2 replies to this topic

[Clocktower]

I just purchased a 300GB external USB hard drive that I intend to use for backups. (Yes, I know that hard drives are not as reliable as removable media. Nevertheless this will be fine with me.)

My questions are these:

1.) Should I specify the same file name for the Full and Incremental backups? It seems to me that if I were using a sequential medium like tape, the incrementals would be appended to the full or next previous incremental. Or am I missing some basic concept about how this works?

2.) The only general "option" that I am allowed to choose if the media already contains backups is: "Overwrite the media with this backup". But I have scheduled an incremental backup job to run every night. It appears that BUMP uses the same file name night after night. If it really is ovewriting, aren't I losing the backups of files that changed the previous day? The file names seem to have a sequence number added to them by BUMP. But it does not appear to increment that sequence number each night, thus it uses the same file name as last night. Should it? Do I have to do something to make it increment the sequence number?

Or, as I asked above, am I missing some basic concept?

Can anyone please advise?

Thanks in advance,
  -- Tim Dempsey

[marlinsinger]

Clocktower, on Sep 15 2006, 04:40 PM, said:

I just purchased a 300GB external USB hard drive that I intend to use for backups. (Yes, I know that hard drives are not as reliable as removable media. Nevertheless this will be fine with me.)

My questions are these:

1.) Should I specify the same file name for the Full and Incremental backups? It seems to me that if I were using a sequential medium like tape, the incrementals would be appended to the full or next previous incremental. Or am I missing some basic concept about how this works?

2.) The only general "option" that I am allowed to choose if the media already contains backups is: "Overwrite the media with this backup". But I have scheduled an incremental backup job to run every night. It appears that BUMP uses the same file name night after night. If it really is ovewriting, aren't I losing the backups of files that changed the previous day? The file names seem to have a sequence number added to them by BUMP. But it does not appear to increment that sequence number each night, thus it uses the same file name as last night. Should it? Do I have to do something to make it increment the sequence number?

Or, as I asked above, am I missing some basic concept?

Can anyone please advise?

Thanks in advance,
  -- Tim Dempsey

Here is what I do. For the full backup I use I:\BUMP\FullBackup00001.qic, where I is my external hard drive. I then increment the job number 00002, 00003, etc for the full backups.
I do differential backups and save them to I:\BUMP\DiffBackupxxxxx.qic where the xxxxx is the same number as the full backup. You could do this and add an a,b,c, etc to the end.
After updating the backup name, I save the job so I know what the next would be.
Yes, you would be losing the previous backup if you did not rename.
As far as should it change, I don't think it was ever designed to do that as there is no way they could know how you want to name the files.
I do find it easy enough to just save the job with the new name when I am finished with the backup.

[Clocktower]

marlinsinger, on Sep 15 2006, 10:49 AM, said:

Here is what I do. For the full backup I use I:\BUMP\FullBackup00001.qic, where I is my external hard drive. I then increment the job number 00002, 00003, etc for the full backups.
I do differential backups and save them to I:\BUMP\DiffBackupxxxxx.qic where the xxxxx is the same number as the full backup. You could do this and add an a,b,c, etc to the end.
After updating the backup name, I save the job so I know what the next would be.
Yes, you would be losing the previous backup if you did not rename.
As far as should it change, I don't think it was ever designed to do that as there is no way they could know how you want to name the files.
I do find it easy enough to just save the job with the new name when I am finished with the backup.

--- Thanks, Marlin. That was very helpful. It's clear to me now how BackupMyPC works in this respect. I'll follow your suggestion/method.

Thanks again,
    -- Tim Dempsey