Groom only "older" files?

[x509]

is there a way to set up the Grooming option for a dataset that says:

• Keep all files until they are six months old.
• Groom to Retrospect's policy for older files.  In effect, keep just one backup file per month.

x509

 

[DavidHertzberg]

x509,

So long as you insist on having only one Backup Set, not with Retrospect ≤16 (I don't know what will happen the second week in March with Retrospect 17—though IMHO the engineers have been busy otherwise).  Read this KB article for further enlightenment, then finish smacking yourself on the forehead.🤣

If you still need them, here are some details:

• Create  two Backup Sets, named e.g. YoungFiles and OldFiles.  You will only do Backups to YoungFiles, which will have no Grooming option.  OldFiles will have the option Groom to Retrospect Defined Policy, with Months To Keep set high (to 9999?) per pages 7-8 of the Retrospect Windows 10 UG.
• Once a month run a Transfer Backups script, per pages 229-234 of that same UG (only the page numbers will have changed for newer versions of the UG), to copy YoungFiles to OldFiles using a custom Selector—per pages 495-508 of that same UG—that Includes only files that are 6+ months old.
• Once a month, after you're sure the Transfer Backups script has run OK, run a Groom script on YoungFiles with a custom Selector—per the KB article—that Excludes files that are 6+ months old.  AFAICT YoungFiles doesn't need a Groom Policy to allow this, due to the ver.15 add-on for GDPR .
• Once a month, after you're sure the Transfer Backups script has run OK, run a Groom script on OldFiles without a custom Selector—per pages 242-245 of that same UG.  This may delete any newly-Transferred copies—which shouldn't exist—of files that are 6+ months old.
• If you or your auditors are too lazy to search both YoungFiles and OldFiles, you can when necessary run another Transfer Backups script that copies both YoungFiles and OldFiles to a third Backup Set named e.g. AllFiles.

I'll leave the testing to you; I'm generous that way.🤣

 

[x509]

David,

 

Actually I don't insist on having just one DATA backup set.  i have 2 for DATA.

For about five years now, I have been doing a Yearly DATA backup set and Monthly DATA backup sets, one per month.  I just went through all my backup drives (1 per year) from 2009 to 2014 (so far) and I have been dong pretty much what you said.  (1) Groom the Monthly DATA to 1 copy (2) transfer the backup set to the Yearly DATA and (3) Forget/delete the Monthly DATA backup set.  After a couple of years, this does get a bit tedious.  However, the resulting Yearly DATA backup set is about 200 GB plus/minus, so I can now consolidate many years of backup onto just one drive.  (Who knows?  I might eventually decide I don't need backups older than say 8 years ago, but that's a discussion for another day.)

Then I re-read the manual (v16) for Retrospect's default grooming policy and realized that the default grooming policy means I could simply my process.  (1) Keep all Monthly backup sets for six months.  (2) Transfer the Monthly backup set to the Yearly backup set.  (3) Run a grooming operation on the Yearly backup set.  (4) Forget/delete the Monthly backup set.

IF, IF, IF Retrospect implements the features in the first post for this thread, then I could go to just one DATA backup set and simplify further:

Since this is a home LAN, there are no auditors.  🤣

[Nigel Smith]

20 hours ago, x509 said:

Since this is a home LAN, there are no auditors.  🤣

You sure? If I lose my SO's photo archive[1], I'll be "audited" very severely...

[1] Yes, it'll be my fault that she didn't read the "Are you sure you want to delete all these photos?" dialog before clicking "OK".

[x509]

On 3/2/2020 at 7:30 AM, Nigel Smith said:

You sure? If I lose my SO's photo archive[1], I'll be "audited" very severely...

[1] Yes, it'll be my fault that she didn't read the "Are you sure you want to delete all these photos?" dialog before clicking "OK".

Nigel,

I stand corrected. Very corrected.   If I did something like that, my SO would be pretty sore at me.  I'm supposed to fix every obscure Windows (or Outlook or Word) bug that has ever appeared, is appearing right now, or ever will appear in the future, BECAUSE.