How to setup a USB harddrive Backup

[John_Sparks_2]

Hi All,

My backup USB tape drive is failing dismally and whilst I wait for either Sony or Symantec to sort it out I need to backup the Company data from a Win2003 SBS.

I've got a large USB disk drive and want to setup a rolling Mon-Fri backup.

The Overwirte and Append options always seem to throw a spanner in the works so I'm looking for a simple way of doing this.

Whats also confusing me is the "maximum number of backup sets per backup-to-disk file" option.

Whats it mean and whats the best setting to use in this scenario.  (I've read the glossary at the back of the admin manual but could do with some guidance!).

Many thanks.

Cheers

John

[Ken_Putnam]

From the V11d Admin Guide

Maximum number of backup sets per backup-to-disk file

Type the maximum number of backup sets to be written to each backup-to-disk file in this folder. The maximum number can range from 1 to 8192. The default is 100.  Fewer backup sets in a backup-to-disk file may allow the overwrite protection period to expire sooner, and disk space to be reclaimed faster.

and the definition of a BackupSet

The data that is selected from a single resource, such as a Microsoft Exchange dataset, and placed together on media when a backup job is run. Files selected from multiple resources create multiple backup sets.

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 09-24-2007 11:15 AM

[John_Sparks_2]

So let say I'm backing up Sysstate, Exchange and 3 harddrives.  Thats a total of 5 resources = 5 backup sets.

So in this scenario I'd need to set "Maximum number of backup sets per backup-to-disk file" to 5 ?

Cheers

John

[Ken_Putnam]

To create only one BKF file per job, and to put all the data into it, yes

[John_Sparks_2]

Many thanks for your message.

If i set the MAX figure to 5 and only backup from 4 resources, does the next backup get mixed in with the last one?

Let me explain...

If I want to run a daily backup to the HD device can I clearly distinguish between backups?  Put another way, I'm used to running one backup of everything to a tape.  So each tape is a distinct backup.  How can I setup B2D to do this?

Many thanks for your patience!

Cheers

John

[Ken_Putnam]

Just think of a BKF file as a tape volume.

If all your jobs are Overwrite, a new BKF file will be created each time the job is run, regardless of how many backup sets are in the previous BKF file, or how large the file is (500 MB of a 5GB max for example)

[John_Sparks_2]

Many thanks for your message.  I'm slowly getting there...

Looking at it from a tape perspective, my objective is to run a backup each night, keeping this backup as a BKF file.  At appropriate times, I'd manually archive and/or delete old BKF files onto another HD.

How can I setup BE to do this? 

Again if you see, my viewpoint is to treat the BKF files as tapes if you see what I mean!

Many thanks

John