You can back up your files and directories either incrementally or selectively. An incremental backup backs upfiles, directories, or subdirectories that are new or that have changed since the last incremental backup. A selective backup backs up specific files or empty directories and their attributes that you indicate.
Your administrator might have set up schedules to automatically back up files on your workstation. See Chapter 5. "Automating ADSM Tasks" for information about checking and running the schedules that are available to you. The following sections discuss how to back up files without a schedule.
The most effective way to maintain a complete set of backup versions for your most important files is to run incremental backups regularly. An incremental backup backs up the new or changed files on your workstation. For full incremental backups, ADSM considers a file changed if any of these items are different from the last backup taken:
There are two types of incremental backup: full and partial. A full incremental backup is also referred to as an incremental backup. ADSM ensures the backups kept on the ADSM server are managed according to your storage management policies, and that your backup storage accurately reflects the condition of your workstation storage. See "Using Storage Management Policies". With a full incremental backup, the client queries the ADSM server so that it knows the exact condition of your storage as of your last incremental backup. During a full incremental backup, ADSM uses this information to:
All of this processing is required to maintain your backups according to the policies defined in the management classes.
A partial incremental backup only considers certain information when deciding to back up a file. The incremental-by-date backup asks the server for the date and time of the last incremental backup. This is the only information used to determine which files are backed up. Any file updates that do not change the date and time are not acknowledged. If the last changed date and time of a file is after that of the last backup, the file is backed up. Otherwise, it is not, even if the file is new to the workstation. Because they do not change the last changed date and time, changes to NTFS security information on Windows NT clients are not backed up during an incremental-by-date backup.
A partial incremental backup does not ensure that the server reflects the exact condition of your workstation. For example, files that normally would be backed up during a full incremental backup might not be backed up during a partial incremental backup. Old files that should be deleted from the server might not be deleted. A partial incremental backup completes more quickly than a full incremental backup and requires less memory. If you are constrained for time or machine memory, perform a partial incremental backup.
To perform an incremental-by-date backup, specify the -incrbydate option. Use the -incrbydate option if you must meet a limited backup time window, and using a full incremental backup would take longer than the scheduled time.
Periodically, perform full incremental backups to synchronize the ADSM server with the status on your workstation. For example, if you have only a limited time during the week to perform backups, but extra time on the weekend, use partial incremental backups on the weekdays, and full incremental backups on the weekends.
When you request an incremental backup, ADSM backs up a file if all of the following requirements are met:
When you run an incremental backup, ADSM also backs up all directory information. You can exclude the files within a directory, and you can exclude a directory from being backed up. To exclude directories from backup, use the exclude.dir option. Directories that match the exclude.dir specification are not displayed in the backup-archive GUI.
Directories are counted in the number of files backed up. Perform a selective backup if you want to back up empty directories and their attributes.
To perform a full incremental backup of your new or changed files and directories:
ADSM informs you when the backup is complete. The first time you perform an incremental backup, ADSM has to back up all your files, which can take a long time. Subsequent backups usually do not take as long.
When performing an incremental backup, ADSM:
You can perform an incremental backup from the command line with the incremental command. For example, to back up the c: drive, you would enter:
dsmc incremental c:
See Loop for more information about the incremental command.
If you do not indicate the drives you want backed up, ADSM uses your default domain. See "Set Your Default Domain". You can add drives to the default domain with the domain option. For example, if your default domain contains drives c: and d:, and you want to back up those drives and the diskette in drive a:, you would enter:
dsmc incremental -domain="A:"
To start an incremental backup by date, add the incrbydate option:
dsmc incremental -incrbydate
The performance of an incremental backup suffers if your machine runs out of available memory during the backup. If your machine is not memory-constrained, you can use a more efficient method of backup. Specify the memoryefficientbackup No option in your options file. Specifying No provides the best ADSM performance for machines with sufficient memory.
If your machine is memory-constrained, specify the memoryefficientbackup Yes option in your options file. Specifying Yes reduces ADSM memory consumption at the expense of increased backup time. ADSM backs up only one directory at a time. If you have poor performance even when using memoryefficientbackup Yes, check your communication buffer settings and the communication link between your machine and the ADSM server.
Usually, there are files on your disk that you do not want to back up. These files might be operating system or application files that could be easily recovered by reinstalling the program, or any other file that you could easily rebuild.
Use the include and exclude options in the ADSM options file to define which files to exclude from backup processing. ADSM honors the include-exclude list whether you are performing an incremental or selective backup. ADSM backs up any file that is not explicitly excluded. It is not necessary to use an include option to include specific files, unless those files are in a directory that you are trying to exclude.
For more information about setting up an include-exclude list, see "Creating an Include-Exclude List".
When you start ADSM, or use the incremental command without indicating drives, ADSM automatically selects your default domain as the drives that you want to process. This domain is set with the domain option in the options file. See Domain. If you do not have the domain option set, the default domain is all local hard drives (the drives in your workstation) that have a drive label.
ADSM backs up your drives based on the drive label, not the drive letter. If a drive has no label, ADSM cannot back it up. This use of drive labels permits you to perform such tasks as backing up different diskettes from the a: drive.
Each drive label results in ADSM maintaining a separate drive for a restore or retrieve. These labels become the names of file spaces on the ADSM server. If you change the label of a drive you already backed up, ADSM views it as a new drive and does not relate it to your previous drive.
ADSM cannot back up drives that have drive aliases created with the DOS subst command. This applies to both the drive alias and the underlying physical drive, because the alias name and the physical drive label are the same. If you want to back up these drives, delete the aliases. Because ADSM uses the labels to manage your backups and archives, you occasionally need to use those labels to locate your data when using ADSM commands. For example, if you try to restore a file using d:\projx\file.exe as a file name, ADSM substitutes the current label of your d: drive for the d:. If the d: drive label is D-DISK, d:\projx\file.exe becomes {d-disk}\projx\file.exe, and the label is enclosed in braces.
If the label of the d: drive does not match a file space name on the ADSM server, ADSM cannot find your files. A mismatch between a label and a file space name might happen if you label your drives again, or if you access ADSM from a different workstation than the one from which you backed up the files. If you have not relabeled the drive, and you are at the same workstation where the file was backed up, then you can use the drive letter as a short-hand version of the file space name (drive label).
| Note: | The NTFS drive labels are case-sensitive. If you must specify the filespace name for an NTFS drive, enclose the name in quotes; for example, {"NTFS-DiskID"}\projx\file.exe. |
Some files on your system might be in use when you try backing them up. These are called open files because they are opened by an application for its use. Because an open file can change, any backup of an open file will not correctly reflect the contents of the file at a given time.
If certain files are not getting backed up because they are open and change when you try backing them up or when the backup schedule starts, consider:
You can use ADSM to back up specific files, a group of files with similar names, or empty directories and their attributes. This is called a selective backup.
You can select the files you want to back up either by file name (the path, name, and extension of the file), or by selecting the files or directories from a directory list.
When ADSM backs up a file, it also backs up the file attributes, directory information, and last changed date. These items are restored when you restore the file.
When you back up Windows NT files on NTFS partitions, ADSM also backs up file security information and these file descriptors:
When you back up Windows NT files on HPFS disks, the extended attributes (EA data) are not backed up.
To back up a file or a group of files, follow these steps:
Filtering a directory tree task permits you to display, in the right section of the file tree, the files that match the filter criteria you specified for the filter. Any files that do not match the filter criteria do not display. To filter a directory tree in preparation for your backup: