New Rw Drive

[2393ff46-6b58-4a91-820d-6326790b51d1]

Our rw drive died and I replaced it with new. Retrospect recognized it and added it, etc.

 

My problem: It used to only backup changed and/or new files. It is now backing up (apparently) our entire file catalog. Since we were drive-less for about 3 weeks, I expected to have a few disks to fill due to the down time combined with an unusually busy few weeks. I didn't notice until it got going and eventually asked for a new disk that it was backing up everything.

 

I will be the first to admit that I don't know a lot about Retrospect as when I started working here it was all set up and running and the only thing I ever had to do to it was pop in a new disk when it asked for one. This means, you have permission to speak to me like I'm the dumbest thing on the planet. I have been reading up in the last few days but I'm no where up to speed on this.

 

MY QUESTION: I need to find out if, since it already started over am I committed to continuing with it rewriting our entire backup file again or if there is a way to go back to where it left off saving only the new/changed stuff that we accumulated since the old drive bit it.

 

 

It is naming the disks in the correct sequence (picked up where it left off 3 weeks ago) which is one reason I initially thought it was backing up stuff normally.

 

We are running Retrospect 6.1 on a Mac server

 

 

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[Lennart_T]

I'm not familiar with what an "rw drive" is, so I can only offer general advice.

 

You backup to a "Backup set". A backup set has "members", which can be tape cartridges, DVD discs, hard drives or magneto-optical discs. (I have surely forgotten some type of media, too).

If one member goes bad, Retrospect marks that member as "lost" and tries to once again back up all files that resided on that member. Is that what is happening?

[2393ff46-6b58-4a91-820d-6326790b51d1]

I'm not familiar with what an "rw drive" is, so I can only offer general advice.

 

You backup to a "Backup set". A backup set has "members", which can be tape cartridges, DVD discs, hard drives or magneto-optical discs. (I have surely forgotten some type of media, too).

If one member goes bad, Retrospect marks that member as "lost" and tries to once again back up all files that resided on that member. Is that what is happening?

 

 

That sounds EXACTLY like what it's doing (duh to me, should have thought of that)... So is there a way to make it not do that or does it just have to keep going since I already fed it several new disks to write by the time I noticed...

 

I apologize! RW drive writes to dvd disks... you're lucky I didn't call it that silver thing that does that thing. I am TERRIBLE at knowing the real name for hardware. (Seriously, I used to call the film to plate exposure table 'that sucker downer thing')

Edited November 30, 2011 by DonnaMcM

[twickland]

So is there a way to make it not do that or does it just have to keep going since I already fed it several new disks to write by the time I noticed...

If by this you mean skipping to new media if the one in use appears defective, you definitely don't want to stop this if you value your data.

 

As for apparently writing too much data, you should first check to make sure that your backup scripts are configured as you want them to be. Go to the applicable script's schedule and confirm that the scheduled executions are for Normal and not Recycle backups. To avoid backing up files unnecessarily, go to Options> Matching and be sure that options "Match source files to catalog" and "Don't add duplicates to backup set" are selected. If you don't need to back up metadata such as ACLs (Access Control Lists), be sure that the "Use attribute modification" option is UNchecked. Also be sure that your selection criteria (either as entered in the script itself or via a referenced selector) are what you want them to be.

 

If these look OK, go to Configure> Backup Sets> Configure [your_backup_set]> Members. This will enable you to see how much data has been written to each member, and whether any members have been marked as "missing" (a missing member will have a poof symbol instead of a checkmark to the left of its listing).

 

Finally, you can go to Reports> Contents> and browse the contents of each backup session to see what files were actually backed up. You can choose to view fies without their folder structure, which makes it easy to sort them by modification date, size, etc. This may reveal a pattern, such as that the files are being modified more than you expect, or that there are more large files being modified than before.

 

Finally, check to be sure that the backup and source Macs' system clocks are correct and stable. If the time is too far off or the time zone changes for either, this will cause otherwise unmodified files to be backed up again.

 

Hope this helps.