Does backup date selector work on Win machine?

[RandyB]

Retrospect Desktop, Win XP Pro, fat 32.

 

 

 

I have tried every permutation I could to find a Selector that could Exclude based on the backup date. You can use backup date with both Universal and Windows (fat.ntfs) choices in the left pane of the selectors window. In the right pane I've tried plus and minus, file and folder, etc. So far, nothing is ever excluded.

 

 

 

What I want to do is exclude a category of large files that change daily but I don't want them backed up more than once every 10 days. Or 7 days, whatever.

 

 

 

Has anyone gotten a backup date Exclude to work on a Windows machine? Or is this just another example of Retrospect trying to cover every OS possibilty with no error checking to see if something not possible has been chosen? The reason I suggest the latter is that a Windows OS doesn't store a backup date. So Retrospect could be allowing me to create the Exclude even though it is impossible to get it to work. (I had assumed that Retrospect would check its catalog for a backup date but maybe not.)

[byteback]

I'm also seeing this behaviour, looks like the backup date field is only valid on a MAC but Retrospect indicates it's available on Windows. Can someone at Dantz confirm whether or not this selector type works on Windows. It would be VERY handy if it did. Like the previous poster I assumed the backup catalog would be checked for last backup date.

[RandyB]

I wouldn't count on any comment from Dantz. The selectors are a continuing source of questions but the answers don't come from Dantz.

 

 

 

Retrospect is a schizophrenic product Here's my theory, based on performance but not any facts: It was designed by techies to be used by systems engineers. Then some marketing people decided there would be a market for home and small business users. The interface was prettied up and non-server versions created. But the guts of the interface are still designed for techies. It is a totally unintuitive product.

 

 

 

The worst thing is that there is almost no error checking to prevent you from setting up non-working backup scenarios. That's why you can put in name or date selector criteria that don't come close to doing what you want. Neither the help screens nor the manual have much useful about selectors, and virtually no examples. And look at all the questions about how to set up a backup system where tapes are regularly swapped. You can do it, but it ain't obvious.

 

 

 

I should add that I am a techie who maintains several networks. I still find the program hard to use. Nonetheless, I also think it's the best choice we have.

[Mayoff]

Actually Retrospect has the best and most accurate error checking of any backup product in the industry.

 

 

 

No product can match the byte by byte compare features in Retrospect.

 

 

 

As far as selectors:

 

 

 

That has error correction too: When editing your selector you will find a "check selector" option (Mac and Windows product).

 

 

 

The Universal Date selector that looks for "backup date" will not work when backing up a Windows volume, because Windows does not track backup dates. It would work for a Mac volume, if you turn on the option to set the file backup date.

 

 

 

This selector can be used when searching an existing backup set for files backed up before or after a specific date. So in this case, the selector criteria will work for a restore not a backup. As a workaround you could write a selector that looks for the modify date, with an offset of X number of days

 

 

 

I will put in a request to make this issue more clearly documented.

[RandyB]

I don't disagree that it's the "best in the industry" for error checking at the byte level. I was just talking about selectors and backup volume choice. Here are some errors that are not detected. I'm particularly talking about the Desktop version, although some of this applies to the server.

 

 

 

1. The biggest source of problems is using MAC or Unix selectors on a Win volume, or vice versa. This should be trivial for the programmers to set up a test for. Yet Retrospect allows any number of errors based on this failure. All you need to do is scan this forum for "selectors" and you'll see the confusion this creates. Universal name vs name vs path is an example of where the confusion and errors occur. Of course, this can't happen with the backup program built in to Windows. Nor does it happen with Backup Exec, which I previously used.

 

 

 

2. "Check selector" is essentially a trial-and-review approach, not error checking. It lets you see the effect of your selectors -- SLOWLY, if you have a lot of files. Before I realized that "backup date" didn't work in Win, I must have tried a dozen permutations and each time had to fully scan a large volume with "check selector" only to learn that nothing was happening. This is rediculous. The program should recognize a Win installation and not allow a backup date check. Many users assume that backup date is based on the catalog. This is a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding. No help screen, manual, or error check says otherwise.

 

 

 

3. "Source volume" is another place where there is no error checking. It is possible to have a selector that is, say, Win path d:\data\*.* and then choose as source volume C:. Granted, it's illogical to do this. But it's also illogical to allow the two conflicting choices to be made in the first place, and easy to misunderstand.

 

 

 

4. I don't see how your workaround for backup date would work in the situation that I and others have asked about in this forum. We want to back up all new files daily except for a selected group of files. The selected group is the email database. It's large, changes every time there's a new email, and is on the email server long enough that weekly backup is more than sufficient. So we want a selector that makes sure the backup is at least 1 week old on the email files, but not on anything else.

 

 

 

5. I made the request about selectors a long time ago. Never heard a peep.

 

 

 

Randy

 

 

[Mayoff]

You can do the following to only back up the file once a week.

 

 

 

1) Create a script (your every day script) that excludes the file based on the name.

 

 

 

Then

 

 

 

2) Create a script that runs once per week that backs up that file only. Or in that once per week script, look for files that have been modified in the last X days

 

 

 

The 2nd script can have the same destinations and scheduling as the first script.

[RandyB]

Two scripts will work, but it is a more complex solution than it sounds. Most of us swap tapes periodically and do recycle backups when tapes get full from many incremental backups. That strategy is messy in itself and not easily automated. (Or if it is, I haven't found the way to do it explained anywhere.) Add in parallel scripting and it's even harder to be sure that that you change everything correctly for each swap and recycle.

 

 

 

What would be really helpful is a strategy/selector FAQ that took the common questions from this forum and put them together with answers that actually illustrate the solutions.

 

 

 

Going back to the tape rotation issue, maybe you could answer this question about automating it. What if I create two identical scripts that weekly do a recycle backup and daily do an incremental, with different destination sets (i.e., tape 1 and tape 2). Then I want to swap tapes weekly just before the recycle backup, without having to open up Retrospect and change anything. Assuming tape 2 is in the machine, will Retrospect go ahead with the tape 2 script and ignore the tape 1 script until a week later when tape 1 is back in? Or will it just refuse to proceed if tape 1 isn't put in? This is what we used to do on our old NT4 server with Backup Exec, except we didn't even need two scripts.