Most modern tape drives provide a high-speed positioning mechanism to greatly reduce the time needed to restore a few files from tape using
a technology called Fast File Restore (FFR). BackupEDGE includes full support for this on all platforms. If you are using DVD, CD, REV, removable hard drive, or FTP/FTPS Backups, BackupEDGE can start a restore practically instantaneously using Instant File Restore
tm (IFR). BackupEDGE provides three separate Fast File Restore interfaces to better suit the task at hand. The simplest of the three is our command-line interface, which
allows you to name an archive device (local or remote) and then specify which files you'd like to restore on the command line. The utility then handles all the details of looking up the location of
each file in the archive content database, and performs a highly optimized Fast File Restore™ or Instant File Restore™ procedure to restore your data. Our second interface to FFR/IFR is through our EDGEMENU program. By navigating our intuitive menu
system, you can browse the contents of an archive, and select those files and/or directories to restore from any drive to any machine with BackupEDGE
installed. You need not even be concerned that you are using FFR/IFR in this case; the "slow" and "fast" options of the interface are identically easy to use. Our third interface also involves EDGEMENU.
If you know exactly what you want to restore, you may type those filename(s) in, and EDGEMENU will restore them directly.For tape-based Fast File Restore, BackupEDGE
can actually measure the overhead of switching into and out of the high-speed positioning mode for your particular tape drive, and use this information during restore operations. Specifically, BackupEDGE
orders the files to be restored by tape position, and decides for each file whether it is faster to use high-speed positioning or simply read-and-discard data. The result is an incredibly fast restore that never requires more than a single pass across the tape (and even then, only if you request the last file!). As Instant File Restore
tm incurs no overhead because of the nature of the devices involved, this procedure is not applicable to IFR.. |
