Add "follow-on" backup type for 2 types of media

[wswfdmlcom]

The program is remarkably sophisticated. I've used it at my company, and now I'm purchasing Retrospect Professional 6.5 for my home office.

 

But it needs a new feature, which I call "follow-on backup". This is a backup that writes periodically (like monthly) to a large, cumbersome device, and frequently (like daily) to a smaller, easier device.

 

The monthly backup is a normal (progressive) backup, which is complete in itself - it makes no reference to the smaller daily backups. It can be to a CD-R, DVD-R, off-site location, etc.

 

The daily backup is also a normal (progressive) backup, but it starts from where the most recent monthly backup left off. In other words, it is a "follow-on" to the big monthly backup. The first daily backup after a monthly is a "recycle" backup, meaning it overwrites all the previous daily's, but it does not need to copy all the files that were just copied to the monthly backup store. Thereafter, the daily backups are "normal" (progressive). This allows the use of a smaller, easier-to-handle device for the daily's (I'm using a USB flash drive that I carry on my key ring).

 

Thank you for a great product. Looking forward to even more improvements.

 

Warren Wolfeld

 

 

[jamesmerrill]

I'm not sure I want exactly what you describe, but I have the same basic notion. I'm backing up to a big partition on a big hard drive (250gb for $200 after a rebate!). It seems that, without my asking, Retrospect keeps the backup data in a collection of individual files (with .RDB extension) that have a max size of 629,153,792 bytes.

 

That looks like a convenient size to burn onto a CD. (I sort of doubt that that's a coincidence!)

 

What I'd like is some explicit instructions, and perhaps some assistance from the software, about what to do if I've burned the earlier-dated files onto CD (or DVD), made sure that they "compare" correctly, and removed them from the "destination" -- and I need to do some kind of restore that requires those files.

 

If I had backed up directly to CD/DVD and needed to restore, Retrospect would prompt me for the disks as needed. Will I have to copy the required files to the hard drive? Will it tell me the name of the file that it needs? Or will it just blow out if it needs something from one of the .RDB files and can't find it?

 

Would the ability to burn the .RDB files onto CD/DVD (or even tape) -- perhaps calling this "migrate to long-term storage" -- accomplish what you want as well?