Adam,

We were only doing incrementals and we had a situation where we had to restore a
Novell server.
The restore had to go through two years worth of incremental tapes to complete
the restore. I would
strongly recommend doing periodic fulls (and colocation) unless you have a SLA
which allows for extremely long restores.

Regards, Tim
NAFTA IS Technical Operations
(203) 812-3469
tim.melly.b AT bayer DOT com



                    Adam J Boyer
                    <adam.j.boyer        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
                    @FRB.GOV>            cc:
                    Sent by:             Subject:     Incremental forever -- 
any problems?
                    "ADSM: Dist
                    Stor Manager"
                    <ADSM-L AT VM DOT MA
                    RIST.EDU>


                    12/17/2001
                    09:31 AM
                    Please
                    respond to
                    "ADSM: Dist
                    Stor Manager"






Hey,

Our management is wondering if it's safe to just do incrementals
forever, or whether we should try to do a forced full every few months
to keep things fresh.  Our experience has been that the incremental
system works great-- we once restored a whole raid 5 array, with many
files from years ago.  But, nonetheless, I'd appreciate any stories or
testaments to help build a case.

Thanks much,
adam