JGillTech wrote:

> I was under the impression the ssid was the unique identifier of the save 
> set.  Can a ssid be reused?  I was under the idea that each save set 
> specified in a client resource is assigned a unique ssid when backing up.  
> Correct me if I am wrong.  If that is true, why is a clone id needed?  

Yes each save set is assigned a unique SSID, but if you make a copy
(clone) of it, then the contents of the clone are identical to the
original. For recovery purposes you can use either and the result will
be the same. However if you clone the save set you may need a way to
refer to each copy of it, hence the clone ID.

An SSID CAN be reused, but only after the save set has been removed from
the media database.

As a comparison, consider books in a library. Every book has an ISBN,
the unique identifier for that book. It has other attributes too, such
as the author, the title, the number of pages etc. The ISBN is like the
SSID, and the other attributes are the client, the save set name and the
 number of bytes in the save set.

Now imagine that this is a popular book, so the library has bought 10
copies of it. The library needs to identify each copy so that they can
tell who has borrowed it, so they will give it another number, this is
the equivalent of the clone ID.

You could read any copy of the book and the story will be the same. You
don't care which copy you are reading, but the library still needs to
know where all of its copies are in order to keep track of them.

Is this any clearer?

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