It sounds to me like what you want to do is make a new amanda configuration 
which you run once a week and have it take full backups only. You would then 
need enough tapes to do say 12 full backups. That way you would have data from 
about 3 months ago if you needed it.

Then, each week, in addition to your daily backups, you will do one extra 
backup which is your full backup of everything.

It might be easier to get another 20 tapes and add them to your existing 
rotation. That way you will have the 10 tapes you are using plus two full 
cycles of backup history. Then you just go through all 30 tapes before starting 
over.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lloyd [mailto:subscr002 AT twilight-systems DOT com]
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 2:11 PM
> To: 
> Subject: Re: adding snapshot backups?
> 
> 
> Brian Cuttler wrote:
> > You have a tape cycle of 10, what is your dump cycle ? 
> Certain less than
> > 10, hopefully less than 5. 5 given one untouched copy of 
> the your level
> > 0 backup while the older level 0 is being overwritten 
> (assuming a single
> > level 0 per dump cycle).
> 
> the dump cycle, runs per cycle, and tape cycle are 10.
> 
> 
> > What are you trying to do ?
> 
> just ensure there is some kind of snapshot history going 
> back, say three 
> months, in case i need to reach into the distant past for a 
> file.  maybe 
> a once-weekly snapshot...
> 
> 
> > Are you looking for periodic level 0 that are outside of the
> > normal tape pool or rotation ?
> 
> i think this is what i'm after.  perhaps combine this with your 
> suggestion to lower the dump cycle to < 5 ?  can i just change this 
> value in amanda.conf?
> 
> 
>