Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
incremental additions since a single full backup long ago—you reduce
the risk of data loss due to file corruption or misbehaving backup
software. How often you recycle your media is up to you, but in general
I'd suggest recycling every 1-2 years.
Do, however, be aware that when you recycle media, you lose all the
versioned backups stored since you started that particular cycle. In
addition, if you recycle more than one set of media (for example, two
or three hard drives), stagger them—do one, wait a week or two, then
do the next one, and so on. That way, if you suddenly discover that
you've erased the media containing an old file you need, you'll still
have a chance to recover it easily from another set of backup media.
For bootable duplicates, as long as there's enough free space on your
destination disk, you can simply erase the disk and start over from
scratch. But if you're running out of space on the disk or partition you
use for duplicates, then your only options are to repartition the drive—
either expanding the partition for duplicates if there's enough room,
or repurposing a multi-partition drive as a single-partition drive—or
to erase the disk, use it for something else, and buy a new, larger drive
to use for bootable duplicates from now on.
Tip:
If you're erasing a hard disk anyway, this is a good time to
reassess partition sizes (see
Decide on Capacity
)
. If your disk or
home folder is significantly larger than before, consider changing
the partition sizes to better accommodate your current needs.
If You Archive Old Backups…
When you see that your backup media is close to being full—or when
your drive's warranty has run out and you start losing faith in it—you
can set it aside, buy new drives, and start new sets of backups.
Unfortunately, as I discuss just ahead in
Think about Long-Term
Archive Storage
, hard drives make a poor choice for long-term storage
(though an older hard drive that you wouldn't trust for backups may
be fine for casual, non-critical uses). In other words: yes, do buy new
drives, but don't put too much faith in being able to retrieve backups
from your old drives years from now.
