Re-using old members of current back-up sets

[wswfdmlcom]

Hi! I'm new to this forum, so I hope I'm not asking too many questions all at once.

 

We have Retrospect Backup, Server Edition, for Windows 5.6.132.

 

Our backup strategy is as follows:

We have 5 scripts, that run on Monday through Friday nights respectively.

When a script runs out of space on a tape, we just add another tape to the backup set.

As a result, we now have tapes labeled:

1-Monday

2-Monday

3-Monday

...

 

1-Tuesday

2-Tuesday

3-Tuesday

...

etc. to Friday.

 

We would like to permanently discard all tapes that do not contain any backups made this year. For example:

If a tape contains only backups made before 2003, we want to discard it.

If it contains only backups made in 2003 we want to keep it.

If it contains some backups made before 2003 and some during 2003, we want to keep it.

 

After we discard a tape, we want to completely erase it and re-use it in Retrospect so we don't have to keep buying new tapes.

 

So here are my questions:

 

1. How do I find out which tapes in each set I should discard? There's probably a way I can do that in "Restore"?

 

2. How do I tell Retrospect that I'm discarding a tape, so that the next time Retrospect runs that same script, it will create a new backup of the files that were on that tape? I assume it has something to do with marking a backup set member "missing", but I'm not sure.

 

a. Let me explain that question again. In Matching Options, I have the checkbox *checked* for "Don't add duplicates to backup set". But if we DO discard an early member of a backup set, then I want Retrospect to know that we no longer have certain files in the backup set. I want Retrospect to make a new backup of those files that were on the now-discarded member (assuming there isn't already a more recent copy of the file on a more recent member of the backup set). Will that be accomplished simply by marking the backup set member "missing"?

 

3. Once I do all that, how do I erase the discarded tape so that Retrospect thinks it is blank media and doesn't recognize it as having a previous Retrospect backup on it? Can I do that from within Retrospect, or do I have to bring it near a strong magnet?

 

I've located Retrospect help and tech support articles that explain how to erase a tape, but if I'm reading them correctly, they all require getting rid of the entire backup set. That's not what I want. I want to retain the newer tapes in the backup set, and just re-use the older tapes.

 

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[wswfdmlcom]

OK, I see I asked too many questions at once and made it much more complicated than necessary. Let me try again.

 

First question:

 

Is there any way in Retrospect to get a list of which members of a backup set contain backups made within the last year?

 

Thank you.

wwolfeld

[natew]

Hi

 

Retrospect is not really going to do this very well. I'd like to suggest a better way.

 

Backup to your sets as usual for one year. At the end of the year put one of the sets in a safe deposit box and replace only that set with new tapes. Once a month do a recycle backup on one of the sets until you have recycled all of them.

 

This way you reuse most of your media and you maintain a "buffer" of sorts by staggering out the erasure of your existing sets.

 

Your other option is to just recycle one set every 2 months so you never have any data more than 10 months old

 

Nate