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All Volumes on client scanned instead of Selected Volume


jotrago

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I have a bunch of laptops with clients automatically added to the "automatically added clients" group.

These laptops turnover quite frequently so they are constantly being added and removed as clients.

Pro-Active with Client Certificates & Using the Auto Added Group seemed like a perfect solution.

 

I have a pro-active script backing these up.

I only want to backup a folder on the C:\ drive eg: C:\MyData. I discovered it had not been implemented consistently and had variations like My Data MyData My-Data & My_Data.

 

I created a selector to Include Windows Path starts with "C:\My" AND path contains "Data". This did the trick!

I assumed that this would result in only the C:\Drive being scanned for data, but apparently not

 

The backups run fine, they find the C:\MyData folder and it's variations.

BUT they also waste time scanning every other drive they can find on each client where patently no folders will match "C:\My". (Some have additional drives configured, and various external drives are plugged in randomly)

 

Is there a way to prevent Retro from scanning other drives WITHOUT

Manually changing the Client Sources to Startup Volume

or

Manually creating a C:\ Volume for each Client on the console

 

If there is a way to change the Client Sources setting from "Desktop" to "Startup Volume" I think that would meet my needs.

 

I want to keep the system completely automatic so that all the customer has to do is install the client on a machine, the client is auto detected and added, and the correct folder will get backed up without any further configuration.

 

 

Any tips greatly appreciated

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Hmmmm Good thought. Yes there are two selectors, a generic Volume Name, and a Windows Drive Letter.

I did a quick test, which didn't quite work.

It appears that Retro Selects the drives/volumes it is going to work with based on the items resolved by the Sources.

It then scans EVERY source applying the filters in the selector(s). It even did this when running the preview of a backup job, producing a separate window for each volume.

So it finds the correct files on the correct drive,

BUT if I select the whole Client as the Source, which by default, includes all items on the Desktop, ie ALL Drives, then Retro wastes time scanning all those extra drives AND building Snapshots for them.

 

So it looks likes Selectors are only applied AFTER the Volumes are chosen :(

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you never want to back up data on additional drives (i.e. mounted USB sticks or external drives), then you can set the Volumes tab in the client config to "Selected Volumes" and select C: drive (or others if they have multuple partitions). Then, the selector will not scan any disk/partition other than the one (or more) chosen.

 

I use that method to avoid scanning OEM rebuild partitions on some laptops (i.e. HP/Lenovo ones).

 

Hope that helps..

 

Richard

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  • 6 months later...

In the end I had to go to each client individually and set the Volumes to Startup Volume only.

That was not too much of a pain with only a dozen clients.

But this process has to be repeated fairly frequently as clients come and go, which is pain.

 

It would have been a different story on a larger site with hundreds.

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If you open the Retrospect Client on a client and add a specific drive to "Do not backup the following" box, that drive will be completely skipped and will not even show up in the Client options on the server.  The "Do not backup the following" box can found on the "Access" tab in the client software.

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