|
Subject: Diff backups abruptly become full backups. Why? |
By: Bruce Mutton |
07/11-2006 01:23 |
After about two months of running two complimentary pairs of backup jobs;
1: on a DAILY-DIFFERENTIAL, WEEKLY-FULL cycle, and
2: on a THREEDAILY-DIFFERENTIAL, MONTHLY-FULL cycle ,
with almost perfect success 1 suddenly started making daily full backups despite no changes been made to the job definitions, or anything else that I am aware of for that matter.
The catalogue files were getting rather big, 50MB and 11 MB, so I deleted (OK renamed so it would not be used) first the differential catalog, then when that had no effect, I deleted the full catalog. Still no change. And still 2 was behaving perfectly.
About two weeks later, after its scheduled full backup came around, 2 started misbehaving like 1. I just happened to be watching when 2 first started misbehaving, and so I know there was no spurious user intervention. There were no unusual messages or dialogs. Just did a full backup, despite displaying settings that indicated a differential backup.
Then after a few weeks 1 started behaving perfectly, and so I was hopeful that 2 would follow suit. But alas, a month later there has been no change.
So now I have a hard disk filling up with gigabytes of needless data!
Any insight into what might be happening and how to rectify?
.Some possibly relevant details include
.Stand alone PC Windows XP MCE SP2
.Zip Backup to CD version 3.19.8.504
.All jobs run as a service, and run a batch file that warns the user (with dos echo commands in a dos window) that a backup will start, and pauses for 5 minutes before running the job.
.Both cycles (all four jobs) use the same catalog files. (Well, OK the differential catalog is not used by the full backups) and yes, it was painful to setup, but for a few moths it ran fine.
.The weekly-full job includes a system state backup.
.Backups to internal hard disk (I burn them to DVD with another application from time to time)
.All the jobs are fully automatic, and have required no user intervention, apart from (getting them to work in the first place!!! and) occasional cleaning out when the disk gets too full.
|
By: Bruce Mutton |
14/11-2006 09:24 |
Alas, no responses.
Too much information I know.
To continue with the above saga, on the 8 Nov, a couple of days after backup job "2" did it's scheduled FULL backup, it correctly did a DIFFERENTIAL backup, (yayy!!) and the subsquent scheduled DIFF backup also ran correctly.
The reason for the change completely baffles me, I have made no changes, and for the last couple of weeks I have given up even looking at the settings in ZBCD. Just resigned myself to deleting the burgeoning folder full of backup files on a very regular basis.
So now the software is working perfectly.
But what random occurance does it have in store next month?
|
By: voitek kubacki |
16/01-2007 21:39 |
Well, I have discovered this software few months ago, so far so good, do all backups full, diff. and incr. manually, so far with no strange behavior. That too, i do not use catalog files although the are created by the software.
|
By: Gavin Blem |
25/01-2007 10:23 |
Bruce, a pity you've not had a response.
I use a similar regime, not yet had the same occurence as you had, but I'd certainly be interested in views on why it happened. Please post if similar happens. Presumably its okay since.
|
By: Bruce Mutton |
25/01-2007 19:53 |
Gavin
Yes, it seems to be working fine. Job 2 missed it's monthly FULL backup a couple of weeks ago, but I'd say that was 'cos I deleted a heap of pending scheduled backups after returning from holiday.
|
To make use of the support forum it is necessary for you to have an user account. If you already have such one, then use the login form below. Otherwise you can create a free user account by clicking here!
Other threads:
|
