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Retrospect 11 Hangs While Grooming


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Retrospect: 11.0.1

Mac OS X: 10.9.3

 

While running a backup script, Retrospect's grooming routine started at what looks to be about 3:00AM. This was expected behavior, as I have grooming enabled for that Media Set. Three hours later it's still at it. It's reporting "Remaining    30,067 files    14.4GB    00:09:59", but has been for at least the last hour, maybe more. The file it's working on has not changed in that time either.

 

I should point out that I was anticipating the groom, as the Media Set was close to full. And I should add that this Media set had not been used for months, not since before I upgraded from Retro 9 straight to 11. (So the last time I backed up to it I was running Retro 9 on Snow Leopard.) The media set was over 800GB.

 

The Status is reporting "Grooming..." with the spinning activity indicator. And sometimes alternates to "Matching <name of backup set>", so it appears to be doing something.

 

The interface is otherwise responsive: I can select menu items and click buttons, etc, with the expected result.

 

Is this a hang, or normal?

 

And more importantly:

 

If it is a hang, can it be safely stopped without compromising the integrity of the backup destination's files?

 

If I do have to stop the process, will it pickup where it left off after restarting Retrospect? Or after I restart the computer? Or after I repeat the script that initiated the Groom to begin with?

 

OR, am I just being impatient:

 

Does the interface report "Remaining..." info for the groom while grooming is executing?

 

Or is my "Remaining..." info just indicating at what point the script was when grooming interrupted? And now grooming is happening, but not indicating progress, and just needs to complete before the backup resumes?

 

If that is the case, anyone's guess how long it might take to groom 800GB (external drive, over Firewire 800)?

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Is this a hang, or normal?

 

And more importantly:

 

If it is a hang, can it be safely stopped without compromising the integrity of the backup destination's files?

 

If I do have to stop the process, will it pickup where it left off after restarting Retrospect? Or after I restart the computer? Or after I repeat the script that initiated the Groom to begin with?

 

OR, am I just being impatient:

 

Does the interface report "Remaining..." info for the groom while grooming is executing?

 

Or is my "Remaining..." info just indicating at what point the script was when grooming interrupted? And now grooming is happening, but not indicating progress, and just needs to complete before the backup resumes?

 

If that is the case, anyone's guess how long it might take to groom 800GB (external drive, over Firewire 800)?

 

So, having done grooming with Retrospect for years now, I can answer some of this from my experience:

 

 

1)  If the status is updating at all -- it's working.

 

2)  In general, as long as the status is not indicating that it's actually *doing the grooming of the files* ("Matching" is not grooming), you can stop the process without compromising integrity.  However, the general suggestion for a media set if you unexpectedly stop a groom is to rebuild the catalog before using the media set again.

 

3) As to your "how long might it take to groom 800G" -- it all depends on (A) the number of files, backups *and sources* in the media set, (B) what your groom settings are and © how fast the CPU is of your "engine" computer.    You could have 800 1G files in your media set over 20 backups of one source, but your groom settings are just to keep 15 backups and that would probably groom in about 15 minutes (or less).   Or you could have 800M files over 1000 backups over 30 sources and you are grooming this to keep 20 backups that will take a *lot* longer to groom.

 

My last real-world example of a groom was that rooming 315G (which was mostly large 4G database files) took 16.5 hours.   I can't tell you the size of the media set *prior* to backup, but that media set currently has 3.2M files in it, uses 1.5TB of disk space and my groom settings are to keep 90 backups of two Mac OSX 10.8.5 file servers (the entire server).

 

Another media set I have that just backs up *one* 10.9.3 server -- but keeps 183 backups -- only groomed out 21G of data the last time I ran it, but that took 28 hours to run.   That media set has 3.3M files in it and is 915G in size.    This is an example of a media set with twice as many backups, but essentially the same number of files in the media set.

 

My engine computer is a 2.5Ghz i5 Mac Mini with 8G RAM.   CPU speed -- above all else -- factors into grooming speeds with everything else being the same.

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