deiner Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 I am using retrospect server backup 5.0 on an Xserve. I am backing up networked clients to an external 120 GB firewire drive (drive A) connected tro the Xserve. I want to rotate the firewire drive (drive A) offsite and use a new one onsite (Drive . I DON'T want to have to start from scratch and begin a normal backup of the entire contents of each client onto the Drive B though because of time constraints. So I was thinking... Can I just copy the backup set and the catalog from drive A to Drive B, make sure Drive B has the same name as drive A did and then continue to run the same backup server script? Will something go wrong? Would i have to repair the catalog? If this worked, I could then rotate the external firewire drives weekly and not have to do full backups each week (just incremental changes since the last time that specific drive was connected). Anyone tried this/have any advice? Thanks, mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcswgn Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Even if you could do it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. In the end only one drive has all of the info needed to do a complete restore, so what good is the other drive? If the answer is that it would at least have the most recently modified files, then maybe you should consider a system where you mix in scripts that just back up subvolumes. (E.g., user home/document directories.) This would get the files you need most with less overhead. If you want to be able to restore from scratch, though, you will need all the data on each disk. One option in your case would be to keep one disk off site except to bring it in just long enough to mirror the contents of the backup disk. This would allow the off site disk to be used as a slightly stale version of the backup disk in the event of a catastrophy. However, while this might add some redundancy, ultimately you have only one backup set. The problem is that a corrupt backup set might get duplicated to the mirror disk and then where are you? In the end you have to bite the bullet and do a full backup. You can't go forever appending to the same backup set. Each person needs to make their own decision about how long they can go between full backups, but once that decision is made, you can work it into your pattern. I figure, based on the size of my backup sets, number of tapes I use, and the fact that nothing we do is mission critical, that I can go maybe 3 months between full backups if there is just one set. So I will go maybe 2 months on one set, then start a second with a full backup. Now I've got two offset by a couple of months. Then I alternate sets once a week (I back up every machine every day) for a couple more months, and then I recycle the first set and repeat. (Actually, I use three sets. The first goes into cold storage for a couple of months while 2 & 3 alternate, then is recycled back in to alternate with #3 while #2 is in storage, etc. We don't do any permanent archiving--if you didn't notice it was gone for 6 months, you didn't really need it! Obviously that philosophy won't work for everyone :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Quote: Can I just copy the backup set and the catalog from drive A to Drive B, make sure Drive B has the same name as drive A did and then continue to run the same backup server script? You don't need to try and fool Retrospect into thinking you're using the same File Backup Set when it's different. Your script can point to /Volumes/DriveA/BackupSetA and /Volumes/DriveB/BackupSetB and as long as the expected drive is connected, Retrospect will be happy to backup to it. As for copying the first full backup file, it should work. Be sure to copy both the data and catalog portions of the file (if it has been seperated). Then rename both parts (backupsetA and backupsetA.cat become backupsetB and backupsetB.cat), and use Configure->BackupSets->Open to clue Retrospect to the location of this backup set. I have to disagree with mcswgn; both Backup Sets will be capable of doing a complete restore, it's just that one will be farther out of date then the other. And of course since File Backup Sets grow over time you should expect to need to do a Recycle backup on some sort of regular basis. As for bringing the offsite backup onsite for mirroring, it's a find idea unless you are truely mega-cautious about your data. In which case you'd have _three_ Backup Sets, and never, ever have all your data in the same physical location at the same time. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcswgn Posted February 5, 2003 Report Share Posted February 5, 2003 Quote: I have to disagree with mcswgn; both Backup Sets will be capable of doing a complete restore I missunderstood what he was asking. I thought he just wanted to put new files on the second disk. Certainly duplicating everything will work. You will need to add "StorageSet B" into Retrospect's list of catalogs. However, this still leaves the two storage sets at the same effective "age" even after they start alternating every week. I think it would be better to wait for a while (halfway through StorageSet A's life) and then bring the second disk on line by doing a full backup. Or get it started by duplicating A, but then recycle early on one of them so they get offset. As a side point, I don't think it's the best idea to keep the catalog on the external disk. The catalog should be on the internal disk (with a copy put on the external before it goes off site). Otherwise you don't know what's on that disk when it's not there. My backup sets probably run to a max of about 120GB before they get recycled and my catalogs are 300-400MB by the end, so it doesn't take that much space to hold 2 or 3 catalogs. If you don't have all of your catalogs available you can't search across sets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick_Gray Posted February 8, 2003 Report Share Posted February 8, 2003 When I used to back up to DVD-RAM disks I would be asked to insert a new disk when the current one was full. After a year or so I had a shelf of 20-30 DVDs that held backed-up data from the past year. If I needed to restore a certain file, Retrospect would say "insert disk named xxxxxx", work for a while, then say "insert disk yyyyyy". After a little disk-swapping I could retrieve any file I wanted. Now that hard drives are cheaper than any removable media (e.g. today on Dealmac you can buy a 200GB disk for $200) I'd like to do the same with hard drives as the backup media. When a hard drive gets full, I'd like Retrospect to say "install a new drive". I'd put the full disk on the shelf and install a totally new hard drive and Retrospect would continue just as if I had inserted a new DVD-RAM disk in the past. When I needed to restore a file Retrospect would ask for a certain hard drive to start with, then switch as needed to other ones. With several hard drives and two FireWire enclosures (to swap between) this would be very easy and could accomodate huge backups. A separate disk could be used to hold the catalogs. Isn't this a reasonable thing to want to do? I back up a dozen Macs (all running OS X and each with 40-200 GB of diskspace) every night and backing up to large hard drives seems like the best method (my avg nightly backups are about 1-5 GB). thanks for any advice, rick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted February 9, 2003 Report Share Posted February 9, 2003 Quote: Isn't this a reasonable thing to want to do? Sure is. I think it's something Dantz has put into the Windows version of Retrospect (6.x?). External FireWire hard drives won't show up as Removable Media under OS X, as they sometimes did (depending on the formatting software used) under OS 9. Hard Disk Backup Sets (as opposed to the existing File Backup Sets) are at the top of my Macintosh Retrospect wish list. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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