Using 2 external HDDs

Hi

I'm trialling Paragon Backup Server and I wish to set up a backup schedule that uses 2 external HDDs. One HDD will be left plugged in all week and then swapped on a Monday morning so that the company has offsite backup whilst allowing the backups to occur at night.

What is the best way of setting up Paragon Backup to do this?

What I'm unsure about is how Paragon will deal with cyclic backups where say 5 copies has been set as the max number. Will it keep 5 copies on each drive or 5 spread over 2 drives?

And what about differential backups over two drives? Will it work at all? Will it deal with the drive swapping automatically or do I need to somehow set up two schedules so that each drive has a base image + increments?

Thanks in advance

Nozza

 

Stupid question or too hard to answer?

 

You aren't going to get too much help from me since I'm a very recent Paragon Home user. The lack of response could be that most people on this forum don't use the server product.

I will say that a differential backup relies on the base (complete) archive and records all changes after it was made. An incremental reflects the changes made since the last incremental was done.

Unless there is some extensive cataloging of drive contents (unlikely) in the server product each drive would have to have a base archive for a differential to be added. Also, having only one base image on one of the external drives would be dangerous. Assume the facility had a lightning strike and the drive containing the only base image was connected. The base image could be destroyed and it would render your off-site differentials useless.

I don't know about the maximum differential limit question but my guess (!) is that it would look at the status of each drive when it is connected. Paragon has what appears to be an extensive scripting language so you may be able to setup a task that recognizes each drive perhaps based on a disk label. Like I said, just speculating.

You need to do some careful testing to see how it performs in your environment. Let's face it all software has a lot of "this is what it should do" features hyped about it but what it does on your system is the only thing that matters. If you are responsible for the data integrity on a multi-user server installation, the last thing you want to have to tell people is that it crashed and the backups aren't useable. If this is a major activity to secure data then I would be speaking directly to a Paragon rep about their product.

 

Thanks for the reply anyway.

Microsoft's Windows Server Backup as incorporated into SBS2008 has the ability to span multiple external drives. it automatically detects whether there is a base full backup and then increments from that and other increments on it. All one need do is to label the drives during set up and it handles everything for you. I was kind of hoping Paragon might have worked out the same deal.