Backup Incremental

Ricardson Williams

I really want buy a Knox.... but I have testing and use a very big Knox image around 80GB with all my photos, but to make the backup in my TM Knox did not make a incremental backup... copy the whole sparse bundle image again this take a very long time.... using wireless...



Also Knox should show the time of backup will it will take to finish.



I have chronosync but I didn't test to sync my image sparse bundle image... it works? did you guys test it?





Thanks,

Ricardson

MikeT

Hi Ricardson, welcome to the forums!



Knox uses Apple's "sparse bundle" technology for its OS X 10.5+ compatible (the default) vaults. Sparse bundles should always be excluded from Time Machine and other backup/sync products specifically because if they are currently mounted by OS X at the time of a backup, any utility that backs it up will appear to "succeed" but data integrity is not guaranteed. At some point you may end up with a sparse bundle that cannot be mounted if it is restored.



That's one of the prime reasons why Knox's built-in backups will always close/dismount the vault: it makes the resulting backup a consistently valid copy of the original.



You can use the Knox's built-in backup feature to back up your Knox files to your Time Machine drive instead of using Time Machine to back up.



I apologize in advance if that's not what you were referring to.



Right now, backing up incrementally can be troublesome, especially when the encryption is involved. Chronosync may work but it can result into a corrupted sparsebundle if you're not careful.

Ricardson Williams

Thank you Mike.



But imagine.... copying every backup the whole 80GB.... that is my problem.. using wireless to my Time Capsule, maybe Knox in the future can use the same way as Time Machine use to make the backup of my desktop. Maybe mount both knox images files and sync the contents...



I already avoid TM to backup my knox image.







Thank you very much!

Ricardson

MartyS

[quote name='Ricardson Williams' timestamp='1287623900' post='13702']

Thank you Mike.



But imagine.... copying every backup the whole 80GB.... that is my problem.. using wireless to my Time Capsule, maybe Knox in the future can use the same way as Time Machine use to make the backup of my desktop. Maybe mount both knox images files and sync the contents...



I already avoid TM to backup my knox image.

[/quote]



Hello Richardson,



Our goal for Knox Vault backups is absolute consistency, which means there's no such thing as an "incremental" backup as that implies that file comparisons are being made and access to the most current copy of the files may be blocked by applications that have one or more file open. To keep the result consistent requires that the Vault be dismounted from the OS X file system, preventing further file-level comparisons or copies for incremental purposes from being made.



You can of course choose to use one of many file/folder/"drive" backup utilities to do incremental content backups if that would be of more use to you given the size. Keep in mind that with these other tools the data would be backed up "in the clear" so your sensitive information could be seen in the process.

Locker

Perhaps I don't fully understand the whole discussion here, but isn't the idea of "sparse bundle" to update only the bundles that were modified, without the need to update (copy) the whole .dmg file as in the pre-10.5 format?



e.g. when my vault is in the dropbox folder, just the modified bundles are copied to the other computers' dropboxes? Or am I wrong, and the whole .dmg file is being copied ?

khad

Locker,



It's a matter of whether the volume is mounted or not. Unmounted sparse bundles reap the benefits you describe. You should never backup mounted sparse bundles for the data integrity reasons Mike describes above. Time Machine is not "vault aware" so it will try to backup your encrypted sparse bundles whether they are currently mounted or not.



Of course, there is also the issue that some backup applications are able to do incremental backups of single large files so using a sparse bundle reaps no real benefits in that case.



I hope that helps. Please let me know! <img src='http://forum.agile.ws/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />