Best way to set up backup

I've been fooling around with Amanda for awhile here and am learning it (perhaps too slowly for some...) and could use some advice.

I have three jobs set up

Job 1 - Music - it's to backup my digitized Music. Probably only need one full backup with each subsequent one backing up the changes. The total size is about 52 GB and I'm backing it up to S3. The biggest problem that I'm having is that the backup takes about 10 days on my DSL, so what would be the "best" way to set it up?

I've tried to set up a disklist that breaks the directory into chunks, but find that it just now does a backup in chunks so that I don't need as much disk space to backup, but the writing out to S3 still takes days. Here's the result of my amstatus

amstatus music
Using /samba/bigdrive/dumps/music/log/daily/amdump.1
From Tue Jan 13 17:28:36 EST 2009

localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ca 0       582m finished (8:33:01)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ce 0       904m finished (1+19:28:45)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ch 0       936m finished (1+22:36:43)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Co 0       283m finished (20:59:16)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Da 0      1305m finished (1+3:01:29)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Do 0       345m finished (1:30:37)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./En 0       362m finished (2:44:21)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ep 0       171m finished (18:10:29)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Er 0       374m finished (4:00:17)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ev 0       313m finished (22:03:50)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Fo 0       383m finished (6:35:14)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Fr 0       788m finished (13:33:18)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ge 0       267m finished (20:00:42)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ja 0       665m finished (10:48:18)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Jo 0       862m finished (16:26:44)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./Ju 0       337m finished (0:20:12)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./K   0       258m finished (19:05:29)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./LC 0       380m finished (5:17:49)
localhost:/samba/bigdrive/Music/./cak 0       314m finished (23:07:40)

SUMMARY          part      real estimated
                           size       size
partition       : 19
estimated       : 19                 4919m
flush           :   0         0m
failed          :   0                    0m           ( 0.00%)
wait for dumping:   0                    0m           ( 0.00%)
dumping to tape :   0                    0m           ( 0.00%)
dumping         :   0         0m         0m ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%)
dumped          : 19      9838m      4919m (199.98%) (199.98%)
wait for writing:   0         0m         0m ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%)
wait to flush   :   0         0m         0m (100.00%) ( 0.00%)
writing to tape :   0         0m         0m ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%)
failed to tape :   0         0m         0m ( 0.00%) ( 0.00%)
taped           : 19      9838m      4919m (199.98%) (199.98%)
tape 1        : 19      9838m      4919m ( 9.84%) musicSet1-0002 (38 chunks)
4 dumpers idle : runq
taper idle
chunker0 busy   : 0:25:08 ( 1.25%)
dumper0 busy   : 0:25:05 ( 1.25%)
   taper busy   : 1+9:31:49 ( 99.95%)
0 dumpers busy : 1+9:19:31 ( 99.34%)                runq: 1+9:19:31 (100.00%)
1 dumper busy : 0:12:50 ( 0.64%)                runq: 0:12:50 (100.00%)

Job 2 - daily

This job backs up the /etc/amanda directory and the directory where I keep all the shared documents. I figure the rest of the server can be re-installed so I just wanted to get the information out that I needed. It runs about 4.4 GB with very small incrementals. I currently have it set up

dumpcycle 1 week
runspercycle 5
tapecycle 12 tapes
runtapes 1

I would really like to change it to 1 full backup per month with a two months available. I'm planning on changing it to

dumpcycle 4 weeks
runspercycle 20
tapecycle 42 tapes
runtapes 1

Again - my big problem is the fact that the full backup takes multiple days meaning the incrementals just get dumped to disk. I know I could get amflush to run automatically, but I would be concerned that I'm missing a few days - not horrific, but would like to know the best way to deal with that.

Job 3 - desktops

This job backs up the document directories for the PC's - again, biggest problems are the full takes several days to run with the additional problem is that the jobs are scheduled to be run at a specific time. If one of the PC's is off or out of the office, it just doesn't get backed up. Is there a way to say "Back this up if it needs it"?

Thanks again to everyone on the list...

Matt Burkhardt, MSTM
President
Impari Systems, Inc.
502 Fairview Avenue
Frederick, MD 21701
mlb AT imparisystems DOT com
www.imparisystems.com
(301) 682-7901