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combining catalogs


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I would like to something similar. We inherited a system and are now using Retrospect. there are several catalogs (lets say Catalog A, 4 memebers and Catalog B, 2 members; there are actually about 10-12 old catalogs) that we would like to combine into a fewer number of catalogs (in this example, Combined Catalog A, maybe 6 members). Is there a way to do this? i just want to make it easier for our operators to search for files from the old company using fewer catalogs.

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Is there a way to do this? i just want to make it easier for our operators to search for files from the old company using fewer catalogs.

 


Yes, see my post immediately above yours. Transfer one set into the other or, better yet for caution, transfer both into a third set. But this will substantially explode your catalog rebuild time, and might make your catalog more susceptible to corruption. I'm not sure anyone knows exactly why catalogs become corrupted. I don't see corrupted catalogs, but I never reuse tapes, and I archive the tapes when we get about 250 to 300 GB or data, so our catalogs are probably smaller than yours. We also only store archived catalogs compressed, never compress the catalog for a working backup set - takes too long to compress at the end of the backup window.

 

russ

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Having 2 catalogs named the same thing actually was easy since we kept getting errors during the rebuilding of a catalog. After reading a couple of tapes and have problems it would give us the option to save a partial and then would end. So at that point we would start over and when it ask for a location to save the catalog we would just choose a different folder and it would be named the same.

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Is there a way to do this? i just want to make it easier for our operators to search for files from the old company using fewer catalogs.

 


 

I don't see how having fewer catalog files makes _searching_ any faster. Searching can be done across multiple catalogs, and it only takes a second to select what you want from the list of Backup Sets.

 

Perhaps actual Restore times might be less if you find multiple files to Restore and they happen to be on the same Media Member. But even if you combined your 4+2 Member Backup Set into a single 6 Member Backup Set there's no guarantee about what files would live on which tapes.

 

Dave

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Having 2 catalogs named the same thing actually was easy since we kept getting errors during the rebuilding of a catalog. After reading a couple of tapes and have problems it would give us the option to save a partial and then would end. So at that point we would start over and when it ask for a location to save the catalog we would just choose a different folder and it would be named the same.

 


Glen:

 

No, you can't combine these partial rebuild catalogs. You will have to choose which one you will use. But you can resume a rebuild on a partial catalog, assuming that you saved the partial catalog after the rebuild was stopped at the end of a particular tape member; i.e., when Retrospect was asking if there was another member. See my comments on your related post "Recataloging a backup set."

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