Mauro Condarelli wrote:
> Hi,
> I asked this before, but no one answered, so I will try again :)
> 
> I am using a large (500G) external USB disk as backup media.
> It performs reasonably, so no sweat.
> 
> Problem is:
> Is there a way to do a pre-check to see if the drive is actually mounted
> and, if not, just skip the scheduled backup?
> It would be easy to put a do_not_backup file in the directory over which
> I mount the remote.
> I could then do a test to see if that file is present (no disk) or if it
> is absent (something was mounted over it.
> Unfortunately I have no idea where to put such a test in BackupPC!
> 
> Can someone help me, please?
> 
> Related issue:
> I would like to use a small pool of identical external HDs in order to
> increase further security.


Hi Mauro,

Considering what it seems like you want to achieve, I would suggest another 
approach: Use at least three disks in a rotating scheme and RAID1.

Say I have three disks labeled 1, 2 and 3. Then I would rotate them according 
to 
the schedule below, which guarantees that:
- there is always at least one disk in the BackupPC server.
- there is always at least one disk in the off-site storage.
- all disks are never at the same location.

1 2 3   (a = attached, o = off-site)
a o o
a a o -> RAID sync
o a o
o a a -> RAID sync
o o a
a o a -> RAID sync
. . .

An even safer approach would of course be to rotate four disks where at least 
two disks are always attached to the BackupPC server.

Good luck!
/Martin Leben


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