Interpretting CatTools output from backup catalogs

[CofIAlan]

I've recently inherited a backup system that is capturing over 500GB of data at each daily incremental backup.  We're a small college that in no way generates that much data each day, especially in the summer.  I’ve run CatTools on our BE 2010 R3 setup and need help interpreting the exports.  I’m trying to determine what files are being backed up and why.  I’m using modified date as the criteria for daily backups; archive bit was used before and generated the >500GB backups.  Modified date doesn’t seem to be doing any better, though.  The snippet below is five lines from a 55,500+ line catalog file, of which there are several more from the same backup.  The vast majority of the files logged in the catalogs haven’t changed in months or years, so they shouldn’t be getting picked up through incrementals.

<ET FP="path\folder\folder" SZ="0" LB="84" AT="1340048667" CT="1256946811" MT="1337961328" ST="10" AR="0" XA="0" IN="0" OST="0" IIMG="26"/>
<ET FP=" path\folder\folder " SZ="0" LB="85" AT="1340048667" CT="1331915765" MT="1339177065" ST="10" AR="0" XA="0" IN="0" OST="0" IIMG="27"/>
<ET FP=" path\folder\folder " SZ="0" LB="86" AT="1340048667" CT="1331915731" MT="1337287084" ST="10" AR="0" XA="0" IN="0" OST="0" IIMG="28"/>
<ET FP=" path\folder\folder " SZ="215091" LB="87" AT="1340059373" CT="1315318546" MT="1340059373" ST="10" AR="0" XA="0" IN="0" OST="0" IIMG="29"/>
<ET FP=" path\folder\folder \file.docx" SZ="172083" LB="88" AT="1340059374" CT="1339779640" MT="1340055397" ST="9" AR="2048" XA="0" IN="0" OST="0" IIMG="30"/>

Thoughts?  What exactly am I looking at and how can I figure out the problem files and directories?

Thanks!

[VJware]

Probably easier to start all over...create a new selection list..create new full & incremental backups....

Also, what sort of data/resources are being included in the backup ?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You can go to Tools --> Options ---> Job Log and select summary, files and folders.  The job log would then list all the files backed up.  Make sure that you have lots of disk space on your C: drive and turn off files and folders immediately afer the test.  The job log would be voluminuous.

If AV is running on the backup source, turn that off scanning and try the backup again before turning on job log details.

[CofIAlan]

VJware:

That's certainly one of my options.  The setup has some other strange things as well, so I've thought about when I install BEX 2012 I will just switch everything to VMware licenses and start from scratch on a fresh media server.  I need to move to VMware agents anyway, so I may just not bother with trying to upgrade what we have.

pkh:

Perfect, that's the information I've been trying to locate.  Turning off AV isn't a bad idea either, though I'll have to see if I can schedule it in our software or issue a command at the start of backups to temporarily stop it on each server and the media server.

I'll make sure to post back here if I find a good solution.  Thanks for your ideas so far!