Amanda is much better than that. It will but the backup in a holding disk
i.e. folder/partition until space runs out or hits the limit you set.

It will not overwrite another tape unless you force it by hand, which
is good.

You don't have to figure out which tape, amanda tells you. You can even 
browse the backup files like a normal Unix system and restore per file.

You have not spec'd how often you backup either, how much data and much more
if we need to help you.

Read the docs first and look at this site:

http://www.oops.co.at/AMANDA-docs/index.html

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
[mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org]On Behalf Of Joe Konecny
Sent: 31 August 2004 15:43
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Need help with backup plan


Right now I back up my Netware server with Arcserve to a
single tape.  I have 10 tapes.  The system is set up to accept
any tape and run a full backup.  What we do is keep the tapes
in rotation and if someone forgets to bring a tape back from
off site it is no big deal we just use the next one.  Arcserve
assigns each tape a new ID when it uses it.  We write the date
of the backup on the case of each tape.  If a restore is needed
we figure out what date we want and insert the tape.  Arcserve
will tell us the tape ID and then we can restore from that
session.  Now I'm switching to FreeBSD and have a working
Amanda install with 10 tapes.  I have yet to configure the
cycle, etc... as I'm not sure how to make it work like Arcserve
did.  Can Amanda be made to work like that?