Retrospect scanning (and partially backing up) excluded folders - why?

[QonoS]

To back up my home directory on my laptop, I created a new Rule excluding 2 particular folders within the home directory. Those 2 folders contain about 150 and 6 GB, respectively.

 

The Rule is essentially as follows:

-- Exclude files/folders based on the following rules:

• Any of the following are true:
  
  • Folder Name contains "Folder1"
    
  • Folder Name contains "Folder2"
    

* When scanning the home directory (designated as a Favorite Folder) for backup, Retrospect scanned those 2 folders anyway, and most of the eventual 240 (!!!) execution errors occurred during the scan. Almost invariably those errors took the form of:

 

Folder path/To/Folder...,
 Scanning incomplete, error 24 ( unknown). 

 

 

* When doing a test restore of the backup, a small portion of each of the excluded folders was present in the restore, meaning, of course, that some of it was backed up, despite the Exclude rule. About 51 MB from the 150 GB directory, and about 152 K from the 6 GB directory. Moreover, almost the entire directory hierarchy of each folder was present on the restore, even though most folders were empty.

 

I'm stumped. Is this merely an example of the crunchy goodness that is Retrospect 8?

 

Most importantly, can I make it stop?

[Lennart_T]

You are trying to cure the symptoms instead of the actual "disease". You should fix the scanning errors in the first place.

 

Repair your hard drive:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417?viewlocale=en_US

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1782

[twickland]

To back up my home directory on my laptop, I created a new Rule excluding 2 particular folders within the home directory. Those 2 folders contain about 150 and 6 GB, respectively.

 

The Rule is essentially as follows:

-- Exclude files/folders based on the following rules:

• Any of the following are true:
  
  • Folder Name contains "Folder1"
    
  • Folder Name contains "Folder2"
    

* When scanning the home directory (designated as a Favorite Folder) for backup, Retrospect scanned those 2 folders anyway

 

Unless you deselect these options, Retrospect will scan and match files on the source and compare them with what's already in the media set. This process occurs first, and encompasses the entire source volume or favorite folder. Only after this scanning and matching will Retrospect apply whatever rule is in your script to decide which files are actually going to get backed up.

 

* When doing a test restore of the backup, a small portion of each of the excluded folders was present in the restore, meaning, of course, that some of it was backed up, despite the Exclude rule. About 51 MB from the 150 GB directory, and about 152 K from the 6 GB directory. Moreover, almost the entire directory hierarchy of each folder was present on the restore, even though most folders were empty.

 

Offhand, I can't explain why some files in these folders were backed up. However, when Retrospect performs a backup, it creates a snapshot of the entire source's directory structure. If you "restore from a backup," Retrospect will replicate the directory structure that existed at the time of that backup, but will include only the files that exist in the backup and that you have chosen to have restored.

 

Retro 6 had an option that made it easy to skip restoring empty folders. Retro 8/9 seems to have abandoned this option, but it might be possible to incorporate its function into the rule you use for performing restores by setting a folder size to exclude. I've never tested to see if this would work.

 

Most importantly, can I make it stop?

Your options are limited.

 

You probably don't want to turn off the matching options, as this would defeat the most powerful feature of Retrospect: the ability to perform incremental backups.

 

If the folders were on a client machine running the Retro 9 client, you could designate the folders as "private," which makes them invisible to Retrospect. This option is not available for local backups, though.

 

If you don't have too many folders in your home directory, you could name all your desired folders as favorite folders and back only these folders up.

 

Or you may conclude, as have many of us, that the time Retrospect is taking to perform the matching on the excluded folders is no big deal.