AB's Useful Box - Backup Strategy

I searched high and low to find a sane method of performing backups.

Eventually I did find a very good method, but then lost the link, but following is the basics.

Backups should start with one main goal, what needs to be "restored"!

I needed a backup that could capture any changes made in the previous week, month and year.

I had been religiously backing up every day, but would over write each week day file. This was fine until I needed a file that had become corrupted possibly three months earlier. Alas that system has never been 100% since, despite best efforts.

Now driven by the previous short comings, a better solution was required, that was also able to be automated.

The following strategy was eventually implemented:

That is fine, but also needed a file naming convention, that from the filename, it could be ascertained when the backup was created.

The following naming was implemented:

yyyymmdd - being year, month and day.

Which results in the following schedule:

  •  1 = day 1
  •  2 = day 2
  •  3 = day 3
  •  4 = day 4
  •  5 = day 5
  •  6 = day 6
  •  7 = week 1 (day 7)
  •  8 = day 1
  •  9 = day 2
  • 10 = day 3
  • 11 = day 4
  • 12 = day 5
  • 13 = day 6
  • 14 = week 2 (day 7)
  • 15 = day 1
  • 16 = day 2
  • 17 = day 3
  • 18 = day 4
  • 19 = day 5
  • 20 = day 6
  • 21 = week 3 (day 7)
  • 22 = day 1
  • 23 = day 2
  • 24 = day 3
  • 25 = day 4
  • 26 = day 5
  • 27 = day 6
  • 28 = monthly 1 (day 7 / week 4)

 

 

Updated: 05-Jul-2009
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