Multiple backups to a single tape

[Jeph]

After checking out the price of VXA tapes and their capacity (expensive but very high capacity) I would like to change my strategy to append more than one days worth of backups on to one tape. I have calculated that I should be able to hold 6 copies of my data on one tape. Is it possible, to backup Monday, Wednesday and Friday onto one tape and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday onto another tape, keeping up to 6 days (2 weeks) worth of backups on each tape. Then use a third tape to hold a number of Sundays backups on, keeping up to 6 weeks worth of backups on one tape?

 

This way I would still be able to get back to any day of the week without having to use a different tape for each day. see post http://forums.dantz.com/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=Windows&Number=16420 Changing tapes each day for original question about daily rotation strategy

[AmyJ]

Yes, you can set this in your script.

 

 

 

Three backup sets:

 

M-W-F

 

T-Th-S

 

Sun

 

 

 

Schedules:

 

1. Every M-W-F Normal backup to Backup Set M-W-F at xx time

 

2. Every T-Th-S Normal backup to Backup Set T-Th-S at xx time

 

3. Every Sunday Normal backup to Sunday at xx time

 

4. Every 2 weeks on xx day Recycle Backup to M-W-F set at xx time

 

5. Every 2 weeks on xx day Recyce Backup to T-Th-S set at xx time

 

6. Every 6 weeks on Sunday Recyle Backup to Sunday set at xx time

 

 

 

The Recycle backups will have to be scheduled to run at the exact same time of day as the Normal backups in over to override the Normal schedule.

[Jeph]

Thanks again, does this mean that a "normal backup" does append a new copy of the backed up files to the tape rather than overwriting the files previously backed up to tape, and if you do not do a "recycle backup" that the tape will fill up eventually, even if the size of the files being backed up does not increase?

[AmyJ]

Yes - that is correct.