Please correct me if I’m wrong, but right now Duplicati backs up ONLY at it’s scheduled time or if manually requested. If a backup starts (no matter how) and is interrupted (say machine falls asleep or is manually shut down) then the backup doesn’t resume until the next scheduled time (or manual request) begins. This means if you have weekly backups scheduled it could be a whole week before the rest of the FIRST week’s backup finishes.
Would it make sense to add a “continue interrupted backups” option so that when Duplicati starts if it sees an “I didn’t finish my last task” flag it would prompt the user with a “previous backup not completed, do you wish to continue it now?” with a No button and a Yes button showing a count down timer on it?
If user doesn’t click no before Yes counts down to 0 the Duplicati would start up the previously uncompleted job. I’m not proposing it picks up where it left off (though that might also be a nice feature) so it will still “start over again” with the full file scan but it should get further in the backup sooner than waiting for the next scheduled time. Unless, of course, he user has a lot of changes in the “early” files of the backup…
I think it would make sense, but when should it show this? If the backup fails due to no connection, re-running it repeatedly will not fix the problem.
Good point. I guess instead there could be a “retry interrupted backups interval” field. If greater than 0 (default / disabled) AND an interrupted backup exists then at startup and every “interval” minutes an “is destination available” check could be done. When it becomes available is when the prompt could appear.
Of course if one has an unstable connection that could cause many annoying prompts so maybe no prompt is needed. The act of setting the interval could be considered “approval” to continue when possible.
I think I’d also assume incomplete backups take precedence over scheduled ones. So if an incomplete exists then a normally scheduled start of a fresh backup would instead just continue the incomplete one.
