Planning an incremental backup with rotation. Please Advise. (TIH 2009, Vista x64)

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I'm currently running True Image Home 2009 (build 9809) on a Vista x64 laptop (Home Premium).

I'm not interested in doing a full system backup on this machine for bare-metal restore. Rather, I need to back up select directories.

I have two external drives I would like to rotate off-site weekly. The idea here is to have one drive attached to the machine doing incremental backups daily, and swap that drive with the other at the end of each week.

Given that these drives serve as backup in case of fire/flood/theft, each drive must be able to restore independently of the other, in a worst case scenario only losing one week of data (ie, if the loss of the on-site drive happens the day before the two drives were to be rotated).

How do I schedule this? One incremental job? Two - one for each drive? How do I adjust should I rotate the drives a day late?

Thanks in advance :)

Wed, 08/11/2010 - 16:06
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Reading over this post, I think I may have been a bit unclear about how I'd like to do my rotation, so I'll attempt to clarify.

Monday: Disk A is used for the first time. Incremental backup scheme, but because it's never been used before it's functionally a "full" backup of selected data.

Tues-Sunday: Incremental backups continue each night on Disk A, updating backups with work done throughout the week.

Monday: Disk A goes off-site. Disk B comes on-site for the first time. Incremental backup scheme, but because it's never been used before it's functionally a "full" backup of selected data.

Tues-Sunday: Incremental backups continue each night on Disk B, updating backups with work done throughout the week.

Monday: Disk B goes off-site. Disk A returns on-site. Incremental backups pick up from the last time Disk A was used, so after Monday backup, Disk A contains same data as Disk B, plus one day.

Tues-Sunday: Incremental backups continue each night on Disk A, updating backups with work done throughout the week.

Monday: Disk A goes off-site. Disk B returns on-site. Incremental backups pick up from the last time Disk B was used, so after Monday backup, Disk B contains same data as Disk A, plus one day.

Tues-Sunday: Incremental backups continue each night on Disk B, updating backups with work done throughout the week.

etc, etc.

1) Does this make sense?
2) How can I actually schedule this? Is there a better way to achieve this?
3) I'm assuming I can manually consolidate backups as needed. Is this correct?
4) How do I deal with situations where I can't get a disk on-site in time?
5) If I exceed the sizes of Disks A and B, can I smoothly transition to larger portable disks?

Thanks all :)

Wed, 08/11/2010 - 22:42
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Having a strange issue with this thread in that I only see it on the forums when I'm logged in. Can anyone else see this, or did I manage to screw up my post somehow?

Thu, 08/12/2010 - 05:39