Scheduled backup using "any available media set"?

[peternlewis]

It appears the Proactive Backups will backup to whatever media set is available (and there isn't any way to specify a specific one).

 

But it seems there is no way to get the same functionality with Scheduled Backups - it'd be nice if as well as being able to select a media set, you could specify "any available" (and perhaps even "all available" which would backup to each available media set in turn).

 

My usage case is three rotating disk backups with two stored off site. I want the back up to whatever disk is currently mounted. And having "all available" would allow for a seamless initial setup - just plug in all disks and wait.

 

Thanks.

[Lennart_T]

I think your only chance is to always run proactive backups.

 

A scheduled backup to a non-available media set will just result in a "Waiting for media" message.

[peternlewis]

Currently, I manually change my backup script when I change the backup disk (ie, once a week). But I can't see any reason there couldn't be an option in the schedule destination for "any available".

[twickland]

If you really want to do this, you could schedule your backup script to back up to each of your desired media sets beginning at a slightly staggered time. Then set a media request timeout in the main Retrospect preferences. I haven't tried this, but theoretically the script should cycle through each scheduled backup, timing out whenever the needed media was unavailable, until it came to a scheduled backup where the media was on-line.

[peternlewis]

@twickland you are probably correct, but that would likely fill the log up with extraneous errors, making real errors (common enough already) very difficult to see.