Windows XP/2k3, drive letters, and automated backups

[andris]

I'm in the process of setting up automated backup tasks to keep our archive of derivative files backed up on a daily basis without me having to remember to do anything.  Our derivatives live on our server, to which is connected a Quad bay external SATA tower. 

I'd like to implement a system where we have two separate copies of the derivatives archive, call them A and B.  Every night, I'll swap the two:  one will live in the SATA bay and get an automated backup around 3:00 am, and the other will get sent home with the photographer.  Ideally, all I'd have to do would be to swap the drives.  Now, though, I have the additional task of manually assigning the drive letter of the newly inserted drive to match the configured backup location. 

When I assign a drive letter to backup 'A', that letter is retained as many times as I pull 'A' out and put it back in.  However, once I assign that same drive letter to drive 'B', the assignment for drive 'A' is forgotten.  (I'm using a product called FolderClone to run my nightly backups...I'm assuming there are some out there that base the backup location on volume name rather than drive letter? Recommendations?)

Is anyone aware of a good way to get around this drive letter issue?  I've tried assigning the drive letter to A, imaging drive A, and then laying that image back down on drive B....but the drive letter assignment is still not retained.

Thanks,

Andris

[jmitch]

Just a thought but why not just define 2 back-up jobs (1 for each drive letter).  1 will always fail but the other should succeed, this will happen for each on alternating days.  I've never done such a thing but you could test it out and see if it works. 

Jim

[peterkrogh]

Jim,
That's what I was thinking.
Unfortunately for me, Chronosync only wants to do weekly or daily, not bi-daily.
I have set up my weekly rotating offsites that way, and live with an error notification every week when it can't find the alternate drive.
Peter

[scottreynolds]

There's another simple option..... assuming both drives are the same physical drive size use a tool, like acronis, to do a clone of the other drive. This will set all the information to be exactly the same on the drives and the hot smapping will result in the same drive letters -- I found that out by mistake in my testng last night. 

Scott Reynolds

[andris]

Thanks for the reply Scott...I tried that with Norton Ghost already (see my first post) to no avail.  Maybe I need to play with it's settings a bit, but my understanding was that I was creating a complete image of the drive.

I'm giving the two backup task approach a shot tonight.  I'm willing to live with one of them failing every day if it means I don't have to manually assign the drive letter each time I swap.

Andris

[scottreynolds]

Disapointed by my last attempt (It should work I'm sure of it) I thought I had better set about finding you another way...
There's a handy dos command called SUBST (Substitute)..............................

You can set up this command to do the drive mappings for you and run it prior to your backup... I just tried it although I'd suggest using b: as your drive name. A and B drive are from floppies and 99% of people don't use these.

To set up -- where a: is the fake drive:
subst a: m:\
to Remove
subst a: /D


Here's a little script you can runevery day to ensure your drive is mapped correctly. This script will report errors but won't fail. Basically it the drive exists it will drop it if disk one exists it will be mapped, if disk two exists it will be mapped.. This is much nicer in my opinion than having two jobs

subst B: /D
subst B: L:\
subst B: M:\


Details of the command are below..................
SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

  drive1:        Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
  [drive2:]path  Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
                 a virtual drive.
  /D             Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

Hope this helps Scott..