TI 11 - Backup strategy with 2 external HD possible ?

Hi, at the moment I make complete and following incremental backups to one external USB-HD which works pretty well. Backups are made automatically during the night.

After having heard of a friends desaster whose backup HD crashed and shortly after that the working HD crashed too I'd like to increase security against crashed HDs and double the backups. This means to make
one set of backups (full and following incremental) to external HD 1 and - independently of this process - than make a 2nd set to external HD 2.

The question is if this might work properly ? E.g. are there any flags being set so that backup operation to HD 2 has some effect to the next incremental backup # 1.

Does somebody has experience with that or - which I would appreciate - some better ideas ?

Thanks - KilaVos

 

Copy the backups, using Windows Explorer from the first external to the second external. In other words the second external is a duplicate of the first. This need not be done right away ... once per week should be okay.

 

I agree with DwnNdrty, all you need to do is to copy the backups.

You are doing the right thing. You should always have more than one backup; I just let them fill the disks up and make no effort to delete them until necessary.

I do this as well but make my primary archive to an internal HD and then copy some of them for extra security to 2 external drives. I don't copy to both externals at the same time but alternate them. I do occassionally make a DVD backup but this is usually for storing at a friend's house in case of a major, major disaster such as robbery or fire.

To go back to your original concern, TI doesn't set any flags. So you could make a full and incrementals on drive external1 and then at any time do the same on external2. When TI makes the incremental it bases it on the Full and incremental archives that are on that drive with the same name. It has no idea that other archives exist elsewhere and if the filenames aren't the same it doesn't even care about archives on the same external in the same folder.

 

Personally i make my primary backups to an external hard drive and then i make secondary backups to a flashdrive. I also make another set of backups using an alternate imaging program.

 

Hi DwnNdrty,
thanks for your suggestion - I laughed out loud because this is as obvious as simple and it did not cross my mind.
That's why brainstorming and discussing questions like in this forum is a good way.

Hi seekforever,
thanks for the explanation of TI's modus operandi, which means that several backup sets do not influence each other.
Comparing COPY and 2nd BACKUP: COPY copies corrupted backup set resp. files - a separate 2nd backup has a chance to be o.k. Anyway, I might be somewhat pessimistic.

Thanks + regards

KilaVos

 

If you want to play it safe when doing backups being pessimistic is not necessarily a bad thing; the optomists very likely get into more trouble.

Making a 2nd backup instead of a copy would be slightly better than just doing a copy, IMO.

If you want to ensure that the copy itself is valid you can either do a TI validate or run one of the free checksum calculators and compare with the source file(s) checksum.

 

Hi seekforever,
I think so too + going to test this way in the next weeks.
Regards
KilaVos

 

To give a short summary of my testing:

I tested 2 backup sets (to 2 external HD) during the last week and it seems that seekforever is right: the 2 sets does not influence each other.
Coming to the conclusion: Backing up with 2 separate set2 does work.
Answer to my original question: YES !

Thanks & regards
KilaVos