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Re: DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

 
A Sidoti
Occasional Contributor

DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

I am struggling to understand how to manage the media on DPX with two Removeable USB Hard drives. I would like to have a media set for each drive eg. Media-1 for USB Drive 1 and Media-2 for USB drive 2. Basically I use USB drive 1 for one week, pull the drive out add USB drive 2 and use that drive for the following week. The spare USB drive is taken offsite when not in use and will retain a week of backups. How do I go about this or is this product not capble of doing this? Please see BMP to show my media setup for a backup job. Is using a virtual library a better option?
4 REPLIES 4
D Lancaster
Honored Contributor

Re: DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

I have never had this request before so I had to do some testing before I responded. With the exception of the specific naming of the media. Data Protector Express can do exactly what you are requesting.

You have the destination selection set right. Set the job to use both drives and it will automatically use whichever drive is attached. The only diference is the job needs to name the media. If you use the default name "Media" for the first drive, the files on the second drive will be written to "Media:1" -- not exactly what you wanted but it is diferentiated so that the application knows which file it is writing to.

If you ever need to recover a specific version of a file, simply attach BOTH USB drives and the application will figure out which one to read from.

DL
A Sidoti
Occasional Contributor

Re: DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

Actually when I attach the next drive I don't get a new media name at all. It continues to use the existing media name, i.e. If my media name is Media-1 and I attach the second drive it will use the same media name, Media-1. Can you provide details on how you got DPX to create a new media name? Is using a Virtual Library an option?
D Lancaster
Honored Contributor

Re: DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

I'm not sure excactly why it did what it did but I can tell you how I set up my test.

I used 2 USB memory devices since I didn't have any actual disk drives. I made sure both were connected and recognized by Data Protector Express when I set up the job and selected both as destinations. I left everything else in the destination screen at the defaults.

To run the test I removed one of the USB devices and ran the backup. The media name was set to the default "Media" by the backup.

I then re-attached the USB drive I had removed BEFORE removing the other drive. I think this may be a key step. It forces the USB drive to a different drive letter.

When I ran the backup a second time the new media named "Media:1" was created. From that point on, the job logs showed that what ever USB device was connected the appropriate media was used.

I'll do some more testing today and see if I get different results.

DL
A Sidoti
Occasional Contributor

Re: DP v3.5 SP1 with two Ext USB Removeable Drives

I have changed over to the second USB drive and it failed to run the Backup job with invalid media. What I noticed is that the second drive had data on it, not related to the Backup. I deleted all data on the USB and re-run the backup. DPX created the new media perfectly and the backup job ran with no problems. Basically this means to make sure that both USB drives must be without any data and just let DPX create the necessary files, folders and Media. Thanks for your help.