Recycle a Backup Set

If you're storing your archives on hard disks, they will eventually fill up. How long that takes depends on the size of the disks, whether or not you use compression, and how frequently your files change. If the disk holding a backup set becomes completely full, Retrospect will continue attempting to run your backup scripts, but each one will fail due to a lack of disk space. Therefore, you should check on your free space periodically and, when it begins to get low, recycle your mediain other words, erase the backup set and start over with a full backup.

The procedure to do so is easy, but it isn't obvious. To recycle a backup set, follow these steps:

1.	On the Configure pane, click the Backup Sets button. The Backup Sets window appears.
2.	Select the backup set you want to recyclethe one that's stored on whichever volume is closest to being full. Click Configure. A new dialog opens.
3.	Click the Options tab. At the bottom of the Options pane is a Media section with a single button: Action. Click the Action button. The Media Control Manual Override dialog appears.
4.	Select the Recycle radio button and click OK. This tells Retrospect that for the next run of this script only, it should use the Recycle actionerase the backup set and then perform a full backup.
5.	Close all the other windows, saving your changes if prompted.

The next time your backup script runs, it will recycle that backup set.

Needless to say, when you recycle a backup set, you lose all the old incremental archives from that set. Therefore, you should not recycle if you've had any computer problems recently that make you suspect you'll need to access older versions of your files! The best practice, assuming you have more than one backup set for your archives, is to stagger their recycling datesby a month or more, if possible. That way, you'll always have at least several older copies of your files.