Rotating Backup Media; Hints needed for

Hi again!

I'm really liking TI. But I have a couple of questions about how to use TI with a rotating set of backup disks.

I have a set of three removable disks; they slide in and out of the computer, and are connected to the IDE channel (ie, they're not USB or Firewire).

I like to leave one drive in for an entire week, then sometime on Sundays, I usually power down the system, then swap the backup drive with one of the others, then reboot the system. This allows me to keep a rotating set of three backup hard drives; two backup hard drives onsite, and one for offsite storage.

Q1) Can TI handle this automatically, without forcing me to manually delete any of the backups that may be "left over" on the drive? I think it can, but I would like confirmation.

Q2) How does TI handle the filenames of the backups if I want to keep 3 "sets" of backups on each hard drive? You see, I prefer taking full backups on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but don't want the backup files to be overwritten until the fourth "full" backup is taken. Can I do this with TI?

Clarification: I want to keep 3 backup sets on each of 3 backup hard drives, for a total of 9 full backups of each and every partition in my system. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I really don't know how the TI scheduler works, but I would assume that if you:

• Create 4 separate job named DAY1A, DAY1B, DAY3A and DAY5A,
• with the image named respectively IMAGE1A, IMAGE1B, IMAGE3A and IMAGE5A, and
• schedule them for Monday in odd weeks, Monday in even weeks, Wednesday every week and Friday every week,

then True Image will have no choice but to overwrite the images when the job runs? It will require disk space for 4 images though, but that can hardly be avoided if you want to keep 3 good images while the 4th is being taken.

 

Excellent suggestion! I could create sets titled by day of week, or by some other mechanism. But wow, it sure would be a lot easier to have an "event copy" feature......

I will give this some thought. For now, I have already defined my full and incremental tasks, and I've manually executed each of them to get a valid "first full" backup for each partition.

What happens if I create only "incrementals", and don't set up a scheduled "full"? Will the first incremental being deposited to a given backup drive end up being a "full?" I might experiment with this, too.

Thanks again. Anybody else have any additional suggestions?

 

It's nice to see someone not afraid to experiment and put their own thoughts into practice. Once you have created and verified a full image, "suck it and see" is usually the best way of answering many of hypothetical questions I see posted on this Forum. If nothing else, it's a good way of learning about the ins and outs of True Image.

Regards