent scheduled tasks, resume/fault tolerance, and Cloud/LAN/USB/Zima sources and destinations.
That is a much broader feature set than the 1.5.3-era thread. Reproduce any old scheduler symptom on the current release before carrying forward a service-restart workaround.
Separate UI Delay From Scheduler Failure
In the source thread, some users saw a task appear only after roughly 10–20 seconds. A slow task list is a presentation/registration symptom. It does not prove the task itself failed to run.
Check the task’s last-run state, timestamps and logs around the scheduled time. If manual “Run now” works but the scheduled run never starts, the scheduler path is more suspect than the source data.
Outlook PST Is a Special Windows File Case
PST files can be open or otherwise constrained by Outlook/Windows while the application is running. The original user said Outlook was closed, but later improved the workflow by changing backup direction and pushing from Windows toward ZimaOS.
The current ZimaOS computer backup guide provides a cleaner PC-to-ZimaOS path than pulling a special Windows file remotely from the NAS side.
Do Not Turn a Service-Restart Workaround Into Normal Operations
One community user scheduled a cron job that restarted the backup service and observed that it forced tasks to run. That is useful diagnostic evidence that the scheduler/service state may have been stuck, but it is not a documented supported fix.
The current backup overview is a better reference for the product’s present capabilities.
Verify Restore, Not Just “Task Completed”
After fixing the schedule, restore at least one representative file and open it. For Outlook data, do not rely solely on job status—verify the restored PST can be copied back and opened by the intended Outlook version.
Bottom Line
On current ZimaOS, first prove whether the problem is UI delay, scheduler execution, source-file access or network timing. For Windows PST data, a PC-to-ZimaOS backup workflow is usually easier to reason about than pulling the file from Windows. Avoid cron-based service restarts unless you are using them temporarily to isolate a bug.
