Hourly incremental backup of file in use

[Rondog]

I am in need of a backup solution that will allow me to backup files incrementally hourly/4-hourly and backup files that are in use eg: Outlook 2003 .pst file and Quickbooks .qbw file.

Any thoughts?

[danrok]

Quickbooks has its own backup tool which creates a .QBB file. I'm not sure if you can successfully restore from a copy of the .QBW file.

[Rondog]

Yes, however it is not automatic periodically throughout the day and cannot operate without shutting down the .qbw file in question.

Currently looking at Backup Exec as a viable option.

[danrok]

Why the need for such frequent back-ups?

[Rondog]

Customer request, advised them it is not really necessary, they are hell-bent on the idea though.

*shrugs*

[ccperf721p]

There are some cross-platform cron apps that will handle what you need. The only one that comes to mind right now is pycron. Worth a look anyway..

[Áedán]

That won't handle files that are locked against read/write though.

You might need to work out if there's a better way of handling this - for example, a centralised email server rather than relying on backups of ost/pst files.

[Rondog]

In the end, client went with a copy of Backup Exec with the functionality to backup files in use, and also purchased another server to host Quickbooks and email.