Recycle backup of laptops?

[tfredvik]

Currently I'm running a Backup Server script doing daily back up the laptops (that happen to be present) on our network. So far so good, but the Retrospect manual says that it's a good idea to do periodically recycle backups, and I can't see how that can work on a network with laptops logging on and off all the time? Doesn't a recyle backup simply mean a full backup of all the clients? Backing up all the laptops takes several days, if they were all logged onto the network, which they most certainly are not.

[nekr0phage]

Hi,

 

A recycle backup means that the contents of the backup set will be cleared, then sources will be backed up again. You will need to do this at some point, as Retrospect's normal backup will continue to add data to the backup set. As it increases in size, you will eventually run out of space on the volume to which your backups are stored.

 

If this is the case, you might run into a situation where you temporarily do not have backups of certain clients. Alternatively, you could create multiple backup sets so that you can recycle one and still have a backup. However, this will increase redundant data and the necessity of backup micromanagement (you will need to make sure one backup has data for all clients before recycling others).

[tfredvik]

So there is no difference between doing the very first backup of a client with normal backup and a recycle backup, since in both cases all files need to be copied from the client?

 

Isn't it possible to use the current backup set as a starting point for a new backup set, i.e. let the new backup set consist of the latest version all files of the current backup set? It seems to be such a waste of time and bandwidth to copy all files from all clients all over again during a recycle backup, when all the files already exists on the backup computer?