Need solution for set-and-forget backup-to-external disk rotation
Tape doesn't have the capacity, speed, or reliability I need for a backup medium. Backup over a network is just too slow and chokes the net. So I have been using USB attached disks. The problem is that Microsoft apparently has no way to guarantee drive assignments on removable disks and Acronis won't backup to a removable disk without using an assigned drive letter (sorry, but this is just plain dumb). The best I have been able to manage is by assigning all the external drives that belong to a rotation, to drive B: which is normally expected to host a floppy drive. That works for awhile because if someone plugs their flash drive in it will never be assigned to A: or B:. However, sometimes the user plugs in one of the drives and it doesn't get assigned to anything. Once that starts to happen it will always happen unless I make a trip to the customer site and reassign the drives again.
So I need a better solution. Acronis and Microsoft ought to take this on themselves, but they won't. Has anyone come up with a solution that doesn't require me to visit a customer regularly to fix this?
