Hey,
So I've recently replaced our single LTO4 drive with an LTO5 autoloader complete with barcode scanner due to increasing number of tapes per day/time to backup etc.
Prior to the autoloader I would name each tape according to its day in the 4 week cycle, so Monday1-A, Monday1-B etc, so it was nice and easy to keep track and load the tapes. We had overwrite protection set at 3 weeks but because I knew exactly what tape was in the sequence this didn't really matter.
Now with the autoloader I've been using for 2 weeks I've suddenly clicked my old convention doesn't really work. Sure I have a 3 week overwrite but unless I just load 2 tapes in there at a time it might pull any of the tapes to write on. I want to have more than 2 in there really because if I cant make it to the office one day, being a one man band it was always a pain.
So how do you guys manage this? Do you just have Week 1, Week 2 etc sets of tapes (I would have 10 tapes per week) and just load those and let it overwrite as needed for that week, or do you limit it in other ways?
As an SMB but part of a larger corporate we do full backups each night for 4 weeks, then a monthly for 12 months then a yearly for 7 years.
Thanks,
Andy