Need advice re: transfer backup sets. Also questions about Snapshots

[backy]

Hi there.  I have a large disk backup set (~8TB of data, ~300,000 files) of video editing work from 2014.  The backup set media is 6 hard drives.  (Also have an "off site" set of the same data).

 

Since hard drives die, I would like to transfer this set to an LTO-6 tape backup set.  I select my source, the 2014 Disk Backup set, choose the destination, a new LTO Tape Set.  I'm Selecting "All Files".

 

In the Options…Since I've already selected transfer "All Files", do I need "Copy Snapshots" selected?  We're only concerned with being able to search and restore specific files; I don't need to restore an entire disk as it was at a certain point in time.  Is there any reason to uncheck this (would it go faster?  will I be missing data once the transfer is done?)?

 

Also wondering about the option "Transfer any needed intermediate database Snapshots".  If I don't need Snapshots, can I leave this unchecked?  When would someone check this box?  Does database mean the Retrospect database (the .rbc file?), or does it mean an actual database, like mySQL, etc (probably a dumb question, but oh well)?

 

 

Further to that…is there any point in using Snapshots for this type of data backup?  Maybe for our 2015 set I don't need to create Snapshots?  Or is it always a good idea?

 

I do use Snapshots for my backups of our system boot drives in our computers, because in that case, I may someday need to restore a disk to a certain date.  But for media files, maybe it's not necessary?

 

If it helps, an example of our restore process would be: our video editor needs to restore a video project from 2014.  He has the Final Cut Pro/Adobe Premiere project file, opens it up, and the program will show a list of what files are offline/missing, ie. exactly what we need to restore.

 

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Lennart_T]

I would use "Transfer back set" (as opposed to "Transfer snapshots"). That way you will always get all snapshots.

 

I would recommend using snapshots. You would not gain anything from omitting them, but you could lose information about the backups that might be important. For instance, you might get several generations of files with the same name and it would not be as easy to choose the correct one for restore.

 

Using snapshots guarantees that all files are from the same "generation", if you see what I mean?

[backy]

Thanks for the response, I will use Transfer backup set and snapshots.    (sorry late response, didn’t see the notification).