ANKulin Posted April 12, 2015 Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 I am a home user and would like some advice on improving my back-up startegy. I am currently running Retrospect 9.5, I have not yet updated to version 10 yet. I currently have some 80,000 image files (photos) on a 4TB HDD (WD Red NAS). This I call my X: drive. I have personal fiules and stuff on an SSD which I call my D: drive. I back each of these up onto separate back-up drives. My back-up drives consist of: 2 x 4TB WD Mybooks, used to back-up the photos 2 x 2TB WD Mybooks, used to back-up the other files Back-up Strategy: I keep a pair (2TB + 4TB) of drives connected to the computer. Back-ups are scheduled daily mid-evening the second pair of drives are stored off-site at my office once a month a move the pairs of drives from home --> office and vice versa. The drives from the office are one month out of date and so they would be brought back up to date automaitcally on the first evening back home. I have assigned different drive letters to each back-up drive:Q:(photos) <-- 4TB R:(photos) <-- 4TB S:(data) <-- 2TB T:(data) <-- 2TB I have set up 4 automated scripts in Retrospect: Data --> S and, Data --> T (which ar e identical except for naming the destination drive) Photos --> Q and, Photos --> R (which are identical except for naming the destination drive) I have attached JPEGs that show how the back-ups have been set up. (I have noticed doing this that they are not nearly as identical as I thought they were, the data back-up has a few less options selceted) Problem: There is a problem however that I have noted and that is that the automated scripts stop and wait (w/o notification) when they get to a script to do the back-up for any of the drives that are off-site and not connected to the computer. This means that the drives that are connected do not get backed up until I manually abort the back-ups that are waiting for the missing drives. I think I would be in better shape if I named both sets of drives identiacally. So 2 x 4TB drives named Q:(Photos) and 2 x 2TB drives named T:(Data). And then remove the two redundant scripts which should result in Retrospect scripts not waiting for off-site drive drives to apear, and thus keeping my daily back-ups running on-schedule without my manual intervention. But is this do-able (advisable may be the better word) in Retrospect and in a manner that won't cause issues to the software or my back-ups? Also if there are any obvious ways to improve what I am doing I would like to hear about them, bearing in mind that I am in no way involved in IT and therefore mostly ignorant in all the jargon. So please keep it simple for me. Thanks, 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted April 12, 2015 Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 Renaming the drive would only confuse yourself, when Retrospect tell you it needs drive Q and you have two of them. Retrospect will still tell them apart, as it uses a unique ID for each drive. Or rather, it's the Windows ID. I would change the scripts to proactive scripts. They run to whichever destination that is available. Or you could change the drives every two weeks and have the schedule reflect that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ANKulin Posted April 12, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 Lennart: If I change the back-up to a pro-active script willit be able to carry on with the back-up data currently on the portable drive as-is,or do I need to basically wipe the drive and start over with it? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scillonian Posted April 12, 2015 Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 You can continue to use your existing backup sets. I second Lennart's recommendation for Proactive Backup scripts. There are no functionality changes that I am aware of between Retrospect 9.5 and Retrospect 10 for proactive backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted April 12, 2015 Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 Yes, of course you can continue using your existing backup sets. They can be used for all kinds of backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ANKulin Posted April 12, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 What I meant was if I change the backup set I have to a proactive one can I then continue backing that up to the same portable drive right away and everything will be fine? From what I can see I will have to start the proactive script from scratch. There does not seem to be an option when editing teh current scripts to turn proactive on or off. And I worry that I might not 100% copy down the same parameters when I initiate a pro-active script. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted April 12, 2015 Report Share Posted April 12, 2015 What I meant was if I change the backup set I have to a proactive one can I then continue backing that up to the same portable drive right away and everything will be fine? From what I can see I will have to start the proactive script from scratch. There does not seem to be an option when editing teh current scripts to turn proactive on or off. And I worry that I might not 100% copy down the same parameters when I initiate a pro-active script. Thanks The script is just a list of source, destination, options and a schedule. You will have to create a new (proactive) script. It does not matter that the destination already has been used for backups already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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