deleted files/dirs under the differential scheme

Questions about Cobian Reflector
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gennff
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 Aug 2022, 16:22

deleted files/dirs under the differential scheme

Post by gennff »

hi,
me again, testing up and down reflector features.

#1
how do you folks out there proceed to efficiently restore some point-in-time state under a full/differential backup scheme, say one full backup on sun and six diff backups from mon to sat?
usually one would want to restore the last full backup and then merge in the last diff backup, right.
however, how to manage deleted files and dirs as reflector does not seem to have any implemented concept of preserving information about deletions(!)?
i've got the archive flag usage switched on and from what i learned so far, reflector just nicely includes any file (and probably dir) into the diff backups as long as the archive flag is currently set, which is ok, but nothing more.
so, when i restore the last full from sun and the last diff from fri and then copy the diff over the full, i'll get the full set of data that ever happened to have existed (on backup) over the last 5+ days, no matter what i may have deleted, for example, on thu.
am i'm right or do i miss some understanding or setting of reflector?
also see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1170 releated

#2
i used the decompressor for decompression and decryption. i fed in two directories from the backup disk, aka the base directories with the extended names of timestamp and backup level. after running the decompressor, i found anything being extracted to the same target folder, whereby the two base directory folders itself have noch been created as well. so, for two backup base directories with 50 files you'll get one restore target folder with 100 files. is this expected behaviour?

#3
so, since i usually only start this (home) machine in the evening, at no regular time whatsoever, im configured the backup schedule for one of the tasks to daily 8am. this is a time where the machine is nealy always off. along with the : settings -> functionality -> "run missed backups" option, i expected the task to automatically start running more or less immediately after starting or waking up the machine. this worked half way : it did not start after startup/wakeup, however, it did finally start some two hours later. so, the question is, how do you check for missed automatic backup tasks? how's the pattern?

#4
PLEASE rename : taks -> edit task -> advanced -> "ignore empty directories" to something which won't lure users to expect that this setting affects the source side of the backup :lol: i found myself evenly trapped, alike viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1214 or viewtopic.php?f=3&t=726 and many others in the forum. i don't know how i came up with my interpretation, most probably my confusion, but if this affect so many, something should be adapted. maybe add some clarification in parentheses.

thanks peter
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cobian
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Re: deleted files/dirs under the differential scheme

Post by cobian »

1. About deletion: you could use a mirror task is you are not creating separated backups.

2. Yes. if the archives don't have directory information that's the behavior. If they have the paths, then those should be created.

3. It is checked some minutes after the program's start, but sometimes it could take some hours depending om the task type.

4. The name on the Beta version was "Delete empty directories" and after some suggestions the new name was selected. "Ignore" should be non-destructive. "Delete" sounds definitely dangerous.
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Luis Cobian
Cobian Backup's creator
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