Using two USB drives and swapping for offsite backup

[dndrich]

Linkstation pals:

 

I am currently using a 6 TB Linkstation pro duo set up as RAID 1. Nice. I have a USB hard drive 3 TB connected to it configured with ext3 file system. Now, I backup nightly from the Linkstation to the USB hard drive. Would it be possible to use another USB hard drive that I swap every week and take one home? Or, would it error out when I change hard drives?

[drmemory]

Yes, you can use a second hard drive for backup. Configure it the same way (same format) as the first one. Our IT admin does a daily swap of backup HDDs and takes the backup home with him, every night. Having backups in two physically different locations is a preferred way of backing up your data.

[dndrich]

Thanks for the quick reply! OK, that sounds good. Now that I have you "on the line...", slightly different question. I know, should be different thread...

 

I am using a differential backup of about 150 GB. It takes like 3 hours to run despite almost no changes to the files. Have I checked a wrong box such as "full backup"? Seems to me using rsync this should run like lightning if there are few changes to the source files...

[drmemory]

That does sound long for a differential backup of that size. I would verify the settings in the unit first.

[dndrich]

I will. The instruction manual is a bit sparse with regards to what each of those check boxes does. So, I will play with the settings and see how that works out. Thanks for the quick response. Great product.

[dndrich]

OK, took a careful look at the instructions. Even though I am doing a differential backup, I have the complete backup box checked. I believe that overwrites all of the data again, so I unchecked that box. I suspect that will do it.

[dndrich]

That did it. Tonight the backup took all of 2 minutes. Perfect!