Repeatedly backing up files which have not changed

[madonnell]

I've been using Cobain Backup for a few years to occasionally backup my working files to an external drive. These backups have generally run at night, but as I'm doing it more frequently now, I'd like to resolve why it seems to be backing up the same, unchanged, files every time. (I will switch to the first stable version of Reflector. but I assume I'd end up replicating this problem there).

It is configured to backup a set of large directories from C (ssd) and E (portable working usb3 HD) to F (external usb3 ioSafe drive). I am creating a single copy mirror of the directory structure to F, but anything it deletes when mirroring goes into a SafeMirrorDelete folder so I effectively have a copy of all deleted files as well - just not in my mirrored structure. Note I dont want version tagged extra files in the mirror directory - I want a faithful exact mirror of the working directory.

But when it is iterating through directories which have not changed in ages, Backup shows an updating blue percentage bar for each file and takes a number of seconds per file, and the IO load on F is still high and similar to the IO load on E when nothing should be copying. This implies to me that it is re-copying these files even though they have not changed.

I have confirmed that the source files and mirrored files have unchanged file dates from the past (the one in the screen shot has a date of May 22 2015 in both the source directory and the mirror directory).

Suggestions?

Cobain1.jpg (196.85 KiB) Viewed 2092 times

Cobain2.jpg (227.41 KiB) Viewed 2092 times

[cobian]

The only way for the program to know which files have been changed is to consult the archive attribute of *every file*, so it must iterate the source. It will not copy the files is it's not necessary.

[madonnell]

Well, C**p. I had switched all my Incremental backups to Full when I was restarting my backup process on a new disk last year. Didn't fix them back. Dumb a** mistake.

Nevermind. Problem solved.

Thanks for the software!
- Mark

[cobian]