Proactive backup to whichever of 2 USB drives is available

[jgowing]

For a simple fully automatic backup with minimal operator intervention I thought this would be desirable.

 

After much experimentation, and some discussion I got the following setup to work nicely.

 

 

[color:red]WARNING

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If you create a backup set pointing to the root of a USB drive it erases the whole drive

If this is not what you want , point the BUSet to a directory on the drive.

Retrospect WILL Relabel the Drive Volume to the BUSet Member name

 

This Volume Name is most important, since you cannot predict the drive letter when mounting a USB drive.

SO Retrospect uses the volume name to track the drives.

 

SETUP

Create a BUSet for Each Drive, Add the member by pointing to the Root or directory on the Drive.

Create a ProActive Script Specifying ALL the above BUSets as destinations

If all drives are connected, consecutive ProActive backups will cycle round the BUSets

RS attempts to maintain this cycle.

If a specific USB-Drive is not available it uses any other BUSet-Drive which is.

Suspect that if there is a choice it will use the media with the oldest backup to bring it up to date.

 

OPERATION

When swapping out BUSet-Drives, Open ProActive monitoring Tab, Select Backup Sets.

Dismount Drive(s) using "Safely Remove hardware"

Mount Drives

Give Retrospect a few minutes to poll the hardware

Check that appropriate BUSets show Ready or Media

 

Leave ProActive Backup to do it's job

 

Welcome to painless backup

 

See the white paper "Backing Up to External Hard Drives" in the knowledge base

 

For detail of the discussion on this mentioned above see http://forums.dantz.com/showpost.php?post/137475/