Recycle or Normal Backup?

[scmi11er]

I don't know if I need to do recycle backups or not.

 

 

 

On a daily basis I back up 2 GB of data to 20 GB external FireWire hard disks.

 

 

 

Is there any practical reason to do a recycle backup instead of only normal backups?

 

 

 

The manual suggests doing a recycle backup to avoid "cumbersome" backup sets that can "grow out of control." I've been using Retrospect for five years but don't understand what this means. There is plenty of room on my internal hard disk so space is not an issue.

 

 

 

If anyone can shed some light on this I would appreciate it.

 

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

Scott Miller

 

 

 

 

 

Tech Data:

 

Power Mac G4/400MHz, 576 RAM

 

Retrospect 4.3

 

Maxtor 20 GB external hard disks

 

Granite Hot-Swap FireWire/IDE bay enclosure

 

Single user computer

 

No network

[vandehey]

Hi Scott, there are some benefits to a recycle. Like the manual says, it does eliminate cumbersome redundancy for things like an email database. It might be helpfull to have 2 backup sets (ex. A & . Do a recycle to A on Monday, then normals for the rest of the week. The following Monday, do a recycle to B, then normals for the rest of the week. Keep these going with an every other week schedule.

 

 

 

This does take up double the space, but can be helpfull. This way you have 2 weeks worth of backups, and a different set incase one set is corrupted.

 

 

 

Good luck,

 

Jeff