Sam Sheppard asks:

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   I need to restore a filespace (or directory for that matter) to a
state as it looked several days ago and think I am missing something as
regards to how ACTIVE and INACTIVE files are handled in this situation.
My current understanding is that INACTIVE files could be either older
backups of ACTIVE files or remaining backups of files that have been
deleted.

   It seems to me that, unless there is some other flag in the
database indicating the difference, I may get files restored that I do
not want when using the TODATE and LATEST options. That is, I would get
files that did not exist on that date (had been deleted).  Does ACTIVE
in this situation refer to files that are currently ACTIVE or were
ACTIVE on the date to be restored to?  Or, are INACTIVE (deleted) files
somehow distinguished from INACTIVE (prior backup copies).

   The situation I am currently dealing with is one in which a client
lost a hard drive,  started a RESTORE which was interrupted and then
had a scheduled backup start before the RESTORE was restarted.  This,
to my way of thinking, would cause all files except those already
restored, to be marked INACTIVE (deleted).  The PICK option is not
viable in this case, since we are talking about several thousand files.
At this point, I am thinking my only option is to do a database restore
to a point-in-time just before the incremental backup and go from there,
but any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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If you do a RESTORE with -INACTIVE and -TODATE, ADSM will restore any
versions meeting the criteria, including files that had been deleted prior to
the date of the crash. So yes, you may get some unwanted files restored. Of
course it all depends on the circumstances (how much have you deleted, and
does ADSM still have inactive versions), but in my experience, I've never
seen this be a major problem.

However, this is still a valid point. I don't know whether there is any
requirement to provide for a "true" point-in-time restore, which is what you
really want, so you may want to consider sending one to the ADSM-R list
server.

Level 0.3 of the V2 clients also added a -TOTIME option, as well. You may
want to consider using this in conjunction with -TODATE. This is useful if
your incremental backups ever cross midnight (i.e. start before midnight and
end after midnight).

Andy Raibeck