Hi Rick,

for me it depends...what is your definition of backup.

If it is 'for safety', then an empty files (clone no records) should serve
if something happen to the file in production.

Or a real copy could serve to put an early situation back in production.

We use our backups part as 'history', so we keep one backup made at the end
of each month, sometimes going back several years.
This way we can go back in and 'see' the given situation at a given time and
use that data.

Nearly all our application have a closing script that makes a backup file.
Every month we check the latest file to see if there's no corruption, and we
delete all the rest.

We have a disaster procedure in place, and it saved us more than once.

Ground rule here is to check if the backup is a real working backup without
corruption.

HTH

JW



On Wed, 25 May 2011 19:52:52 +0000, Rick O'Quinn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I know there's not a "rule" but I was just wondering how long most people
keep a backup? I have had a routine of archiving a weekly & monthly backup
to an external disk, then cloning that disk. I was looking through my files
today and realized I had a copy of the monthly archive going all the way
back to 2000! Just started wondering, really, do I need to keep anything
THAT old?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Rick
>
>
>
>-----------------------
>Rick O’Quinn
>Photographic Services Coordinator
>University of Georgia
>Public Affairs
>Broadcast, Video & Photographic Services
>188 Georgia Center
>Athens GA 30602-3603
>Work: (706) 542-8085
>Fax: (706) 583-0011
>[log in to unmask]
>http://www.photo.alumni.uga.edu