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Incremental backup problem


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We have upgraded our Intel MacPro under Leopard Server 10.5.6 with Retrospect Single Server 8.0

 

Everything is fine except that :

 

All the favorites folders selected (which are shared points of our Leorpard Server) as sources for the backup seem to have a problem of incremental selection.

 

It means that Retrospect re-backup every time a lot of files, much more than needed, even from sources with no modifications since the last backup.

 

First backup

 

+ Normal backup using Backup HDD at 4/22/2009 7:09 PM (Execution unit 1)

To Media Set Backup HDD A...

4/22/2009 7:09:49 PM: Copying Projets

4/22/2009 9:27:33 PM: Snapshot stored, 25.2 MB

4/22/2009 9:27:34 PM: Comparing Projets

4/22/2009 11:31:52 PM: Execution completed successfully

Completed: 89926 files, 121.3 GB, with 33% compression

Performance: 950.5 MB/minute (906.6 copy, 998.9 compare)

Duration: 04:22:02 (00:00:47 idle/loading/preparing)

 

Second backup

 

+ Normal backup using Backup HDD at 4/24/2009 0:12 AM (Execution unit 1)

To Media Set Backup HDD A...

4/24/2009 0:12:47 AM: Copying Projets

4/24/2009 0:51:54 AM: Snapshot stored, 26.6 MB

4/24/2009 0:51:58 AM: Execution completed successfully

Completed: 12544 files, 37.0 GB, with 50% compression

Performance: 988.5 MB/minute

Duration: 00:39:11 (00:00:54 idle/loading/preparing)

 

Third backup

 

+ Normal backup using Backup HDD at 4/27/2009 10:00 PM (Execution unit 1)

4/27/2009 10:18:27 PM: Copying Projets

4/28/2009 0:02:53 AM: Snapshot stored, 21.0 MB

4/28/2009 0:02:57 AM: Execution completed successfully

Completed: 70016 files, 78.1 GB, with 19% compression

Performance: 771.2 MB/minute

Duration: 01:44:29 (00:00:52 idle/loading/preparing)

 

 

The following source was not modified since the last backup.

 

4/28/2009 1:05:48 PM: Copying Software

4/28/2009 1:06:38 PM: Snapshot stored, 13.9 MB

4/28/2009 1:06:40 PM: Execution completed successfully

Completed: 746 files, 194.1 MB, with 0% compression

Performance: 554.3 MB/minute

Duration: 00:00:52 (00:00:30 idle/loading/preparing)

 

... and 746 files processed !

 

This problem is nonexistent when sources are not on share points

 

How to solve this problem ?

 

Thanks for your help

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The share points are on a local disk in the Leopard server. Retrospect is installed on a other internal disk.

 

Backups from the startup disk, which contains Retrospect, to the third internal disk, dedicated to Retrospect backups are OK.

 

Backups from the second disk, which hosts the share points, to the third disk are problematics.

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You may not have directly changed the file, but if the file meta data somehow was changed by the OS, then the files will get copied again.

 

You would need to compare a file in "past backups" with a file on the hard disk to be sure about what is happening.

 

Retrospect uses name, size, creation date/time, modify date/time, kind, label and meta data to identify changed files. If anything changes to those items, the file is copied again.

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Hmmmm.... It appears that files with special chars in the name (é or è or another accent) are always backuped.

 

I think of a problem in the test of the "name change" with special chars... Really anoying...... Because saving 8Gb each day for nothing will make my backup media grow too fast.

 

 

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Hmmmm.... It appears that files with special chars in the name (é or è or another accent) are always backuped.

 

I think of a problem in the test of the "name change" with special chars... Really anoying...... Because saving 8Gb each day for nothing will make my backup media grow too fast.

 

 

Right.

 

I made a test with a favorite special folder with some files names with special chars.

 

Every files with special chars backed-up from the shared internal disk to the dedicated Retrospect backup disk are duplicated each time.

 

Second test, the same folder is copied this time on the startup disk, which contains the retrospect app. Alle the files are backed-up without any problem the first time and during the following backups.

 

Strange.

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Backing-up, always the same test folder, from the Retrospect dedicated disk to the same disk is OK too.

 

So the problems exists only on the disk which hosts the shared points of the Leopard Server.

 

Unfortunately, this is obviously the disk which contains all the important datas and I'm backing-up every day about 30 Gb for nothing :-(

Edited by Guest
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Yeah, really annoying. And in conjonction with the bug that don't groom all backups thaty it should, my 1To disk was full too with an initial backup of 400Go too and an auto-groom option to 6 backups per script...

 

I copy the content to another media set and recycle it. I hope that will solve my groom bug at least...

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's really better but not totally fixed...

 

I've just tested and when earlier backups always backuped at least 1.8Go, it only backuped 400Mo. But another backup juste after still do 400Mo. Looking in the log I see a lot of

MapError: unknown Mac error 20

 

I'm testing a bigger backup just now and I will see. Maybe I need to recycle my backup set.

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I see this, too.

 

I have two pairs of external video drives, one pair copies to the other. On each pair I see the issue where files get copied over and over again, even though neither drive has been modified.

 

As an example, copying files from one 500 GB external drive to an identical one:

 

First Backup: 410 GB; all files

Second Backup: 14.1 GB; 13 files

Third Backup: 14.1 GB; 13 files

 

There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why certain files re-copy. None have non-ASCII characters in their names, all permissions seem normal, all file names are short (< 31 chars), their sizes have nothing in common.

 

I also tried opening the video files, 'saving as' to a new file, then copying the newly-saved file so that it replaces one of the problematic files. Same issue.

 

These files compare just fine every time they are backed up; they just get backed up over and over, wasting time and energy.

 

Mac Pro Early 2008 2 x 3 GHz Quad-core Xeon

8 GB RAM

Mac OS X 10.5.7

Retrospect 8.1 (Build 148)

 

Any ideas?

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We have tried to reproduce the problem but we are not seeing it so far.

 

If you have a file you can .zip and email to me that you think has this problem, I would love to try it. retrospect_forums@emc.com

 

 

Can you try restoring one of the files backed up over and over, then compare the file Get Info screens of the original and restored file? Are they the same down to the second?

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  • 5 weeks later...

Hard for us to accept that this problem is still not fixed...

 

We are backing up more than 40 Gb of unchanged files everyday !

 

Restrospect 8.0 HAS a big problem with files names containing special characters.

 

I made a new test with a small folder containing 10 files, 8 with special characters, 2 without.

 

First backup : 10 files completed

Second and following backups : 8 files completed !

 

As I wrote in my first post (more than 3 months ago), this problem does not occur if the same folder is copied on the startup volume.

 

The location of the mediaset doesn't change anything.

 

When the files are located on an shared volume, which is our case, the problem occurs.

 

We are using Retrospect since 1991 and I cannot understand that this application still cannot be used in an international and professional environment, I mean with a Leopard server with shared volumes.

 

What to do ?

 

Unfortunately, it seems that this tread is dead as if everthing was fixed...

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What is the path of the folder that you are backing up?

 

Does it matter if you make this "small folder" a favorite folder only?

 

can you provide a Finder screen shot of the folder so we can see what this test folder looks like (list view) *if* it happens when the duplicate backup happens with it as a favorite folder?

 

I'd like to try reproducing this on my end...

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The path is :

 

/Volumes/File Server/Shared Items/Archives/Perret/99-06 Le Crêt/Décomptes finaux

 

Here is a screen shot of the folder

 

List%20view.png

 

Copying the same small folder outside the Shared Items avoid any duplicate backup.

 

It's seems to be clearly a problem with the shared volumes under Leopard Server.

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The path is :

 

/Volumes/File Server/Shared Items/Archives/Perret/99-06 Le Crêt/Décomptes finaux

 

Here is a screen shot of the folder

 

List View

 

Copying the same small folder outside the Shared Items avoid any duplicate backup.

 

It's seems to be clearly a problem with the shared volumes under Leopard Server.

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