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How can I get multiple restore points


jkbull

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I've inherited a Windows 2000 Server that's set up to use Retrospect 7.0 to back up itself and about a dozen workstations to backup files (that are on a separate server). It does a Recycle backup the first of every month, and a Normal backup every night. The backup files are separately archived to other hard drives and offsite.

 

It seems to me that because the backup is incremental, I should be able to restore to any point in time, but I can't. In other words, on the 20th of the month, I should be able to restore a workstation to its state on the 1st of the month, or the 12th, or whatever. Instead, my only choice seems to be to restore a workstation to its state at the most-recent backup.

 

There is only one "snapshot" -- the most recent -- available to restore from. I would like to restore, all "sessions" up to a certain date, but I can't find a place to specify that.

 

Is the setup for the backups wrong? Is there some option that I'm missing when I try to restore? Am I just too dense to see how to do it? Or isn't Retrospect 7.0 able to do this?

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I suspect that you don't understand the Retrospect paradigm, which is completely different from other backup programs. Under the hood, Retrospect works like other backup programs, making a "full" backup initially and then making "incremental" backups. But, to the Retrospect user, they all are "normal" backups, and Retrospect "does the right thing", backing up whatever it needs in order to create a "snapshot" of the source (usually a volume) AT THE TIME OF THE LAST INCREMENTAL. And then, when you go to restore, it uses its database of what is in the backup set to let you restore from the last "snapshot" (not the same as a "session", in other backup program terminology), presenting an interface of what was on the source at the time of the snapshot, which is a composite of the original "full" backup plus the complete incremental history. So, the user, without having to worry about restoring a series of "sessions" forward from the last "full" backup, just chooses what is wanted from the "snapshot", which is an inventory of the disk at the time of the last backup.

 

If you want your files back to their state at the time of the last backup, regardless of which backup "session" the files were backed up in, just choose from the most recent snapshot. If you want to restore from earlier "snapshots" (versions of the source at the instant of a prior backup), then click the button to "Add Snapshot" when you are doing the restore, and Retrospect will figure out, by going through its backup history, what the state of the source was at the time of the selected snapshot, and you can restore from that.

 

Clear? Perhaps I don't understand the question you are asking?

 

Russ

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