I want to start using a large IDE RAID in addition to my DAT drive with
Amanda and I have a couple of questions about that.

1) Which version of Amanda should I best use ? I got 2.4.3b3 (I know b4 has
been released) and 2.5.0 and I see that both of these have support for the
file: backup device. So, which to use ? Is Amanda like Linux in that 2.4 is
the release version, and 2.5 is the bleeding edge version ? In that case,
I'll use 2.4.3b4 (and later as available) because I want stability in my
backup software, thanks very much.

2) How does one restore ? I've RTFM in 2.4.3b3 and in the amanda man page
I've read about usage of the file device - reasonably straightforward. In
previous discussions on the list I've seen people suggesting that one scheme
is to make a new directory in the backup directory each day named after the
date and to symlink data to that for that day's backups - seems like a
reasonable way of doing things. BUT how does the database / index files /
amrecover deal with this ? Normally (using tapes) one uses amrecover,
selects files for recovery, and by suitable manipulation of the index files,
amrecover knows what tapes it needs to get back the files and prompts 
accordingly. How does this map into a configuration where the file driver is
used ?



Kindest regards,




Niall  O Broin