Replicating Generation Data Groups on W7

[jimbo45]

Hi all
Going back to my mainframe days it was possible to store previous versions of a file very simply by what was knows as a GDG or Generation Data Group.

For example you had file A. the current version was known as FILE A(0).
If you create a NEW version then you would write to FILE A(+1), or if you wanted to access the previous version this would be FILE A(-1). You could define how many levels you wanted.

When you deleted the oldest version FILE A(+1) becomes the Current version FILE A(0) and so on.

Anybody got any software for simply replicating this type of stuff --- I'm getting so many backups that it is almost a job in itself keeping a decent track on everything - conventional cataloging software doesn't seem to be very good at this.

This old Mainframe system was EXCELLENT and was available from the early 70's or even before - but we don't seem to have anything like this on modern computers.

How do most I.T depts organise caraloguing their backups or is it genearlly "Panic Stations" when something needs to be restored.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[zzz2496]

Why not use SAN, Jim? SAN has that capability IIRC, it called SNAPSHOTS, and it works at block level. The downside would be you need to setup an independent storage machine to run this software. In Linux you can build SAN your self, use RAID + LVM, added to that ext3/ext4 FS, that storage server is close to undestructable...

zzz2496

 

[zzz2496]

Or maybe back your files using Rsync? It has similar to SNAPSHOT feature you can explore.

zzz2496

 

[r1ddl3m37h15]

You could run this BAT.

@echo on
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set myDir=%~1
set limit=%~2
if "x%myDir%"=="x" set myDir=%CD%\*.bak
if "x%limit%"=="x" set limit=3
REM Find the total number files in the directory.
set /A total=0
for %%v in ("%myDir%") do (
    set /A total+=1
)
REM Delete all but the last few files.
set /A delCount = %total% - %limit%
set /A count=1
for /f usebackq %%v in (`dir /b /od /tc "%myDir%"`) do (
    if /i "!count!" LEQ "!delCount!" del %%v
    set /A count+=1
)