Veritas 8.6 - Backups to External Hard Drives - Questions

[Edward_Redondo]

According to the PDF manual and posts on this forum we CAN backup to any external hard that Windows Explorer can see.

The problem is that the Veritas docs do not have explicit procedures that should be followed when backing up to external hard drives. So I have questions before we try to do this (we don't have the drives yet).

I am familiar with other backup programs, so most of my questions come from my experience.

What we want to do is a Full Backup to a external hard drive each week, overwriting the previous backup. We do Differential Backups to tape daily.


1) We want to overwrite the backup on the hard drive each time. In other programs I know this would mean the filename for the backup must be identical each time.

Question: In the Job Properties dialog, is "Media name" going to be the filename on the hard drive?


2) In the Job Properties dialog, under "Destination, Device" is this were the external hard drive should be listed in the drop-down?

The reason I ask is the only devices listed now are: All Drives, DWI Backup, Shared Storage Devices, Quantum 2. There are no individual drives listed.

I note that in the Device Management dialog there is a "Backup-to-Disk Folders" listed in the tree for our server. This folder is empty at present.

Question: How will we add the external hard drive to backup devices? Specific steps please.

Any other advice/suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Ken_Putnam]

Run the device wizard and tell it to define a B2D folder when prompted, at the appropriate location. Once you have done this, you should see the B2D folder as a target for the backups

Media Name will be what ever you want to call the media - "Friday Full" for example

[Edward_Redondo]

Thanks Ken.

But you didn't specifically answer one of my questions.

Will "Media Name" (like "Friday Full" in your msg) be the filename on the hard drive?

Essentially I want any existing backup files on the hard drive to be overwritten every time, which would require the filename on the drive to be always the same on other backup programs I have run.

Again thanks

[Ken_Putnam]

No, the file name on disk will be something like B2Dxxxxxxx.BKF

Overwrite of Disk Files is handled just like overwrite for tape volumes (think of each BKF file as a small tape). It is controlled by the OPP (Overwrite Protection Period) of the media set that the BKF file belongs to.

If you always want the file overwritten, set the OPP to zero (but why would you want to always overwrite?).

If you have multiple removable (USB) drives that you use once a week, for example, then set the OPP to six days. etc.