OPP setting

[Wayne_P]

@pkh:

So if I have 4 external drives, and each one gets installed on a Tuesday, how long do I set my OPP for? 

That's a part that I'm not getting.  I looked at your article - thanks!  I'll do that setup this weekend, but I'm still not sure on the OPP setup.  I'd like to set it at 21 days so that it's clear to be overwritten the next time it gets connected.  You said that rotation doesn't matter for OPP (well, I'm paraphrasing I think) but it still has to be shorter than the rotation period.

Somewhere I read (or heard) that I should do a full, and then incremental on the same drive for that one week, and keep going like that.  Drive 1, Tuesday - full, W-M - incremental.  Change to Drive 2 on the next Tuesday and same routine. 

I've never been a fan of incrementals but that does seem pretty good as the backups will be quicker.

Thoughts or ideas or comments?

Thanks!

 - Wayne

[pkh · Accepted solution]

I have branch this question off to a new discussion as it is a discussion on OPP and not how to rotate disk.

You are right in setting the OPP to 21 days, but not because you want to rotate the disks.  It is because you want to make sure that your media can be overwritten when the disk is online.  You can actually set the OPP for a longer period since you would probably have a lot of space.  For example, if you set it 7 weeks,  after the first rotation, when the first disk is online, the .bkf would still be write-protected.  However, BE can create another .bkf to write to if there is sufficient space on the disk.

You don't have to do incremental backups.  If you have sufficient disk space, you can just do full backups every day.

[Wayne_P]

Okay, I think I get it.  I'll set it up as you've specified in your document and give it a go.  Gotta be better than what I have currently!

Thanks!

 - Wayne