recovering an incremental backup. Programs that can do the right thing

[urlwolf]

I was trying to recover an incremental backup using syncBacSE and couldn't do it straight away,  so I posted this to their forum:

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Hi, I have read a few threads on this but I still cannot get it to work.

I have a 'fast backup' (incremental) profile to backup my laptop everyday.
I need to move all the backed up info to a new laptop. I do this every month or so to keep the laptops synchronized.

I installed sbSE on both, copied the profile to both, and tried a restore on the destination one.

The problem is that I'm prompted for a single origin directory... that's not right. I want sbSE to realize that this is an incremental backup and act in consequence, copying the newest version of each file (traversing the versioned list of folders, with variables -dates-).

If this is not possible, I need to know so I can go back to testing other software.
thanks

To my surprise mickyj answered:

Hi, as with all backup software, when you restore from incremental or differential you must restore from your oldest backup, then next oldest, etc.

I thought the program would do this for me:

And you have to do that 'by hand'?
This is the typical task that can be automated.
There should be an option to do that, don't you think?

I'd like to point sbSE to a directory that contains the incremental backups and get out of it the full contents, totally up to date. Otherwise, there is no point.

In the meantime, I'll use a synch profile AND keep the incremental backups as two separate entities (double the space!).

Thanks

Do you do this with any other program? It sounds silly to have to do it ba hand.
What is your stragegy?

Thanks

[f0dder]

Hm, even the old backup program that used to come with MS-DOS did recovery from incremental backups automatically, I think. Any sane backup program should.

[urlwolf]

agreed. I mean, I could clob together a perl script that used the OS copy to do that instead of doing it by hand. Something sounds terribly wrong. No designer can be this off the mark. I'm sure SyncBackSE does this ??

[Carol Haynes]

If it works like that get yourself a decent backup app and ditch the rubbish. That is definitely not how incremental and differential backups work.