Backup Software & Entourage 2004

[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 “Duplicate”, 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 I’d like some verification (or recommendation of Mac backup software than can handle open files — I’m not married to Retrospect).

Thanks.

[Paul Berkowitz]

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

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

On 6/1/06 00:35, in article BFE2FB5B.BDF7C%berkowit@spoof_silcom.com, "Paul Berkowitz" <berkowit@spoof_silcom.com> wrote:

On 1/5/06 6:06 AM, in article BFE267F6.1364A%scottc....@gmail.com, "Scott Melendez" <scottc....@gmail.com> wrote:

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 “Duplicate”, 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 I’d like some verification (or recommendation of Mac backup software than can handle open files — I’m not married to Retrospect).

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/

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?

--
Barry Wainwright
Microsoft MVP (see http://mvp.support.microsoft.com for details)
Check out the Entourage User's WebLog for hints, tips and troubleshooting
<http://homepage.mac.com/barryw/weblog/weblog.html>

[Joseph Chamberlain, DDS]

On 1/6/06 2:13 AM, in article BFE3F35A.8C9CF%ba...@mvps.org.INVALID, "Barry

Wainwright [MVP]" <ba...@mvps.org.INVALID> wrote:
>>
>
> 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?
>

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

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

On 6/1/06 22:45, in article BFE432EA.36C8D%drjcham...@earthlink.net,

With an applescript:

Tell app "microsoft database daemon" to quit