Backup Software & Entourage 2004

S

Scott Melendez

I use Retrospect for backup, and every other week I do a duplicate to an
external drive. I my long experience with backup software, it usually takes
specialized agents to back up open files.

The Retrospect documentation, from what I can tell, is not quite clear. If I
take Entourage offline for the backup, will Retrospect (or any backup
software) complete and back the database? When I do a ³Duplicate², I usually
get an error when it is doing the comparison, but the database does get
cloned.

I would like to not have to shut Entourage down for the backup, but I¹d like
some verification (or recommendation of Mac backup software than can handle
open files ‹ I¹m not married to Retrospect).

Thanks.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I use Retrospect for backup, and every other week I do a duplicate to an
external drive. I my long experience with backup software, it usually takes
specialized agents to back up open files.

The Retrospect documentation, from what I can tell, is not quite clear. If I
take Entourage offline for the backup, will Retrospect (or any backup
software) complete and back the database? When I do a ³Duplicate², I usually
get an error when it is doing the comparison, but the database does get
cloned.

I would like to not have to shut Entourage down for the backup, but I¹d like
some verification (or recommendation of Mac backup software than can handle
open files ‹ I¹m not married to Retrospect).
Click to expand...

I use Retrospect daily. If Entourage is open while it's running (which is
usually the case for me) the Log will show that the Database file had
changed at the end of the run compared to the how it was when the script
started (it notices the modification date-time has changed), but it still
backs it up. There is no problem with the back up : it backs up the Database
file as is, and notes the "error", which you can ignore. (If you want to
avoid this, you'd simply quit Entourage first, as you know.) It works just
fine. Just to check, I've just restored (to another location) my Main
Identity folder as backed up at 2:00 this morning by Retrospect, while
Entourage was running, and it's all there/

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

I use Retrospect daily. If Entourage is open while it's running (which is
usually the case for me) the Log will show that the Database file had changed
at the end of the run compared to the how it was when the script started (it
notices the modification date-time has changed), but it still backs it up.
There is no problem with the back up : it backs up the Database file as is,
and notes the "error", which you can ignore. (If you want to avoid this, you'd
simply quit Entourage first, as you know.) It works just fine. Just to check,
I've just restored (to another location) my Main Identity folder as backed up
at 2:00 this morning by Retrospect, while Entourage was running, and it's all
there/
Click to expand...

It is probably worth pointing out that there is theoretical risk in copying
the database while the Daemon is running ­ it is possible that not all data
has been written from the Daemon's file buffers, and the database that is
copied is therefore slightly corrupted.

Having said that, the minor risk entailed here would not (does not) prevent
me from taking backups of my data every day ­ I would rather have to restore
a slightly damaged database than lose everything in a disk error!

I suppose the best of all worlds would be to have retrospect close all
office apps and quit the daemon before it did it's back up run, then start
things up again afterwards. I don't use retrospect, but I believe it has an
option to run a script before and/or after a backup run?
 
J

Joseph Chamberlain, DDS

It is probably worth pointing out that there is theoretical risk in copying
the database while the Daemon is running ­ it is possible that not all data
has been written from the Daemon's file buffers, and the database that is
copied is therefore slightly corrupted.

Having said that, the minor risk entailed here would not (does not) prevent me
from taking backups of my data every day ­ I would rather have to restore a
slightly damaged database than lose everything in a disk error!

I suppose the best of all worlds would be to have retrospect close all office
apps and quit the daemon before it did it's back up run, then start things up
again afterwards. I don't use retrospect, but I believe it has an option to
run a script before and/or after a backup run?
Click to expand...

Barry:

And how can one quite the daemon before running Retrospect ? Is there a way
to do it without restarting the system ?

Thank you in advance,

Joseph Chamberlain
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

Barry:

And how can one quite the daemon before running Retrospect ? Is there a way
to do it without restarting the system ?

Thank you in advance,

Joseph Chamberlain
Click to expand...

With an applescript:

Tell app "microsoft database daemon" to quit
 
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