Done. Man, I'd like to know the database architecture you have underlying this. Something tells me it's not an SQL-type relational with BLOBs...

And...that was it. I suspect the new archive was created when I added the identity key.



I suppose I can simply delete the lower archive dated 5/14...

In that case, I think I am Doing Something Wrong. For example, the Documents folder contains my Parallels virtual machines. I see QRecall thrashing through my Win 7 VM almost every day (because I use it frequently), but no backup of it is shown past May 19.

A better example might be my Desktop folder. It changes daily, and yet it doesn't show any changes past that date either (and yes, I am running a Hackintosh. Now that I'm retired I can't justify new Mac Pros any more. I don't think this should make a difference, though...)

OK, next question. Whilst browsing my archive, I noticed I only seem to have two layers: they're dated May 12 and May 19. But QRecall backs up every day (I can see the backups in the log), with weekly verifications and compactions.

I can recall items from either of these layers, but can't find a way to expose later layers. Pulling the shade control lets me exclude the latest layer, but that's it.

Obviously I am missing something terribly obvious. "Reveal all Layers" is disabled in the Layers menu, so that's not it. So...where are the other layers?

James Bucanek wrote:In the QRecall application, choose Help > QRecall Help. The QRecall help was recently rewritten in its entirety, so feedback is welcome.

I finally noticed that!

James Bucanek wrote:I'm compelled to note that you can turn timelines on and off as desired (View > Show/Hide Timelines).

Oh, I knew that; it just seemed as though leaving them off by default might be better. But it's easy to turn 'em off.

James Bucanek wrote:QRecall's goals are data integrity and efficiency, and we think there's room in the universe for both approaches.

I used Retrospect for close to 20 years before the Mac version ran off the rails. It's nice to have something sophisticated again...

James Bucanek wrote:QRecall can/will do exactly the same thing (it's called "rolling" your incremental backups). The different between QRecall and Time Machine is that in QRecall you can specify exactly the scope, frequency, and granularity of the roll. And like Time Machine, you can also make these actions conditional on the amount of free disk space available (or not). Again, you get to decide the strategy that makes sense for you.

I think I've got it: created one action to handle to backups and another to handle the rolling merges. I think I'm gonna like this!

Apparently there is a QRecall manual. If so, where can I get it? If it's on the site it's not obvious...

So far I'm impressed with QRecall running on Lion. I use a Windows 7 virtual machine almost daily, and had told Time Machine not to back it up since it's 20G in size and your backup disk fills up rather quickly at 20G/hour, even with some compression. Of course I had to restore my boot drive and the VM wasn't on the backup and I had to recreate and configure it from scratch, which is a pain.

Based on what I've seen so far with my QRecall trial, the advantages Time Machine has are:

1. Somewhat simpler U.I. (Of course it does less, too, but the QRecall interface can still be a little daunting, especially when you open a folder with a lot of files and see all those "timeline lines". It's kind complex visually.)

2. Its deep integration with OS X means you can do things like recover individual Mail messages. And you have the option of restoring directly from a Time Machine backup when you install OS X.

3. Time Machine consolidates backups (i.e. hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last week...) and automatically deletes older backups as space is needed.

I can work around #1; it's just a matter of learning the interface. I realize that a third party developer simply can't duplicate #2, and that's OK, too.

For #3, the backup consolidation doesn't seem necessary with QRecall since the incremental "quantized" backup means the individual backups are typically much smaller. But what happens when the backup disk fills up? Do I delete older backups manually somehow?