Generated backup file names?

New to TI Home 9, apologies in advance if this has been discussed.

I plan to schedule automatic overnight full backups on a periodic basis, and would like to keep 2 or 3 generations of them. What about the file names each time it runs? Is there a way to have it automatically generate a new file name each time, perhaps based on date/time or an incremented version number? I'm willing to kill the older ones from time to time, but I'd rather not have to go in after each and every backup and manually rename it to avoid being overwritten by the next one if I don't have to. Can this be done?

TIA

elaine
charlottesville, va

 

TI will not rename them, but you can run a Pre/Post command that will. You could add the date to each file after it gets created with this method.
Or, depending on your schedule, you can set up separate tasks to run on, let’s say, the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th day of each month. Once the entire month is over, the tasks will overwrite the image files so that you will never have more than 5.

 

Ah, excellent ideas! I'll read up on the Pre/Post commands and see if that will help--I wasn't entirely sure how those were to be used, but this makes perfect sense. Is there a generic function/parameter for date that can be used here? Something like date() or whatever. The other suggestion is definitely workable too. I've been thinking in terms of a single task, but you are correct, there's no reason why I have to do it that way. For the record, I've just purchased the product and haven't received it yet so my questions etc are a result of the trial and lots of excellent reviews

elaine

 

I use a program called NameDate to add the date to the end of file names. You can find it here: http://www.informatics-consulting.ch/software/namedate.htm
After installing the program, I created a .bat file that contained my TI image file name and the necessary NameDate parameters to add the date to the end of the file name.
The .bat file is then called through the TI Pre/Post command options.

 

Sounds like this will do the trick. Thanks!

elaine

 

OK, I've installed the utility and set it to do exactly that. Here's what I put into the bat that is called in After Backup Process :

G:\
cd \backups
namedate /U /y /Z:"Y-m-d" mybackup.tib
exit

Both checkboxes in the Post edit window are checked. The problem is that it threw an error:

Failed to open the file MyBackup.tib for read: 262,161.

I believe what happened is that after the post command renamed the file just fine, the next step in the process, which was to validate the archive, clearly couldn't find the file since it was now renamed. It is apparently a timing issue. I unchecked the validate option and it worked fine.

Thing is, shouldn't I really WANT it to validate the archive?? I guess it could be done later, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having the job scheduled for off hours, doesn't it? Otherwise it works just dandy

Comments?

Elaine

 

Please check out theses threads. AFAIK, nothing has changed.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=148731

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=128324