Retro 7.7: Windows 7 and various app files being backed up twice

[x509]

I use a laptop for for when I'm out of the (home) office, so it has most of the same apps installed that are installed on the desktop I use in the office. Same versions, e.g. Office 2010 Professional Plus, Quicken, FireFox, same utilities, etc. Both systems are running Win 7 Pro 64. I have always kept data in a separate D partition, separate from the C partitions used for the OS and applications.

 

I just started to back up the Programs partition on my laptop. I thought that there would be very few actual files backed up, since the various OS or app files are the same on both systems. However, Retrospect 7.7 appears to have done a complete fresh backup of all those files on my laptop, looking at the size of the backup data set relative to the space used by the installed files on both laptop and desktop, and by the time required for each backup session in the Operations log.

 

Do I need to change a parameter setting so that this approach doesn't continue?

 

I don't know much about disk grooming. Can I use grooming to eliminate the duplicate files?

 

Thanks.

[cfieldgate]

x509,

 

By setting up two different backup jobs / scripts - one for the desktop and one for the laptop - you are telling Retrospect that these are different file systems / PCs (which they are) and are to be backed up separately. If you had one backup job / script that backed up the drives on both PCs (which would have to run against both PCs at the same time - which is somewhat inflexible) I believe that Retrospect might be smart enough, after a Groom, to only keep one copy of all these system / application files. I would worry a little about Restore - although I think it should be safe I have not tried this scenario myself.

 

That said, I really don't think this is a big issue. The flexibility of separate backups is well worth it if you need to Restore (you will one day - honest) and in any case these system / application files will only get backed up the first time - as they do not change. As storage is fairly cheap I wouldn't worry about this kind of duplication.

[x509]

x509,

 

By setting up two different backup jobs / scripts - one for the desktop and one for the laptop - you are telling Retrospect that these are different file systems / PCs (which they are) and are to be backed up separately. If you had one backup job / script that backed up the drives on both PCs (which would have to run against both PCs at the same time - which is somewhat inflexible) I believe that Retrospect might be smart enough, after a Groom, to only keep one copy of all these system / application files. I would worry a little about Restore - although I think it should be safe I have not tried this scenario myself.

 

Actually I do have one script that names the right volumes (Programs or DATA) from each system as sources. I also back up another client, a desktop, so my scripts now identify three different volumes as sources for the backup. The other client, however, is still running Win XP, so duplication of OS files isn't an issue for now.

 

Are you saying that if I did a grooming operation, that is needed to eliminate files that are exact duplicates? I thought that Retrospect was supposed to detect duplicate files during the backup operation itself.

 

That said, I really don't think this is a big issue. The flexibility of separate backups is well worth it if you need to Restore (you will one day - honest) and in any case these system / application files will only get backed up the first time - as they do not change. As storage is fairly cheap I wouldn't worry about this kind of duplication.

 

Your point aobut needing to restore is probably more important than disk space. I agree about that. Either Retrospect is smart enough to recognize exact duplicate when backing up, or it is not. If not, I don't want to take a chance if/when I need to restore a system. Even if both clients ran Windows 7, i'm probably talking about an extra 80 GB max of unnecessary duplicate files.