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Retrospect not backing up certain files


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Hello,

 

After doing a test-restore of one of my Retrospect backup Scripts I found out not all files on a source volume were backed up.

 

The Script backs up all files of a network Client's disk as a Source to a disk based Media Set with grooming. The Client's disk mostly has very small files, Office documents and such. Instant Scan is off.

 

There was no common denominator that I could find in the files missing on the disk based Media Set. After restoring the disk some folders were completely empty, others only had a few files where the source disk had many.

 

The backup Script has default settings except for the option "Use attribute modification date when matching" which is off. The selected rule is "All Files".

 

After playing with the settings a bit I found out that the missing files would be included in the backup only after I selected the option "Match only files in the same location/path" (which is off by default and should be off according to the manual).

It seems like Retrospect somehow concludes the files are already backed up (which they aren't) or that they are identical to other files part of the Media Set (which they aren't, these are unique files).

 

I would like to know how this could happen?

 

For now my new policy is to always select "Match only files in the same location/path" in all of my scripts.

Had there been an emergency I would not have been able to restore all data in this case, which I find very scary.

 

Retrospect 10.5 Mac.

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Last night all our backup scripts re-ran with "Match only files in the same location/path" switched on on all scripts.

 

One of my (remote) client's sources (a single server volume backed up to a single disk based grooming media set reserved specifically for this client) had to back up >40GB extra, it's actually still running.

 

I haven't checked all our backups to determine which files were now backed up that weren't previously but I have checked a few and it looks like it always concerns small files (older Microsoft Office documents and such). Files that certainly weren't backed up previously and certainly didn't have exact duplicates elsewhere on the source (yes I checked).

 

Next to those a lot of system files were backed up, which is logical because that's exactly the kind of files that would be excluded by not selecting "Match only files in the same location/path".

 

Am I misunderstanding Retrospect's (default) matching options causing our backups to be incomplete (which would be bad in any case considering that it's a default setting) or is this a bug?

 

I am currently checking all my backups and so far it seems that this issue only occurs where the destination is a disk based Media Set. So far I haven't found any tape based backups that included previously skipped files. I will report when I know more.

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Think I found the cause:

 

It seems to happen to the contents of folders that have been MOVED from one subfolder to another on the source on scripts backing up to a disk based Media Set. I haven't (yet) found the same issue on tape-based scripts.

 

Apparently Retrospect concludes it already has backed up those files (which is true) but doesn't show them in the correct folder (on its new location) during a restore (and nether while browsing the content of the backup)!

 

Checking "Match only files in the same location/path" forces Retrospect to backup the content of moved folders again.

 

Seems a data loss bug to me.

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