joaquin Posted December 2, 2006 Report Share Posted December 2, 2006 I'm still completely baffled, even after talking to the very nice lady at EMC. I've been backing up a data only drive daily to an external hard drive, alternating between two backup sets, had no problem setting this up, and no problem with the scheduled execution. I've retreived a chosen backed up file, just to make sure I know how to do that. Again, no problem. Retrospect seems very easy to use. So far. I want also to make, every month, a backup of the entire drive to DVD. I've studied the manual, looked through the knowledge base, scanned this forum, tried Wizard and Advanced mode of both Duplicate and Backup, and I am defeated. It seems that Duplicate will not use a DVD drive. Is that right? Backup will, and all goes well the first time, but a month later, Retrospect seems to insist on doing an incremental backup. My task, making a complete backup of an entire drive (or directory) seems like the simplest thing a person might want to do. I can't figure out how to do it. Isn't there some way to define the task of doing a complete backup to blank media? Having done that, isn't there some way to do the same thing again a month later without having to do any change to that already defined task? [i won't be surprised to feel a little silly when I read the answer. If I do feel silly, my guess is that I will have pointed out a serious lack in the Users Guide. Shouldn't this be explained in a few paragraphs and be easy to find?] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted December 2, 2006 Report Share Posted December 2, 2006 Could you say what your objective is? I.e., with Retro making incremental backups it also creates a snapshot of all the files and folders at the time of the backup. So, you do have a complete backup of your drive each time you do a backup. Just Retro doesn't copy files that have already been backed up. As for duplicating to DVD. I've not tried it, but, since Retro makes the target/destination folder exactly like the source, it can't do that on a write once media - i.e., you can't delete files on a write once media. Not sure if DVD-RAM is supported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joaquin Posted December 2, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 2, 2006 Thanks for the rapid response! My objective is to comply with a requirement of the folks I work for, that I back up daily (done, using Retrospect) and once a month back up to removable media (I choose DVD, because I have about 7 GB ). I do the daily backup to an external hard drive. I can back up to DVD, but not without starting over each month with a new backup definition. Otherwise, I am asked for the medium of the previous backup. Put differently: my objective is to start Retrospect, click a few times, and walk away with a complete backup on DVDs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted December 12, 2006 Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 Quote: Otherwise, I am asked for the medium of the previous backup. OK. What is not meeting the requirements if you do an incremental backup? With the set of DVD's, you will then have a complete backup set - with a snapshot for each time an incremental backup is done. If you want to restore the complete set of files for , say the 5th week, you would choose the snapshot for the 5th week, choose all files in that snapshot and - voila - you will have restored the complete set of files that were on the disk that week. Does this do what you're needing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joaquin Posted December 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 Thanks for sticking with me on this. Here is the basis of my problem: I am doing work for a government agency and they have specified these requirements: 1. Do a daily backup so that it is possible to recover from failure, losing a minimum of work. 2. Every month make a complete backup and keep each one. There is no room for me to negotiate these requirements by explaining to someone how I have what amounts to the functional equivalent of a monthly backup. I believe I meet the first requirement by alternating between two backup sets for daily backups. The only way I can meet the second requirement is to make a complete backup every month and keep that. Please understand that my question is not about how to achieve the functional equivalent of a complete monthly backup, but is about how to meet the literal wording of the requirement. ....... Do I understand from your messages that there is no way to specify a complete backup to a set of blank DVDs and then reuse that specification each month to make another complete backup to a different set of blank DVDs? Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted December 12, 2006 Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 Got it. You have a couple options, all of which require some configuring, but you can stay with the basic set up. Option 1: Each month, set up a new Backup Set - you could name the backup set for the month/date. Since it's a new backup set, Retro will do a full backup. As you know, setting up a new backup set is 15-20 sec. Option 2: Each month run the backup script as Recyle. This will force a full backup - but the catalogue will be erased and created anew for the latest execution. At the same time, if you do have to restore from a previous full backup, you would only have to recreated the catalogue from the backup set [which could take several minutes to many minutes] HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joaquin Posted December 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2006 That does help. Thanks, much. Later, I make take the liberty of asking you question on another topic that has come up for me. But that's it for now. Cordially, Joaquin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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