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Creating a new back up solution


a&e

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Hi Everyone!

 

I'm working as an admin in a local travel agency. Due to legal aspects, we're ought to have decent back-ups. Therefore we have chosen retrospect 8 for Mac as our personal back-up solution.

 

Now before I start writing about our problems with the configuration of retrospect, let me give you a glimpse of our used hardware, so that everyone of you can picture our situation.

 

We're using a MacPro Server as our main Server. This Mac has several HDDs but we only want to back up one of them (the one that contains our business-data).

We would like to perform the the back-up to two external HDDs. One of them has a capacity of 1TB and the other has 2TB.

Now, as the two external HDDs have different capacities, we would like to back up the smaller HDD with all data, except our email-archive. Excluding this from the back-up will leave us enough free space on the 1TB HDD to do a back-up of all other data. The 2TB HDD should be backed-up with all our data. Both HDDs are connected via FW800. Both HDDs have different names set by Apple's Disk Utility App.

 

Now comes the tricky part. In terms of scheduling, we would like to do the following. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we would like to use the smaller HDD to back up at 10 pm every week. This HDD will be disconnected from the server every other weekday.

The other 2TB HDD shall back up on monday, wednesday and friday also at 10 pm. This HDD will also be removed on the other weekdays.

 

I have had lots of communication with the retrospect support but nothing really could help me. I took a look at the youtube videos from retrospect and tried to configure everything just as shown in the videos.

 

Unfortunately everything works fine just after all hast been set up. But after several weeks, retrospect isn't performing anymore, meaning that the scheduled back-ups aren't executed anymore.

 

How can I get retrospect to work just as I want it to, without having to bother with it every couple of weeks?? Except swapping the HDDs every day, I really don't want to bother with retrospect as this takes up a lot of time.

 

Just now I have deleted all my settings and did a re-setup of retrospect as shown in their video "backing up to an external hard disc".

 

As today is thursday, the smaller HDD is connected. I have just initiated a manual back-up and everything seems to work fine... But what about tomorrow when the other HDD will be connected?

 

I'm thankful for any given advice helping me achieve my goal of effortless backing-up.

 

Thanks for helping!

Regards,

Moritz

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In terms of scheduling, we would like to do the following. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we would like to use the smaller HDD to back up at 10 pm every week. This HDD will be disconnected from the server every other weekday.

The other 2TB HDD shall back up on monday, wednesday and friday also at 10 pm. This HDD will also be removed on the other weekdays.

OK; this should not be a problem. Assuming that you always want to back up the same files, you should be able to accomplish this with two disk media sets, one on each of your destination HD volumes, and a single backup script containing two weekly schedules, a M-W-F schedule to Media Set A (or whatever you choose to name it), and a Tu-Th schedule to Media Set B. You will also need to schedule periodic recycle backups or grooming to keep the media sets' sizes within bounds, unless you intend to periodically add an additional media set member (another disk volume).

 

Exactly what arrangement did you set up and get to work for awhile? Did you back up the entire source HD volume using the built-in "All Files" or "All Files Except Cache Files" rule, or did you create favorite folders and/or custom rules to exclude certain files?

 

But after several weeks, retrospect isn't performing anymore, meaning that the scheduled back-ups aren't executed anymore.

Does the backup script still contain your desired schedules? If you go to the Activities:Scheduled window, do your desired scheduled executions appear there? If you go to the Activities:Waiting window, do any scheduled script executions appear there?

 

Have you enabled grooming for your Media Sets? If not and if you perform only normal incremental backups, the member will eventually fill up and will ask for a second disk member.

 

How can I get retrospect to work just as I want it to, without having to bother with it every couple of weeks?? Except swapping the HDDs every day, I really don't want to bother with retrospect as this takes up a lot of time.

This is what we all want, and most of us are able to achieve a reasonable approximation.

 

I'm thankful for any given advice helping me achieve my goal of effortless backing-up.

"Effortless" is certainly a bridge too far, but you should be able to do better than you have.

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