Splitting Your Backup Job
When you run out of tape space, one of two things can happen:
- On Windows NT and 2000, the Backup program will pop up a window and ask you to place a new tape in the tape drive. You then have to put in a new tape and click OK. If you don't do this, then your backup will time out, and you will not be emailed the full report log
- On Windows XP and 2003 Server, the backup process will stop and you will see an error message in the backup report similar to the following:
Backup started on 09/09/2004 at 3:00 PM.
The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.
The operation was ended.
Backup completed on 09/09/2004 at 4:57 PM.
Directories: 3222
Files: 20345
Bytes: 20,168,431,751
Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 30 seconds
The Solution - split up your backup job
The solution to these problems is to split your backup job into two halves, and run each job separately.
For example, if you are backing up 30 gig of data and need to fit it onto a 20 gig tape, then setup two backup jobs of 15 gig each. You can use the File Estimation tool in the Files & Dirs section of
BackupAssist to estimate how much data you have selected to backup.
Then you can schedule one job to run at overnight, and another job to run early in the morning (when someone comes into the office and can change the tape).
Advantages of separate backup jobs
The major advantages of having two backup jobs are:
- You will be emailed reports for each job by BackupAssist, instead of timeout messages
- Each backup is "complete" in itself, and if the tape for one backup job stops working, it won't affect the other tape. (On the other hand, if you have two tapes where one continues from the next, if the first tape becomes unreadable or is lost, the second tape is virtually useless)
- You can also duplicate a backup of important files on both jobs for added reliability. If either tape then fails you will still have a backup of your most important data on the other tape.
Tips
- Make sure that each job will eject the tape, so that one backup job won't overwrite the previous one.