graystrickland Posted March 21, 2006 Report Share Posted March 21, 2006 Running Retrospect Multiserver 6.5... What are the advantages and disadvantages of using File versus Disk backup sets when backing up to removable hard drives? I have four 300gb IDE drives in hot swap trays which I can rotate in and out using DriveSwap32. I keep one in the dedicated backup pc and the rest off-site. Any one drive is sufficient to contain all of my data, plus many weeks of incremental backups. A snippet from the knowledge base is quoted below, but I'm still not sure which is best for my situation. Any and all recommendations and comments would be welcome. A file backup set is a single file that contains all the files you have backed up, and that can be stored on any random access device. Like tape or removable disk backup sets, you can incrementally backup to file backup sets and optionally compress your data. The drawback to a file backup set stored on a hard drive is that hard drives are not removable media [not true in my case] and cannot easily be stored off-site for safekeeping. USB or IEEE 1394 (FireWire) drives that are hot swappable offer greater flexibility in this. Incorporating more than one backup drive allows for true media rotation, increasing the security of your backup strategy... Unlike other types of backup sets, a file backup set does not have a separate catalog file upon creation. Its catalog is stored internally in the file itself, in its resource fork. (Its data fork contains the backed-up files.) Because a file's resource fork is limited to 16 MB, the file will eventually grow too large for the file system. When this happens, Retrospect 5.0 or later will separate the catalog file from the data file to allow the file backup set to expand. Retrospect 6.0 added an option under Special>Preferences>Media Handling called "Use USB/Firewire disks as Removable Disks". This option allows you to span between multiple USB/Firewire hard drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waltr Posted March 21, 2006 Report Share Posted March 21, 2006 hi gray, Quote: Running Retrospect Multiserver 6.5... ok. Quote: Retrospect 6.0 added an option under Special>Preferences>Media Handling called "Use USB/Firewire disks as Removable Disks". This option allows you to span between multiple USB/Firewire hard drives. you shouldn't quote from the Macintosh section when you want a question answered about the Windows product. they are completely separate programs, and the above has nothing to do with your question. Disk backups don't have as many advantages in 6.5 as they do in some later versions. the main reasons i would say, "do a disk backup and don't look back" are because the disk backup set is more resiliant against corruption (if a File backup set becomes corrupt, you lose everything, but if one file of a Disk backup set becomes corrupt you only lose what's in that particular file [about 614mb, btw]), also, Disk backups can 'span' multiple hard drives, and finally, because when you upgrade, you will have access to things like grooming and UIR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
graystrickland Posted March 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2006 I quoted from the Mac section? How embarassing. Upon looking again at the KB article "TITLE: Technical Note NO. 503M: Backup to Hard Disks" it doesn't say that it only applies to Macs. I thought that it applied to both. How can you tell that it's only for MACs? Well, at least I posted in the correct forum. I am using the Windows version of Retrospect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waltr Posted March 21, 2006 Report Share Posted March 21, 2006 hi gray, Quote: "TITLE: Technical Note NO. 503M: Backup to Hard Disks" Quote: How can you tell that it's only for MACs? the "M" is for Macintosh. also, i know the product well enough to tell that it's only about Macintosh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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