Simon Travaglia makes an excellent point:

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>Anyone else out there have a need for this feature?
>Anyone from IBM care to comment on directions?
>Or am I missing the boat completely?
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>
>My own thoughts on this: I agree that this would be a desirable =
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>But I don't know how other products implement it. ADSM currently =
doesn't =3D
>inspect the contents of a file. I suppose it's possible that two =3D
>different files could have the same name, size, and modification =3D
>date/time. Maybe not WINWORD.EXE, but perhaps something like MYDOC.TXT. =
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>This might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. I have no idea how other =
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>vendors provide a solution to this.

The problem with duplicate files is that a lot of the time they'll look
like duplicates but will not in fact be that way. Take for instance an
application that is 'customised' by the installation process to work =
only
on a single machine.  It has an IP number, Ethernet address or Name to
distinguish itself.   Stashing only one copy of photoshop say, because
they all have exactly the same file size, would not work.  It's possible
that even checksumming might not work because it's conceivable that the
checksum is 'padded' after the customisation process to match the =
original.

The interim way around not backing up multiple copies of data is to not
back it up at all.  If it's in multiple places and easily installable,
why not exclude the entire directory, or certain file specs.  Another
option is to have application areas and data areas on the client.  Never
backup the application areas and always backup the data areas.
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He's absolutely right - originally I said "maybe not WINWORD.EXE". But =
actually, WINWORD.EXE may in fact store my registration and license =
information.

Another potential problem if ADSM were to detect duplicate files and not =
back them up: for collocated tape pools, the effects of collocation =
would be "watered down".

Andy Raibeck