Backup to External FW drives

[shadowbox]

I am using Retrospect Express 5.0.205 (Mac OS X) to backup my Powerbook G4's internal 27GB drive. I have 2 external 80GB FW drives. Here is what I would like to do: Create Backup sets that would alternate every other day between the 2 drives. And also, create backup sets that would duplicate my user directory (all my important documents) twice a day (again, alternating between the 2 drives).

 

 

 

I have created 4 back-up sets.

 

 

 

-Backup Set 1 (Mercury) does a "normal" back-up M/W/F/SUN to the first hard drive

 

-Backup Set 2 (Gemini) does a "normal" back-up T/TH/SAT to the second hard drive

 

-Backup Set 3 (User Dup 1) Duplicates my user directory everyday at midnight to the first hard drive

 

-Backup Set 4 (User Dup 2) Duplicates my user directory everyday at noon to the second hard drive

 

 

 

Is this a good strategy? When I tried to use easy script, it set up a set with daily "normal" backups and a "recycle" backup at the end of the week. But isn't that dangerous? What if you accidentally erase something and don't notice it until the following week after the recycle backup? Wouldn't it be gone? Is there any reason I should implement a recycle backup? What would be the best way?

 

 

 

Is there anyway that I could create a seperate "bootable" backup once a week to the external hard drive? That way if the internal drive got hosed, I could boot up immediately from the backup, and then restore it quickly to it most recent status using the daily increments? Wouldn't it take a lot longer to restore the drive from the backup set? Does that make sense? TIA

[lv2ski]

Your setup makes sence. You would want to recycle if your FILE backupset gets to large. At that point you probably will want to run a recycle to save space. Up to you though.

 

 

 

The only issues that I see with duplicating to a firewire external to make it bootable would be that we are seeing some issues in the field abut this. I would wait on this for a bit......