On Thursday 08 September 2011 20:54:57 hansbkk AT gmail DOT com wrote:
> Our users have a variety of storage media from ordinary flash drives
> and SD cards to eSata or firewire HDDs, and even some swappable
> "internal" HD's. Much of these data is as or sometimes even more
> important than those on the fixed drives.
> Just as the notebook users are only intermittently attached to the
> LAN, these various drives are only occasionally attached to the
> notebooks.
<snip>
> Or is this a truly idiotic idea that should indeed be prevented by design?

This is a nightmare for backup. And its even more a nightmare for restore, 
because when you loose a disk (btw: did you ever think about the impact of a 
disk lost at the airport or the pub?) and want to restore the data that was on 
there, you will find yourself going through all the hosts to see which had that 
disk with that files on the last backup. Only to find that the last backup is 
two months old...

If your business really needs this variable working-style, I think the disk 
usage and therefor the problematic backup situation is a social problem that 
is not solvable by technical solutions.
I propose a social solution:
 - Assign each person some disks he is responsible for.
 - Create one backup-host for each laptop and one for each movable disk on the 
assigned laptop. And make the one responsible the connected user in backuppc.
 - Set the warning intervals and timeouts and let the email function do the 
nagging.
 - Get the responsible managers to stand behind the idea of regular backups so 
they too bug their people when their entries have been red for to long.

Have fun,

Arnold

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