I think I understand your want in that you would like to have backuppc 
check that a drive is hooked up before trying to use it for backups.  If 
I am correct then I would suggest you build a quick daemon script that 
starts backuppc when the device is hotplugged and stops backuppc when 
unplugged.  I dont know what your linux distro is but hotplug scripts 
are pretty easy, do some google work to get the file and method for a 
hotplug script on a specific device.

Martin Leben wrote:
> 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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