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Old 03-14-2008, 12:13 PM
Spyder Spyder is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Brisbane
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Advanced scheduling

I have two backup drives, one offsite that I rotate weekly. I've been using SuperDuper for a little over a month and for the most part it's great. I didn't think I had a particularly strange setup, but the use of cron for SuperDuper's scheduling system is driving me up the wall

After futzing with 2 scheduled copies for the last month or so I've finally worked out that the only way to make this work is use 4 schedules. 2 primary backup jobs scheduled for most of the week, and another 2 that adjust for the differences between weekdays and the numbered weeks used by the crontab.


To give you an idea of what I'm doing, I backup at 11pm daily and swap drives on Friday. For March, my schedules are now:

Backup to drive 1 on the first and third weeks, except friday
Backup to drive 1 on the second and fourth weeks, only friday
Backup to drive 2 on the second and fourth weeks, except friday
Backup to drive 2 on the first and third weeks, only friday
(if you think about it in cron terms - this is the only way to make the first backup 1-6, 14-20, 28-31 and the second 7-13, 21-28).

I've had to set a calendar reminder to adjust these schedules on the first of each month, April will probably require a 50/50 split between the two because the 1st is a Tuesday.

Are there any plans for a better scheduler? As well as proper weekly schedules, I'd love a "start but wait for drive" option on my mum's laptop. She finds it a hassle to remember that her backup drive must be plugged in at a certain time otherwise SD complains and the backup doesn't happen.


[edit]Just noticed this post suggesting iCal for scheduling. I can possibly solve my scheduling woes with that, but it'd be better if SD could handle it for me [/edit]

Last edited by Spyder; 03-14-2008 at 12:18 PM.
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