Schedule problem

Latest Version of NovaBackup. I have created a backup set for a week rotation. Friday is a full backup the rest of the week days are incremental backups. I have setup a schedule to run these days 3 times now and the program keeps "loosing" them. where is this schedule stored?

Latest Version of NovaBackup. I have created a backup set for a week rotation. Friday is a full backup the rest of the week days are incremental backups. I have setup a schedule to run these days 3 times now and the program keeps "loosing" them. where is this schedule stored?

What do you mean "losing them"? Do you mean the output NBD datasets you expect are not produced?

Assuming you're running in Advanced mode (set from the Home page), the LOGS tab will show you the output of each job that ran. You can specify "detail" in the Notification setup of Settings for the job, to see each folder/file backed up.

And the SCHEDULE tab shows the last run date and the next scheduled run date.

And the RESTORE tab shows each "disk backups" with an entry for each backup job that created an NBD output.

The target folder (specified in the "Backup to..." item at the bottom-left of the job definition) shows where the output NBD goes, and what the "media name" (i.e. file name) should be in that folder.

If you use the same job run each of the 6 days, then the only way you'll get unique output NBD datasets each day is if you specify "append" in the "write mode" of Settings for the job. This will cause a date/time suffix to be appended to the file name you specified in the "media name" of the "Backup to...". Each time this job runs, a brand new named output NBD dataset will be created, producing an ever-growing accumulation of such NBD datasets. You will have to "prune" them yourself, deleting them manually when you no longer want them. And you will also have to "prune" the XML media definitions for those output NBD datasets, by going to the RESTORE tab and selecting each "disk backup" and deleting it (corresponding to each NBD dataset you've deleted).

If instead you want every week's 6 incremental backups to rotate over themselves, replacing last week's incremental NBD with this weeks version, then you want to use "overwrite" in the "write mode" but that means you also need to have six separate jobs, scheduled weekly on each of those 6 days of the week. And each of the six unique jobs (for each day of the week) will also have to have a unique "media name" for its output NBD dataset. But this way you will simply have 6 incremental NBD datasets and they'll just keep overlaying the prior week's version with this week's version as time marches on. Thus you don't have to manually "prune" either the NBD datasets in the target folder, nor the XML media definitions. They will all just keep overlaying themselves and you'll only have 6 versions of both objects.

You could apply the same concepts to your Friday FULL backup. If you only wanted 7-days worth of total backup, then you could use "overwrite" for the Friday job. But if you wanted an ever-growing collection of individual weekly Friday NBD datasets, you should specify "append"... which again, would require manual "pruning" if you eventually wanted to delete the oldest objects.

So... exactly what has been "lost", that you expect to see but can't see? Friday FULL backup? Or the other mid-week incrementals? And exactly which piece of the output objects do you feel is missing?

Have you scheduled your repeating jobs as follows:

(a) weekly



(b) monthly

Let me elaborate a bit... this is all done in advanced mode and run as specific user as per reading in other posts. By losing them I mean that the actual Daily schedule that usually shows on the left side of the home menu keeps disappearing and I have made the same schedule 3 times now and it is gone again so no scheduled backups run, the jobs are still there but none run. I had a one week schedule for each day of the week, and a backup job set for each day. The backup jobs are incremental and overwrite for all days except Friday that is a full with overwrite so my NAS drive does not get full too fast.... so then the schedule was set up daily for each day of the week. It works for awhile and then randomly the schedule is gone. Hope this is a bit more clear. When I first setup the schedule I do get the main Friday backup and can see that it exists on the NAS device aprox 68 Gigs. and some of the daily backups exist on the NAS device ranging from 680megs to 1.2 gigs. It works for couple weeks then stops working when it has stopped working I open Novastor and that is when I notice the schedules are gone.

Well just to review my own approach to job scheduling (since I don't have the same problems you're having)... and you may see something that causes you to modify your setup technique if necessary and try out my method, hopefully with your current problems going away.

(1) My HOME screen shows what one would expect to see, namely the prior four jobs run as well as the next four upcoming jobs.



(2) I schedule new jobs using the ADD button on the SCHEDULE tab, rather than pushing the SCHEDULE button on the BACKUP tab. The dialog is the same, but that's just how I go about it.

(3) I do NOT set these scheduled backup jobs to run as "specific user". Rather I just have them run as "logged-in user", with a monthly frequency (I run 1st-of-month FULL backups and 29 daily incrementals in each month, with each incremental initially scheduled to have its first run on the associated day of the month for that particular job).



(4) The jobs shown on the LOGS tab match the last four run jobs shown on the HOME page.



(5) The upcoming scheduled jobs shown on the SCHEDULE tab match the upcoming four jobs shown on the HOME page.




Do you see anything different in my setup (specifically on my sample incremental backup scheduling setup) from what you've done?

Nothing stands out as much different other than the method that you actually made the schedule with. I picked the schedule on the backup tab and ran as specific user. Will setup another week schedule using the add in the schedule section and change the loggin as logged in user to see if that makes any difference. I also see that your backups work with no errors. Where are you saving you jobs too local or NAS or network drive?