Thanks for the explanation -- that's the behavior I had hoped for.

Now suppose next month I do another one-off capture of /Applications but in the meantime, Apple has updated some of the apps and I have deleted some I was no longer using. In this case, the updated apps will be captured and the old versions of the updated apps will eventually disappear from the archive, correct? And same thing for the apps in /Applications which have been deleted (and not replaced) since the last capture of /Applications, correct?

Question: I automatically back up my Home folder every night, and exclude everything else.

I highlight the /Applications folder and using the Services menu, do a one-time "Capture to QRecall Archive".

What will happen to the /Applications folder contents archived if I don't do that again? Will they remain forever (or at least until replaced by another one-time capture?), or will they be deleted from the archive by a future rolling merge?

Current user of version 2.2.12. I've cloned a copy of my current backup archive and downloaded the beta 3 dmg, but have some questions I'd like answered before proceeding as it appears the beta will replace my current version of the app and its subsystems since the names are the same...

In no particular order:

1. Any plans to allow iCloud to be an stack destination? i.e., create an stack container on iCloud Drive ?

2. Does the beta respect file attributes set on an individual file/folder from version 2 via the Services menu?

3. Can the Beta run along with version 2, or does version 2 need to be removed in order to test the beta? (I notice many of the component names are the same).

4. Can the archive destination be either HFS or APFS? Any advantage using one over the other?

James, let me chew on your reply (have to feed the cats now) but I do have a suggestion from the Human Interface Design point: To many, seeing a "Zero KB" value is misleading; what it really means here is "We don't know" but Zero may be interpreted as: 0, nothing, OMG all of it is gone!

How about using something else like "Unknown" or "?" instead when a value can't be computed?

I recently had to repair an archive damaged when a cat disconnected the drive the archive was contained on during a capture.

I repaired the drive, but it failed when I verified it, so I ran repair again, after which it verified OK.

I now have 2 different layers within the archive which show as <layer#><Date> Zero KB Repaired

(strangely to me the dates of these layers are from 2017 & early 2020 -- I would have expected them to be near the date of the interrupted capture?)

?What is the status of those 2 layers?
?Why are they displayed?
?If they now are empty, shouldn't a Merge have removed them?
?What happened to the data contained in them? (I would have expected any unrecoverable data to be at the end of the archive where it was being added to when interrupted?)

I've been running Catalina under as a Parallels VM and haven't yet requested a trial Key for that, but with the official release approaching I thought I'd ask:
Any known issues with QRecall under Catalina?

That makes sense. Thanks!

Ah thanks, that's a start.

But why do almost all the items in the layer report a size (in sizes view) of "-1 bytes" and "Size undetermined" in the info panel?

I backup my iMac several times a week.

I have the backups configured to ignore stuff in the cloud such as dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, the Photos system library, etc.

Most of the backups capture between one and two Gig and after de-duplication end up writing something between 300 to 700 MB to to the archive.

Today my backup captured 12.13 GB and wrote 5.26 GB to the archive after de-duplication and compression and I can't figure out why. This happens occasionally. I don't know what I did which would cause so many files to be captured as I don't recall doing anything on the iMac to do that.

So I'm really curious ? ? is there any way of looking at a specific layer/backup to see what files were captured, especially if there are any large ones?

Here's an abbreviated copy of the log entries from my last two backups ? ? the more "normal" one And the curiously large one.

Action 2019-06-18 12:06:48 ------- Capture to Backups.quanta
Action 2019-06-18 12:06:48 archive: /Volumes/Seagate/QRcall Archives ?/Backups.quanta
Action 2019-06-18 12:06:49 Capture Lion
Action 2019-06-18 12:06:49 Minutia Locating changes since Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 1:03 PM
Action 2019-06-18 12:10:57 Minutia Recaptured files
Action 2019-06-18 12:13:04 Excluded items
Action 2019-06-18 12:17:09 Ignored changes
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:18 Captured 2199 items, 1.46 GB (49% duplicate)
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 captured: 1.46 GB (1,460,142,366 bytes)
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 written: 377 MB (376,956,800 bytes)
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 duplicate: 719.9 MB (719,869,887 bytes) 49.30%
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 rate: 108.6 MB/min
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 files: 5,655
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 folders: 1,486
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:19 icons: 0
Action 2019-06-18 12:20:24 ------- Capture finished (13:35)

Action 2019-06-21 13:11:33 ------- Capture to Backups.quanta
Action 2019-06-21 13:11:33 archive: /Volumes/Seagate/QRcall Archives ?/Backups.quanta
Action 2019-06-21 13:11:34 Capture Lion
Action 2019-06-21 13:11:35 Minutia Previous layer had no bookmark; performing deep scan
Action 2019-06-21 13:55:49 Minutia Recaptured files
Action 2019-06-21 14:13:48 Excluded items
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 Captured 8245 items, 12.13 GB (45% duplicate)
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 captured: 12.13 GB (12,125,567,163 bytes)
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 written: 5.26 GB (5,258,723,768 bytes)
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 duplicate: 5.5 GB (5,502,469,402 bytes) 45.38%
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 rate: 125 MB/min
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 files: 28,306
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 folders: 5,375
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:36 icons: 0
Action 2019-06-21 14:48:43 ------- Capture finished (1:37:09)

I have a large archive (close to a TB) so the Compact action takes 12-20 hours to complete.

I know I can safely pause/stop a Compact action and resume it later, but what would happen if I attempted to take another backup (recapture) before the Compact is restarted & completes? What about a Merge?

I'm assuming the archive won't be damaged, but would to Compact have to start all over from the beginning?

Curious minds want to know...

I have a 5 GB disk image file I'm backing up.
Actually, it's a "Sparse Disk Image Bundle" consisting of 560+ "bands" each of which is an 8.4 MB file.

I notice when I write to/modify the mounted disk image, the Date Modified for some -- but not all -- of the individual band files change.

When backing up, does QRecall treat each of the bands as individual files even though at the higher level the OS (like Finder) treats the conglomeration as a single file?

If I write to the mounted disk image resulting in say 100 out of 560 of the band files being changed, will QRecall only recapture the changed band files as opposed to the entire bundle?

I did a "Nuke and Pave" on my computer while upgrading to High Sierra to rid myself of over 10 years of accumulated crud and junk files which I did not want carried over to a new installation.

Prior to erasing the disc, I did a backup (actually, several backups ) and my intent was to use QRecall to restore the particular apps and data I wanted from the prior system to the new one.

But I'm running into a problem: on my new clean virgin system my ID (sjg) has a different UID number (501) then on the prior system I backed up (503). Apparently QRecall restores the old files using the UID number to set ownership instead of the name so I ended up not owning the files which I previously owned!

This is not easily rectifiable from the Finder since I am not the owner of the files.

Is there a way to restore files from a backup, using the owners name to set ownership instead of the UID?

Obviously, I prefer to use QRecall but using the advice one maintains multiple backups on multiple physical media, I also maintain an occasional Time Machine backup.

Do you know if for now (until Apple fixes the bootable APFS issues) you can boot into the Recovery Partition and select the option to restore from a Time Machine backup and that will give you a bootable APFS partition?

Could you then restore from QRecall over that?

I'm taking advantage of the need to install High Sierra to do a "Nuke & Pave" -- ensuring I have a current 10.12 QRecall backup, completely wiping the partition, cleanly installing 10.13, and then restoring selected items to the new system.

Since I have a SSD in the computer, the installation process will convert the HFS+ to APFS.

Will I be able to restore stuff from the QRecall backup under HFS+ to the new APFS partition without any issues?
Will file permissions, extended attributes, and other meta-deta all be set correctly ?

With the release just around the corner, are there any known issues? Can QRecall backup and restore non-HFS+ volumes ?