fundametal question.. but i'm getting confused. need help today!

[dantzuser]

OK... R5 backing up to AIT2.. but thats not important.

 

on friday i do a 'recycle' backup. this takes around 5-6 tapes. thats fine.

 

what i want to do is then on monday put in a new tape an do a 'normal' backup...

 

but to do this i must use the same 'backup set' from friday (in order for the compare to work correctly)

 

thus my monday tape will be called what-ever my backup set from friday is called...

 

What I'd like to have is:

 

backup set 'wk1 friday recycle' - save to tapes called '1-wk1 friday recycle' , '2-.... etc'

 

then monday i'd like to save to a tape '1-wk1 monday normal'

then tueday '1-wk1 tuesday normal'

 

etc...etc..

 

I can't seem to get this to work, as if i create sets for each day, then of course retrospect sees the empty set and backs up the lot!

 

This is fundamental, but I've been pooring over it so much i'm getting lost..

 

Please someone point me back on the path....

 

it being friday I need to get this correct todaY!

 

thanks.

[AmyJ]

Retrospect has an option to "Skip to blank media" in the preferences. If the correct tape is not available, Retrospect will take a blank tape and make it the next member in the backup set. The keyword is "blank" - Retrospect will not automatically erase the tape, you must do this manually.

 

Another option, which will allow Retrospect to erase the tape automatically, is to manually set the backup set to "Skip" to the next member. Go to Configure > Backup Sets > Properties > Options > Action > Skip. This is a one-time change. What that means is that each time you change tapes during the week, you'll need to configure Retrospect to 'skip'.

 

[shadowspawn]

I may be confused about what you are trying to do, and I suspect you are confused about what Retrospect is actually doing. Here are some suggestions to try and reduce some of the confusion:

 

1) "recycle" means start this particular backup over from scratch, starting again from the first tape in the backup set. I would suggest it does not make sense to include the word "recycle" in the name of the backup set since it is otherwise the same as the very first "normal" backup to the same tapes.

 

2) A "normal" backup does an incremental backup based on the data already in that backup set. Each backup set is independent. (So you can't do a "normal" backup to one backup set based on the data in some other backup set.)

 

3) Each Friday you can do a recycle backup, as you described, overwriting the old tapes.

 

4) On Monday, if you want a small "normal" backup then you want to continue using the same backup set as Friday. You can either force Retrospect to prompt for a new tape (as Amy described), or keep writing to the last tape.

 

So what you could do is:

Friday: 1-Example, 2-Example, 3-Example, 4-Example

Monday: Either keep writing to 4-Example (which may inconveniently fill up),

or use Skip to write to 5-Example (so you get a whole tape to use overnight).

 

(I missed telling you this on Friday, but this might still help you on Monday!)

 

[dantzuser]

Hi, thanks for both of your replies... I guess what i want to do isn't possible.

 

bascially i want to have named tapes for the week .. wk1fri-thursday, wk2 friday-thursday, etc

 

but the tape name is also the set name...

 

so if you have a set that starts on friday and runs for the week...till thursday, there is no way the tape will ever be called 'wk1 monday' etc etc... it will be called what-ever the set is called.

 

thus i'm left with tapes called:

 

'1-servers week1,'2-servers week1','3-severs week1' etc.. (through to '9-servers week1')

 

and thats the weekend backup run.....

 

then during the week mon-thursday, they are still going to be called '10-servers week1', 11-servers week1'

 

where as i'd like them called 'mon wk1' 'tuesday wk1'

 

i hope i've made this a bit more clear......

 

thanks for all your help.