B2D, Media and USB drives questions:

[Randy_Blasik]

The way I wanted to configure my backups is as follows can someone please varify if this is OK?

I grouped my jobs by operating system and kept the exchange job completely seperate from everything. Essentially 4 jobs run will each day: 2K3 boxes, Linux boxes, Win2k boxes and My Exchange info store (using CPS).


I have 3 750GB USB drives, I'd like to use 1 drive per week so I'd have a total of 3 weeks to go back from.

To begin I setup Backup to Disk folders (B2D) on each USB Drive. SEA1,SEA2 & SEA3. I actually named each drive the same as well.

My backup scheme starts on Fridays with a full backup I will run 6 differential jobs for the rest of the week on each of the different operating system clusters. I created a media set for the friday fullback job with Overwrite protection set for 8 days and 0 days for append period. The friday job is set to just overwrite. My thinking here was by creating this media with the overwrite protection I would be able to prevent any overwriting during the week when my differential backups run.

My differential backup jobs have an overwrite protection of 1 day and infanite append.

So basically I created a bunch of jobs selecting the correct media for each job: SEA1W2k3Friday, SEA1W2kFriday, SEA1LinuxFriday etc...


My questions are as follows:

1.) What would you guys do differently?
2.) Do you think the Media settings are correct (i.e. will I run into problems on the fourth week when I'm using the 1st drive I've setup? will things overwrite as I expect or fill up my drive causing disk full issues in the middle of the week?)
3.) Do you think I will have issues swapping these USB drives? (i.e. will backup exec be ok with the fact that my SEA1 B2D folder that is on a USB drive was detached for 2 weeks and now back)

[Ken_Putnam]

for your full, I'd set the OPP to 20 days if you want to keep the data for three weeks. Definitley leave hte job as overwrite

I'd set the Diff jobs to 14 days Overwrite and 6 day Append (also overwrite jobs)


(OPP is calculated from the time the last backuop is written to the family if BKF fiiles. Append is figured from the time first backup is written to the first BKF file in the family. )

As for swapping USB drives, be aware that each HD must be mounted on the same unique drive letter each time that it is connected - that is, you cannot mount each as T:, but must mount drive1 as T:, drive2 as S:, and drive3 as R: (for example)