Data Set compresion and Groominbg

[capun]

Hello

 

I read the manual and did some searchs but I could not get the proper answer.

 

I have Retrospect Pro 7.7 and have a couple of backup sets. They are set to no compression and appending the data to an external USB drive.

 

I am down to 9% of disk space and wanted to see if I could get more space in the disk.

 

Here's some of the questions that I have:

 

- Is there a way to compress the current data set.

 

- How can I remove extra back-up data without loosing some old data. For example I may have a file calle ABC-R0 in session 1, later I would have ABC-R1 in session 3. I want to keep both files backed up

 

- I get this message if I want to set Groom (abbreviated): Do not use if this data set is used to archive data, "Save Source Snapshot Restore" option is tuned off. What does this means

 

Thanks

[bobbodavis]

I don't use archives. Basically, I set the size of the backup set to as much as I am willing to allocate for my disk (usually all of it). Then under options, set your grooming preference. If you never want to groom, your disk will eventually fill up. The default policy "groom to retrospect defined policy" will attempt to keep us much of your data for as long as there is space on the disk. Once the disk is full, it grooms out the earliest backup to make room for new backups. Pretty standard methodology for backup software. This will allow you to keep multiple versions of files that are represented as snapshots ,up until the point that they get groomed out.

 

You cannot compress existing backup sets that we're not previously compressed from within retrospect. However, you can turn on compression for future backup sets from within your backup script(s). There is an option under Execution / Backup called "Data Compression (in software)". Alternatively, use compression from within windows on the backup device - Right click the Volume Name (i.e. C:), on the general tab, enable the option to "compress this drive to save disk space". That will compress all of the files on the drive itself.

 

Just be careful with compression. It can work great for freeing up disk space, but compressed data is more likely to become corrupted. You have to determine what's more important to you, the data, or the amount of storage space.