Limiting the Backup...

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arrrghhh
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Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:22 am

Limiting the Backup...

Post by arrrghhh » Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:58 am

Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong route, but I want to be sure that R-Drive will remove old backup files when necessary. So for testing (as I only have 15 days to trial this software...) I scheduled a incremental backup every 30 minutes. It does the full backup on its own and the backups kick off automatically beautifully. I was even able to hide the window, have it run while logged out, map drives etc. Surprisingly there wasn't a lot of info on any of that, but I was able to muttle through it. Now that I have it setup the way I want, I have 1 day left on my trial, haha! At any rate, I've tried to limit the backup sets in many different ways, and the issue may lie in how I do these backups - they are being pushed to a network share. I limited it by backup set (7), by number of image files (7) and by backup age (7 days). The only thing I haven't really tested is the backup age, but all the other backup "maximums" are not working for me at all. I let the scheduled task go over the long weekend, every 30 minutes kicking off a backup produced about 14gb worth of data and 150+ files. Obviously this is wrong - is there something I don't have right? Here is the command that is in my batch file.

r-driveimagecl.exe append -append-inc="true" /a /o -s="1:1" -a="w:\test.arc" -c=9 -u -bs -bs-num-b="7" -bs-num-f="7" -bs-age="7"

Alt
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Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by Alt » Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:47 am

Well, what are you doing with this script is appending incrementally data to ONE backup set. And R-Drive Image always keeps at least one backup set regardless of the all other parameters.
What you need is to have TWO scripts, one to create a full backup starting a new backup set, the other to create incremental backups within the same backup set.
The example of such task (although through R-Drive Image GUI) is described in RDI Help -> Scheduled Actions, Command Line Operations, and Scripting -> Backup Sets

arrrghhh
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by arrrghhh » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:40 am

Ah I figured that something was wrong. I'll try that, thanks.

arrrghhh
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by arrrghhh » Thu Feb 19, 2009 11:23 am

Ok, so I now have a full backup that runs weekly and incremental backups that run daily (every 30 mins for testing) - and I still get a TON of files. I'm at 48 incremental backups now. Here's the commands it's running:

for the incremental backup:

r-driveimagecl.exe append -append-inc="true" /a /o -s="1:1" -a="w:\test.arc" -c=9 -u -bs -bs-num-b="7" -bs-num-f="7" -bs-age="7"

for the full backup:

r-driveimagecl.exe create /a /o -s="1:1" -a="w:\test.arc" -c=9 -u -bs -bs-num-b="7" -bs-num-f="7" -bs-age="7"

I have a batch file that maps the W: drive to a network share. I have that working consistently, and the files push to the network share no problem. The issue I have is I need these backups to limit themselves, which they are not. Is there something I'm missing? Thanks.

Alt
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Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by Alt » Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:21 pm

I think, you need to have your full backup task run every several hours for the testing purpose, or see the results in 7 days.
Each backup set for your task should start with a full backup. I suggest

for the incremental backup:

r-driveimagecl.exe append -append-inc="true" /a /o -s="1:1" -a="w:\test.arc" -c=9 -u -bs -bs-num-b="7" -bs-num-f="3" -bs-age="7"

for the full backup:

r-driveimagecl.exe create /a /o -s="1:1" -a="w:\test.arc" -c=9 -u -bs -bs-num-b="7" -bs-num-f="3" -bs-age="7"
Here I limit the number of files to 3 (for the testing purpose). Then start the last script every, say, 3 hours, and the first one every 30 min.
If there are still problems, I'd like to look at the file list in that folder after these scripts have run several times.

arrrghhh
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by arrrghhh » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:36 pm

alrighty, i'll give this a shot and post back.

arrrghhh
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:22 am

Re: Limiting the Backup...

Post by arrrghhh » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:26 pm

alrighty, that seemed to work. i watched it take another full backup and it removed the old full backup and all the incremental backups. thanks Alt!

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