There are two methods for grooming the database: you can prune the files or you can purge the files. The default is for SCO ARCserve/Open not to groom the database until you enable pruning or purging.

Pruning preserves all job and session records, but removes all details about files that were included in the backup sessions. Purging completely deletes all traces of a database record, including session, and file information.

If you have old job records in the database, but you think you may someday need to restore data from those old jobs, you should enable pruning, not purging. Even though all file details will be pruned from the database, you will still be able to restore entire sessions.

If you need to restore files from a job that has been purged, you can use SCO ARCserve/Open's Merge Tape utility to merge the tape information back into the database. See ``Using the SCO ARCserve/Open Utilities'' for more information about the Merge Tape utility.