Backup schedules in Oops!Backup are fairly simple, but certain ground rules must be understood first: Rule 1) If you set your backup to take place every X hours or every X days, Oops!Backup will align your backup to the next top of the hour. So even if the backup is already due at 11:30 for example, Oops!Backup will wait till 12:00, so that subsequent backups will all be at the top of the hour (for example 12:00, 13:00, 14:00 etc... if the schedule is every 1 hour). This does not apply to schedules that are selected with a "minutes" interval. Rule 2) Manual backups and "Plug & Protect" backups (that take place when you plug in your drive), are considered "out of band" and do not affect the next backup according to your backup schedule. In other words, the next backup time is calculated according to the last automatic backup only. Now that these rules are out of the way, let's move on to a more detailed desription... At the top of all windows in Oops!Backup, you can see a status as follows:  How is this time calculated? Take this example, related to the image above: Our schedule is set to backup every 3 hours. The last backup was at 09:34, which was our first backup. The three hours from the first backup will elapse at 12:34. However, as described above in Rule 1, Oops!Backup will align your backups to the hour, so the next backup will take place at 13:00. It is now 11:35, so the text will show us that the next backup is in 1 hour and 25 minutes, as shown above. The backup after that will be at 16:00, three hours after the backup of 13:00. If I take a manual backup at 14:20, for example, this will not affect the 16:00 backup, since it is out of band (see Rule 2 above). What if there are no changes yet? If there are no changes at the point at which the backup time elapses, then no backup will be taken. In fact, if there are no changes, then you will not see the time remaining, but that there are no changes yet. Let's assume in the example above that there are no changes between 13:00 and 16:00. The backup will not take place at 16:00. The first change to a file or folder marked for backup occurs at 16:25. The backup will now take place at the next top of the hour, namely at 17:00. Although the schedule is set at every 3 hours, the interval between backups in this case will be 4 hours, because there were no changes in the first three hours after 13:00. What about "minutes" schedules? If your schedule is set at "every 30 minutes", for example, then the top of the hour is not taken into consideration. After the 09:34 backup in the example above, the next backup will be at 10:04. Let's assume that there are no changes yet at 10:04. If the first change occurs at 10:17, then the backup will be taken very soon after 10:17, because the backup time would have elapsed and no attempt is made to align the backup times to any particular point in the hour. Assuming there are changes, the next backup will then take place at 10:47, which is 30 minutes after 10:17. What happens if my PC is off at the time of the next backup? Continuing on the original example: a backup schedule every 3 hours, with the last automatic backup at 13:00. There are 5 changed files pending backup. That means the next backup is to take place at 16:00. Let's say the PC is turned off at 15:45 so the 16:00 backup cannot take place. The PC is then turned back on at 17:30. Oops!Backup will detect that there are changes pending and the backup is overdue. The next available backup time on the hour is 18:00, so the backup will be taken at 18:00 (see Rule 1 above). The backup after that will be taken at 21:00, assuming there are changes to back up. If my schedule was set every 30 minutes, for example, then an overdue backup would be taken shortly after the PC is turned back on. Please note that this also applies to PCs in hibernation or standby. What happens if my backup drive is disconnected at the time of the next backup? In this case, the same logic as described above is followed (see "What happens if my PC is off at the time of the next backup"). In a nutshell, the next backup will be taken place after the drive is next available, either immediately (if you have a "minutes" schedule) or at the next top of the hour (if you have an "every x hours" or "every x days" schedule). What about special folders? When you have special folders (for example your Outlook PST file) backing up at different schedules, then things may get a bit more tricky. If you don't know what special folders are, then please click here: http://wiki.altaro.com/oops-backup-how-tos/configure-different-backup-frequency-and-settings-for-different-folders Let's assume your main schedule is to backup changes every hour. Your Outlook PST folder is set to back up once a day. There are no changes in your main folders, but your Outlook files have changed. The next backup time will be shown for the Outlook PST folder only. For this reason, you may see "next backup in 22 hours 15 minutes". This may be at first confusing, since the schedule is set on an hourly basis. However this simply means that there are no changes for the other folders. As a general rule, the next backup time is shown as the nearest backup time for the folders with at least one pending change. In the example above, the second a change occurs in one of the main folders marked for backup, the text will promptly change to "next backup in 20 minutes" or whatever the case may be. After that backup, if there are no more changes pending in your main folders, the text will probably go back to "next backup in 21 hours etc.." signalling that the Outlook folder is the only one with changes. What does "Full check still pending" mean? When Oops!Backup is started up, or when you make changes to settings or changes to the treeview selections, Oops!Backup will make a full comparison on the source and destination files to make sure all pending changes are caught, including the ones that may have occurred when Oops!Backup was not running. If you see the text "No changes yet. Full check still pending" it simply means that the next backup time can only be determined after Oops!Backup does a full check for changes. This is usually done right before the next backup time, or maybe even before if your PC is idle and the backup drive is available. What if a backup fails or I abort a backup? If an automatic (scheduled) backup fails, it will be retried after 5 minutes for up to three times. If the third attempt also fails, then no further retries will take place. The next attempt to back up will then be when the backup interval elapses again from the time of the original failed backup. If any backup, manual or scheduled, is aborted by the user, then the next backup will take place after the backup interval has elapsed from the time the backup was aborted. The first backup cannot be aborted, but it can be postponed. If you click the "Postpone" button, then the next backup will take place at the next available backup slot, namely at the next top of the hour, or if you set a "minutes" schedule, when the interval in minutes elapses from the start time of the postponed backup. There is still something I can't understand... We know that every user has his or her particular set up. It is impossible to cover all possibilities in this wiki entry. If you have any questions about what you are seeing in the user interface, or you would like to know how Oops!Backup will work for your set up, we'd be glad to help. Just send us an email to support@altaro.com and we'll take it from there. |