backups, folders but where are the files??

[markman]

I am feeling like the biggest plonker walking

I have been quite happily backing up the students home directories to tape (well I thought I was!!), now two students who's work has mysteriously vanished had me at the server restoring only to find we don't have a single tape with any valid data just all their folders.

Any ideas what has happened

We haven't had to restore anything for ages so our earliest tape from Feb is still file-less.

[pallen]

File size? Has it errored because the amount of data you are trying to backup is too big for the tape?

Whatever has happened, you best get a backup done tonight and then look at your backup design

[browolf]

erm backing up files in a DFS on backup exec the files arent where you'd expect them to be in the backup. had a similar worry with our admin system. we get round your problem by having an additional backup system that just compresses kid's user areas into zip archives on a backup pc's drive. this is the backup we use to restore files from because its just easier to access.

[enjay]

Perhaps you've been doing incremental backups by mistake? This backs up the entire folder structure but only those files which changed that day...

[bossman]

@markman:
you said it

I am feeling like the biggest plonker walking

We haven't had to restore anything for ages so our earliest tape from Feb is still file-less.

I bet you will do test restores once you get your backups sorted at least once a week now hehe! unlucky but it could have been worse if you needed to do a system restore from scratch.

[FatBoy]

I had this problem many moons ago and I think it had something to do with permissions

[Michael]

I would say there's a high probability NickJones is right. Whatever software you're using, you should be able to verify this for certain. Alternatively your tape drive might be on its way out. This is why I would recommend you enable Backup Verification afterwards (where possible) as it will alert you to problems early.

Of course the only real way to guarantee a backup was successful, is to perform a restoration to a temporary location.

[elsiegee40]

This might be the time to start using Shadow copy... It won't help now, but it's a lot better than trying to retrieve data from tape.

[markman]

Yep, after checking we have been doing incremental. Damned frustrating but there aren't any files there and I' sure someone must have done dome work for the last two months

[enjay]

Incremental backups do all files which have changed since the last full backup; therefore, if never ran a full backup, it wouldn't pick up any files.

[tosh74]

Incremental backups do all files which have changed since the last full backup; therefore, if never ran a full backup, it wouldn't pick up any files.

Not strictly true. Incremental backups only backup files with the A(archive) attribute on. Full backups backup everything regardless of the A attribute status. When a file is backed up the A attribute is switched off. If a user then opens the same file after backup then the A attribute is set again. Thus the incremental backup knows which files to backup.

[SpuffMonkey]

On the plus side though - I bet your backups were blisteringly fast...