Outlook Express issue

[mhkatz]

I am using Restropect 5.5 to back up my entire hard drive. When I do incrementals, all of the dbx folders in my Outlook Express directory get updated each time, even folders that have not been modified. Apparently, Outlook Express changes the modify date on all folders each session, even folders that have not been used. Is there a work-around for this problem? If not, is there a way to exclude specific files for incremental backups without doing a new full backup?

[AmyJ]

The short answer is that every time you even open Outlook Express, all files/folders are modified, so Retrospect will behave properly and back them up.

 

You can create selectors (Special > Selectors) to _exclude_ files or folders based on many different criteria. It won't, however, be possible to exclude files/folders based on why they changed. For example, Retrospect doesn't know that a folder date is different because the Outlook application modified the date - or because the user actually added information to the folder.

 

You could set up a selector to exclude certain folders from your daily backup, and then set up a seperate backup to capture these folders weekly if you're not worried about daily changes.

[mhkatz]

Thank you for that explanation.

 

Is there a way to exclude those files from incrementals from here on, or do I need to do a new full backup to change my selectors?

[AmyJ]

You can change your ongoing backup to include a selector. Edit your script, and thange the selector from All Files to the selector you'd like to use.

[awnews]

Some comments about the Outlook Express dbx files:

 

1) If you include them, they can take a lot of backup space since they can get pretty big (esp. for binary groups) and change constantly. So you can exclude them with selectors.

 

2) If you exclude them, when you have to do a restore none of these dbx files will be restored. So your list of newsgroups is gone (Outlook uses these files both for storage and as the list of selected groups). Not a huge deal if you keep a list of groups and don't mind manually reselecting them.

 

My solution:

 

For Backup (not Duplicate) "MyBackup" used in common for *both* of these scripts:

 

a) Set up a script with an "All Files" (or "All Files Except Cache Files") selector for Recycle (e.g. every month or two) and periodic (e.g. once a week on Friday?) Normal backups. This will include the dbx files.

 

Set up another script with a custom selector "All Files Except stuff I exclude such as DBX files" that does a daily (except at the time/date of the Recycle & periodic backup above, e.g. not on Fridays) Normal backup. This will exclude dbx files.

 

So this keeps down the explosive growth of large files, such as dbx files, that are modified frequently, but gives me *some* recent (e.g. weekly) history if I have to rebuild a system. It's too bad that Outlook Express doesn't keep the catalog (list of groups) separate from the cached contents--I wouldn't mind losing the later but it's a hassle to lose the former.