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Swapping 2 Drives On Demand?


Dogwood

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Using Retrospect 8 on OS X 10.7:

 

I looked at this older thread, and didn't see a solution: http://forums.dantz.com/showtopic.php?tid/30334

 

I have a master media set with incremental nightly backups. I'd like to do a Copy Backup of the most recent complete backup for each source to an external drive. That's fairly straightforward. However, I would like to swap the drive out for another roughly every 1-2 weeks, on an unpredictable schedule, without Retrospect complaining.

 

Currently, I have each drive as its own unique media set, and it appears that I will need to manually disable the schedule for the drive that isn't currently hooked up; otherwise, it spawns a "waiting for media" process and sends an alert email.

 

Is there a better solution to this?

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

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I looked at this older thread, and didn't see a solution: http://forums.dantz....c.php?tid/30334

 

If I were going to rotate media sets on an unpredictable basis, I think I would opt for using a Proactive Backup script instead of a standard Backup Script. The primary downside of using a proactive script is that you will not generate a log entry for sources that are unavailable, telling why they were unavailable. This might cause you to miss a situation where the client is not running, is incorrectly shown as "reserved," etc. However, there is a workaround for this deficiency: You could create a dummy file backup set on a local volume on your backup computer, and write a scheduled backup script that backs up to the dummy set using the rule "No Files." This will generate log entries about your sources, while the actual backups would be performed by your proactive backup script.

 

Regular backup scripts are designed to back up to a specific media set at the times you indicate in your schedule, or during a manual execution. If you want to stick with your regular backup scripts and don't want to be constantly adjusting the schedules or running the scripts manually, you might go to Preferences> Media and check the option for Media Request Timeout. This wouldn't solve the problem of the undesired email warnings, but at least Retrospect won't be waiting forever for the wrong media.

Edited by twickland
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However, I would like to swap the drive out for another roughly every 1-2 weeks, on an unpredictable schedule, without Retrospect complaining.

 

I have a similar set-up (originally with v.8.x now with 9): I backup to disks that I switch and store off-site - trying to have the flexibility to switch them, when want / can. The only way to do that, is to have a proactive back-up script running (that backups your backup media) - since there is no "proactive copy" functionality.

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Hmm, a "Proactive Copy" operation sounds like exactly what's needed here. Right now, I can certainly do a proactive backup; but I expect that the main media set will soon exceed the capacity of the external drives. Creating a "staging" media set on a local drive to contain a copy of the current backups, which is then proactively backed up to the externals may work.

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