Overview

The Backup archive application (nwarchive) provides archive services to Backup client machines for which you have enabled archiving. The archive process captures files or directories as they exist at a specific time and writes the data to special archive storage volumes. After the archive information is completed, you can delete the original files from the disk (called Failed Cross Reference Format) to conserve space.

Use Backup Archive in addition to scheduled Backup backups to protect your data. Although backups provide short-term insurance against data loss due to hardware failure or user error, archives offer a long-term strategy for data preservation. You can remove archive files from primary disk storage to make space for newer files, and retain them in archive volumes for quick retrieval in the future.

Archived data is never subject to automatic recycling, so Backup cannot accidentally overwrite archived data. Entries for archive volumes are maintained in the media database forever. To restore archived data to local disk, use the Backup retrieve program (nwretrieve).

Because archive data is in a different format than Backup backup save set data, it must be written to different volumes, regardless of whether the archive performed is a PC or UNIX style archive.

A PC style archive provides the option to store client file index entries, which enables you to browse and recover individual files from within the archive save set. You enable this option by selecting the Store Index Entries attribute in the Pools resource you configure for the PC style archive.

The client file indexes created during a PC style archive to an archive pool that has the Save Index Entries attribute enabled cannot be written to the same volume as the archived save sets. If you enabled the Store Index Entries attribute for the Pool designated for the PC style archive, the client file indexes are automatically written to a volume from the Default pool during the next scheduled backup. If you need to direct the client file indexes for the archive to a volume pool other than Default, see "Example: Directing Client Indexes and Bootstrap to a Separate Pool " for further information.

A UNIX style archive does not provide the option to store client file index entries. You cannot retrieve individual files from the archive save set. A unique annotation of 1024 characters or less identifies each archive save set, for retrieval at a later date.