Hi,

I hope someone can help.

Is there any way in BUMP (or any other place) to compare 2 BUMP backup files (A and B, say) and get a differential list showing deleted, added, and modified files in a format I can use to retrieve the files which are in A but not in B? I would then delete backup file A.

I do my backups to an external USB disk drive which will eventually reach its capacity unless I delete earlier backup files. But I'd like to save any files in the earlier backup which are not in the later one. If I delete a file from its primary location (and empty the recycle bin), I'd like to know that I can retrieve it from backups further into the future than my backup cycle would allow.

I'm not interested right now in keeping earlier versions of modified files, but maybe some day I will be.

I guess, basically, I'm looking for a different retention period for deleted files.

Thanks for any insights you may be able to give me.

-- Tim Dempsey

To my knowledge, it is a matter of "no can do". There may be something out there that will do what you want, but of all the backup software I have tried, none can do that. Also, all that I have tried create a single file that is compressed, so there is no way to just do a straight compare of files. Maybe something can be done to compare the catalog entries, but again, I don't know of anything.
Software I have tried and used:
Stomp PC Backup (aka Nova Backup)
EMC Retrospect Pro
Norton Ghost
NTI Backup Now

Tim, I have some good news, and some bad news. As far as I can tell, you can not compare 2 backups to each other. However, you can compare a backup to your current system and it will tell you whether a file has changed or can not be compared due to it's being missing. That might give you what you want.