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Consolidating backups... RRS feed

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    Due to various computer problems, I have had to reconfigure my home network and restart my OneCare backups several times and in different ways.  As a result, the OneCare backup folders on my external hard drive have several layers of backups files under different folder names.  Is there any way to scan the backup device and consolidate these backup folders?  (They are sucking up a lot of space on the central backup device. )

    e.g., 

    G: (ext hdd)
      Windows OneCare Backup
        computer 1
        computer 2
        computer 3
        Windows OneCare Backup (an independent backup set)
          ...

      OneCare Backup  (another independent backup set)
        computer 1
        computer 2
        ... 


    Tuesday, September 9, 2008 1:26 AM

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    There is no way I know of to consolidate backups. Since you have reconfigured your network the best solution might be to delete all of your backups and perform new full backups of each computer. This will recover some storage space and will ensure the ability to restore files easily if necessary.

    Tuesday, September 9, 2008 4:02 AM
    Moderator

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    There is no way I know of to consolidate backups. Since you have reconfigured your network the best solution might be to delete all of your backups and perform new full backups of each computer. This will recover some storage space and will ensure the ability to restore files easily if necessary.

    Tuesday, September 9, 2008 4:02 AM
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    Thanks, Jim.

    Since my cluster of computers have been through several iterations of operating system re-installs, which means that many of the files have changed as well, I will try restoring the backups before deleting them...

    What really threw my nice organized home network off was a combination of two problems occurring around the same time... A new Dell notebook that I bought with Vista required an OS re-install on 2 different occasions with a loss of all of the files the first time (unexpected), and then the hard drive on my older XP Pro desktop failed (but was mostly backed up and in preparations for being upgraded).  I had planned to try to clone the old hard drive to a larger, newer drive, but it failed just before I got around to it.  

    If somebody sold some sort of "backup wizard" which I could use to just throw all of my old backup sets onto one, big Terabyte drive, and it would sort through them, it would be great!

    bbneo

    Tuesday, September 9, 2008 10:15 AM