compare/restore to a particular date/time

[pb]

Probably this has been suggested before, maybe even by me, I don't remember.

It would be very useful to be able to compare a directory (or disk/partition/etc.) with the backup of that directory as of a particular date/time. With archiving and the tracking database, the information to do this would seem to already be present.

This is similar to functionality in version control systems that will let you see a file as of a particular date/time.

Today's reason why I would like this is that chkdsk found some errors in a filesystem. Some files have been lost. I can guess approximately when the lossage occurred, and therefore if I could compare the backup as of that date I could restore the files that got lost. Comparing the most recent backup, i.e., the current mirror, is of no help, because it has already removed files that were no longer present in the source. The only hope is to manually comb through the archive files, an extremely tedious process for a filesystem that has over 100,000 files.