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Using Multiple Drives for Storing Recovery Points

asolmssen
Level 3
Partner

Hi - I'm in a situation where I have to backup about 3TB of storage to external HDs. I have two 2TB drives attached to the machine, is there a way to use both of them for recovery point storage? Since they're USB, I can't convert to dynamic and extend volumes, and I honestly don't know if that works with SSR or is even safe to do.

Thoughts?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Yes, you should be able to use these drives.

Let us know if you see any problems.

View solution in original post

6 REPLIES 6

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

So you are effectively talking about rotating multiple backup destinations then?

With the current version of the product, I would not recommend this as it generally causes problems with the automatic recovery point 'cleanup' (this in turn leads to disks running out of space).

The workaround to this is to use the independent (full backup only) backup method. You can create 2 independent backups and dedicate the external drives to a particular job. Doing it this way will ensure the cleanup will work as you are always using the same drive for the same backup.

Only downside is that you have to do full backups every day (or according to your schedule).

asolmssen
Level 3
Partner

thanks for replying.

unfortunately, it's more complicated than that.

The machine in question is a Dell R720XD running Win2008 R2 SP1 with the following drives:

2 x 300GB 15K SAS, RAID1 presenting as Disk 0, contains System Reserved (100MB) and C: (280GB) partitions.

6 x 600GB 15K SAS, RAID5 presenting as Disk 1, contains D: (2TB) and E: (800GB) partitions.

Machine is a Hyper-V host running 4 VMs - 3 small ones, and 1 big one. The big one is on D: and E: - each drive essentially holds one file, a VHD that almost fills the partition.

I need to back this puppy up, and I'm at a loss. A 2TB backup drive won't hold a complete recovery point - one that backs up all the drives, but the software says if I don't backup all the drives at the same time I may not get a consistent backup of the VMs. The docs say the new 3 & 4TB drives are not recommended. What are my options here?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

The docs say the new 3 & 4TB drives are not recommended. What are my options here?

What 'doc' are you referring to?

asolmssen
Level 3
Partner

I'm sorry - I appear to have misread a thread that you were actually participating in:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-3tb-external-usb-drives

 

So the 3TB and 4TB drives are OK? Even if they're USB 3? On my server at least, they'd be connected in USB 2 mode since that's all it supports.

Something like this is what I'd want to use: 

http://www.amazon.com/Book-External-Drive-Storage-Backup/dp/B008S94HXG/

Whadya think?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Yes, you should be able to use these drives.

Let us know if you see any problems.

asolmssen
Level 3
Partner

Thanks!